Led Zeppelin’s back together. Stagflation and high gas prices have made a comeback as well. And late next year, you’ll be able to complete a 1970s revival with a two-door car that’s all business up front and party out back.

Answering the wishes of fervent fans — and the fears of some critics — General Motors Corp. was to unveil today its plans for a revival of the Chevy El Camino car-truck as a 2010 model Pontiac hot rod. The “sport truck” doesn’t have a name yet; GM will run a contest over the next month asking for submissions at a Pontiac Web site www.pontiac.com/namethiscar, and announce the winner April 15.

Here’s one: “Australiaino.”

Based on the same underpinnings as the G8 sedan and upcoming Chevrolet Camaro, the un-Camino will be built in Australia, where GM has centered engineering efforts for rear-wheel drive cars. It’s a risky strategy for GM, as Australian-built models have never sold well in the United States, and a weaker U.S. dollar threatens the business case for any imports.

But without its Australian arm, GM would not likely have enough resources to give Pontiac new models.

In addition to the mini-truck, GM also was to unveil today a version of the G8 sedan with the Corvette’s 402-horsepower engine that is to come to showrooms in the next year.

Australia has the longest history with so-called utes, since they were invented there by a Ford engineer in 1934 who got the idea from a farmer seeking one vehicle for church on Sundays and the pig market on Mondays. Ford brought the idea to the United States in the late 1950s, and GM followed, with the Chevrolet El Camino growing to define the segment.

GM’s U.S. production peaked in 1973 at nearly 72,000 El Caminos and GMC Caballeros. By the early 1980s, tighter fuel rules for cars had made small pickups more competitive, and GM ended production in 1988.

And by then, the El Camino and its ilk had become a punch line. President Bill Clinton told workers at GM’s Louisiana truck plant in 1994 that he owned an El Camino in the ’70s: “It was a real sort of Southern deal. I had Astroturf in the back. You don’t want to know why, but I did.”

Abandoned in the United States — save for some unsuccessful stabs at a comeback such as the Subaru Baja — the utility market flourished in Australia, where Ford and GM’s Holden have continued to build several models.

The G8-based vehicle will come only with the 361-horsepower V8 offered in the G8 GT paired with a six-speed automatic transmission. It will haul more than 1,000 pounds and tow 3,500 pounds — as much as some small pickups.

Ford Motor Co. is recalling about 100,000 2008 F-Series trucks because the front driver’s seat does not comply with federal seat back strength regulations, according to information reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Covered in the recall are F-250, F-350, F-450 and F-550 models of Ford’s (NYSE: F) Super Duty trucks, which are built at Louisville’s Kentucky Truck Plant. More than 87,000 of the trucks are in the United States, and 14,000 are in Canada.

“Some 40 percent split and captain’s chair driver’s seats, equipped with lumbar supports, may have improper welds at the joint of the seat back pivot bracket and seat back,” the NHTSA reported. As a result, “in the event of a crash, the seat side pivot bracket may crack or break, increasing the risk of injury to the seat occupant.”

However, no injuries have been reported, according to an Associated Press report.

Ford Motor Co. is launching its new F-150 next year, but it can’t get to market soon enough.

Ford ended January with 32.5% of the sales in the full-size truck segment, down 1.2 percentage points compared with the same period a year earlier. That was the biggest decline among the competitors in the large truck category, which is one of the big profit centers for automakers. While the Ford F-Series has been the best-selling truck model for 31 years, the Chevrolet Silverado trailed the F-Series by just 5,000 trucks in January. Toyota Motor Corp.’s new Tundra picked up 4.8 percentage points of share in the month, for 9.5% of the market.

Coming up: Ford prepares to launch another round of buyouts of its hourly workers.
Couple win auto show wedding

Most people go to auto shows to pick out a car. One couple is going to the Chicago Auto Show to make a stronger commitment.

Chrysler chose Jackie Rohner and Blake Humphrey of Rock Island, Ill., from 63 entries to get married at the auto show. The couple — she’s a schoolteacher and he’s a firefighter — win a Dodge Journey, and Chrysler sprang for a wedding reception and, of course, a Journey cover band.

“If we have experienced and accomplished so many great things in less than a year of dating, we can’t wait to see what, together as a married couple, we can accomplish in a lifetime,” Rohner said in her entry letter.

Coming up: Chrysler readies launch of Dodge Journey crossover.
Site for motoring memories opens

Want to post a picture of that 1968 Camaro you drove in your younger days? Have a story about working at a General Motors plant?

