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If we had any doubts—even eensy-weensy ones—that General Motors (GM) will enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy as soon as possible next week, this tidbit from GM's media site pretty much wipes ’em out:

Let’s just assume that General Motors (GM) will enter bankruptcy next week. When it emerges, what will the new company sell?

GM will have four main brands: Chevrolet, GMC, Buick, and Cadillac. Of these, Buick is important for the China market, but far less so for the North American market. So when the dust finally settles after a few years, you’re really looking at Chevy, GMC, and Caddy.

Yesterday, the New York Times' Micheline Maynard went on CNBC to discuss GM’s impending bankruptcy with John Wolconowicz of IHS Global Insight. (You can check the segment out here.) There wasn’t anything particularly scintillating about the exchange, although there was some good inside baseball on the business details from Maynard.

The era of the international auto show may be drawing to a close. Carmakers are cutting back, some shows are being canceled altogether, and still others are barely hanging on. This is sad news for people who love the auto show spectacle, but is it bad news for consumers?

In about a week, we will witness the darkest day in American business history. That’s because on or about June 1, General Motors (GM) will likely file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

OK, it’s not like GM hasn’t been in a sort of quasi-bankruptcy for the past few months, with the government providing the billions in financing the company has required to forge deals with the UAW, the Canadian Auto Workers union, the taxpayer (who will end up owning a majority stake in the new GM), and …

Various reports today indicate that both the German government and General Motors (GM) want to sell Opel—a cherished German brand that no one has ever heard of and the main European division of GM—not to Fiat but to Canadian-Austrian auto-parts supplier Magna.

Following the Obamastration’s announcement of stiffer national fuel economy standards, Edmunds Auto Observer has pointed out that they aren’t really all that stiff. Referencing a 2007 report from its own consumer auto site, Auto Observer points out that there’s a significant discrepancy between the CAFE mpg numbers and the EPA numbers that most car buyers see when they research a car purchase. The “loophole,” as they characterize it, boils down to: CAFE MPGs are always higher than EPA MPGs.

Reading Daniel Gross’ Moneybox column about increased efficiency as the new productivity, I was struck by a new term: “eco-driving.” Never heard of it. So I checked it out and discovered that it’s a concept related to a more avant-garde and at times deeply odd automotive subculture: hypermiling.

Robert "Make Mine Globality!" Nardelli is out as CEO of bankrupt Chrysler, replaced by (wait for it) … C. Robert Kidder.

Yesterday, President Obama announced a new national fuel economy and emissions standard that will significantly raise the MPGs that cars and trucks are required to get by 2016.

Not surprisingly, this move to higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards for cars and trucks has prompted some oppositional commentary.

Tomorrow, Jim Motavalli, who posts at the New York Times' Wheels blog (among others), and I will be conducting a debate about the future of electric vehicles. We won't be debating live, but we'll both be posting our exchange once we've finished. I'll have it ready by the end of the day for Shifting Gears, so check it out. Jim will be posting at Mother Nature Network.

I have a knee-jerk distaste for cap-and-trade solutions to our carbon problems. To me, cap-and-trade fails the basic test of being easy to understand. When you scale up something that’s complex—as we would have to if we passed cap-and-trade legislation—major failure becomes an option. The most popular alternative, a carbon tax, is by contrast quite simple. Emit more carbon, pay more tax. QED.