GM has opened up its “Wiki” site at its GMNext Web site that allows the public to share stories about the first 100 years of the world’s largest automaker.

Users must register their e-mail on www.gmnext.com to make submissions, then click the Wiki tab at the top. From there, users can post a picture, write a submission or read other submissions.

GM said all submissions are moderated to assure they follow the rules listed on the Wiki, but accuracy is overseen by the user community and subject matter experts.

NASCAR Busch series, which will be called the Nationwide series in 2008 and beyond:
A source at Ford Motor Company says the motorsports division expects the Ford Mustang to replace the Fusion in the NASCAR Busch [Nationwide Series in 2008] series.

That said, it may not be a done deal. Reportedly Chevrolet is balking at running the Camaro in the NASCAR series. Rumors suggest that Dodge is considering a Busch series version of the Challenger, which just went on sale at a price of under $38,000, for delivery in 2008. Dodge will build 5,000 Challengers in 2008, and expects to increase that number by sevenfold for 2009. Sales expectations for the Chevrolet Camaro are higher. With the discontinuation of the Monte Carlo, Chevrolet has no sports coupe aside from the Corvette and the small Cobalt SS, and won’t until the Camaro is introduced. The Corvette will continue to race in the American Le Mans and Grand-Am series, though one contingent within General Motors is pressing for a body change for the ALMS GT1 class, where GM’s two factory Corvettes literally have no competition: They’d like to see those Corvettes rebodied as Camaros to help launch that model, which won’t hit the market until well after the Challenger.

Also, the move to “pony car” coupes could cause a problem for Toyota. The Camry Solara, a two-door sedan version of the top-selling car in the United States, may disappear after the 2008 model year. Sales are dismal; Toyota is expected to build only about 30,000 Solaras this year, compared to about 400,000 Camry sedans. One possibility at Toyota: Automotive News says that the company is expected to introduce a new Celica sports coupe in Europe in 2009. If that car comes here, it could be raced in NASCAR. The discontinued Celica made some appearances in the now-defunct NASCAR Dash series. If the move to the Mustang, et al, is to be made for 2009, that announcement would be expected soon after the first of next year.

In 26 years of selling cars and trucks, Ken Venema says he has never seen a feature impress customers like Ford’s SYNC.

“I must have a half-dozen sales because of SYNC. I strongly believe that,” said Venema, a sales consultant at Pfeiffer Lincoln Mercury in Grand Rapids, Mich. “I’m sold on it. And I’m sure glad Ford’s got it.”

The dealership even switched its radio spots recently from advertising price to promoting SYNC.

“I am using (SYNC) as a showroom builder. I am pumped on it because it’s something that we can offer the market that doesn’t focus on price, and it’s something we have that our competitors don’t,” said Kim Winkler, new car sales manager, Pfeiffer Lincoln Mercury.

SYNC, Ford’s industry-exclusive technology that provides customers in-vehicle voice command compatibility with portable digital media players and most Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, is helping drive vehicles sales across the country.

SYNC-equipped Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles were moving more than twice as fast off dealer lots in November than those same vehicles without SYNC. And customer satisfaction is high.

According to a Ford survey of SYNC customers, nearly 80 percent of respondents “definitely would” recommend it to a friend. Microsoft, which collaborated with Ford on the technology, was very encouraged.

“It’s early in SYNC’s launch — we’ll know more about its impact in a few months — but so far all indicators are extraordinarily positive,” explained John Emmert, SYNC marketing manager, Ford Motor Company.

The survey also revealed that most customers thought SYNC was easy to use, and that dealers were helpful in explaining and demonstrating the new technology.

Sales consultant Everton McLeod of Manhattan (N.Y.) Ford says extensive in-dealership training prior to SYNC’S launch was very beneficial.

“It wasn’t like they just told us about it. Everybody had to do something — pair a phone, dial a number — so the instructor could see that we actually grasped what he taught us,” said McLeod.

SYNC is also hitting its targeted customers, which include a savvy, tech-toting younger demographic as well as an older group that likes the convenience of hands-free mobile phone operation.

Emmert says Ford employees frequently stop him at work to relate stories about SYNC’s ability to raise awareness and purchase consideration for the company’s products among relatives and friends who swore off domestic vehicles years ago.

“When you think about a feature having the power to put Ford back on customers’ shopping lists, it’s pretty impressive,” he said.

SYNC currently is offered on 12 Ford, Lincoln and Mercury models. The first SYNC-equipped vehicles, including the redesigned 2008 Ford Focus, began reaching customers in late September. When offered as an option, the system is priced at $395.

Shares of companies that make Heavy trucks rose Wednesday, pulled up by a strong overall market, along with new data showing an increase in truck orders.

According to data from ACT Research LLC, orders of Class 5 through heavy-duty Class 8 trucks rose 12 percent over November 2006 levels.

The November increase came after a 9 percent jump in October, which was preceded by a drop in the three previous months, according to the data included in an analyst note from Wachovia’s Andrew Casey.

Casey said the sustained strength in orders showed that truck market weakness may have bottomed, which is a relative positive for the companies in the sector, he said.

Also on Wednesday, Paccar Inc. announced a special dividend of $1 per share and a regular dividend of 18 cents per share.

The company said it would increase production at its DAF Trucks subsidiary by 5 percent in the first quarter in light of the strong Western and Central European truck market.

Here how Heavy truck stocks finished Wednesday:

Paccar rose $3.94, or 7.8 percent, to close at $54.55.

Cummins Inc. gained $4.52, or 3.9 percent, to finish at $122.

Eaton Corp. added $2.48, or 2.8 percent, to end at $91.74.

Navistar International Corp. rose $2.20, or 4.4 percent, to close at $52.20.

Ford Motor Co. has temporarily shut down at least two factories that build large pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles amid tepid demand, a spokeswoman said.

A Dearborn, Mich., plant that builds F-150 pickups and a Louisville, Ky., plant that builds Explorer SUVs went dark starting Monday – two weeks ahead of their normally scheduled holiday shutdowns, said the spokeswoman, Anne Marie Gattari.

Both plants will remain closed the rest of the year, people familiar with the matter said. The moves are part of Ford’s efforts to “align capacity with demand,” Ms. Gattari said.

The Dearborn plant will resume production at the start of the New Year, Ms. Gattari said. Workers are also scheduled to return to the Louisville factory just after New Year’s, a person familiar with the matter said.

Ford, along with Detroit competitors General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, has suffered sharp sales declines among its pickups and SUVs. F-Series pickups are off 12.4% through November, while Explorer sales have plunged 23.5%, according to Autodata Corp. Overall, Ford-brand light-duty truck sales, which include pickups and SUVs, have dropped 6.1%.

Detroit’s Big Three auto makers are feeling the pain of plummeting real-estate values and surging fuel prices, both of which have sapped consumer spending. In addition, a marked decline in residential construction has damped sales of Detroit’s profitable pickups. Ford has tended to suffer the most from that trend, as its F-Series trucks are used a disproportionate amount in the home-construction business.

In addition to December shutdowns, Ford will likely temporarily idle some factories in January as part of a 7% first-quarter production cut.

Ford has generally declined to discuss specific factory plans for January but George Pipas, the auto maker’s top sales analyst, said the company would likely target plants building pickups and SUVs for shutdowns or scaled-back overtime as part of the first-quarter production pullback.

Chrysler plans to halt production at truck plants in Warren, Mich., and Fenton, Mo., right before Christmas and extend the shutdown through all of January, according to people familiar with the auto maker’s plans. A third truck plant in Mexico will shut down for the first two weeks of January.

General Motors has said it will temporarily idle three pickup-truck plants for two weeks in January, in addition to the traditional holiday shutdown.

Ford Motor Co. may save as much as $300 million on warranty costs next year because of improved design standards and manufacturing technology, the company’s top quality executive said Friday.

That will be in addition to $900 million in expenses Ford trimmed this year because of fewer dealer repairs after cars and trucks leave the factory, Vice President Bennie Fowler said in an interview.

“The numbers that we’re targeting, probably another $200 to $300 million, would be in line, certainly in line with the substantial improvement we made this year,” Fowler said of prospects for savings next year.

Ford is trying to win back buyers and end 11 consecutive years of U.S. market share declines. A survey commissioned by the Dearborn-based company found that its five-year effort to improve quality was cutting problems to near the level of Toyota Motor Corp., the industry’s perceived leader.

The survey of 60,611 new Ford car or truck owners from September 2006 through February 2007 found 1,427 reports of “things gone wrong” per 1,000 vehicles, 159 fewer than last year, Ford said in June.

The survey, by RDA Group in Bloomfield Hills, found Toyota owners reported 1,362 problems per 1,000 vehicles.

In June, Ford had four of the top 10 brands in the annual initial-quality survey by J.D. Power & Associates. Ford’s Lincoln brand ranked third, with Jaguar sixth, Mercury eighth and the namesake Ford brand 10th.

The warranty savings, now being used to offset losses after a record $12.6 billion shortfall last year, will eventually allow increased spending on future new models, Fowler said.