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Ford (F) has officially gotten behind a bid from Chinese automaker Geely to buy Volvo, the last holdout in what was once Ford’s Premium Automotive Group. Some may remember that Ford offloaded two other PAG members, Jaguar and Land Rover, to India’s Tata Motors in 2008.

With just about a week to go before Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne presents his post-bankruptcy revival plans for the smallest of the Detroit Big Three automakers, words has leaked out that the PT Cruiser, Chrysler’s iconic retro-mobile, is destined to be axed. Again.

Fisker Automotive will be building a snazzy and expensive luxury sports car in Finland, but the $500-plus million it recently gathered in Department of Energy loans will evidently be put to use in ... Delaware! That’s because Fisker is looking to sign a deal to take over an idled General Motors (MTLQQ) plant that formerly assembled Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky roadsters.

By now, everyone knows that when General Motors (MTLQQ) flashily claimed that the forthcoming Chevy Volt extended-range electric vehicle would get ... 230 mpg!, it was a publicity stunt, pure and simple. That hasn’t stopped various critics from claiming that GM is peddling hallucinatory expectations. The latest to jump on the "Volt230 ...

It was looking like all-systems-go for General Motors (MTLQQ) to sell Opel, its main European division, to Magna, a Canadian parts supplier, Russian investor Sbrebank, and Opel’s union. The twists and turns of this deal have been ... well, pretty dang twisty and turn-y. Here are the basics:

We gab a lot about carmaking in Detroit, and carmaking in the Midwest, and carmaking in “Detroit South,” and carmaking in Silicon Valley. What we don’t talk a lot about is carmaking in ... upstate New York. Upstate New York is for apple picking and second homes and the suffering of the Buffalo Bills and great, big drifts of glorious white snow and tatterdemalion industrial dreams documented by the likes of Richard Russo.

Porsche is, at root, a sports car company. And at the root of that identity is a single machine, the iconic Porsche 911, introduced in 1963 and steadily, fastidiously, teutonically improved ever since. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to grow as a car company when your entire history and destiny rest on the admittedly superlative performance of a single automobile. So Porsche has created new cars over the years.

We’re catching up with this a bit late, but still ahead of Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne’s much-anticipated, yet so far highly secretive, plan for the Pentastar’s future success under Italian leadership. Marchionne will present his five-year plan on Nov. 4 to the Chrysler board. But here’s what we like: Sergio’s proclivity for referring to carmakers as “houses”:

Over at Kausfiles, Mickey continues to gently dig at me for my observation that, over the past few months, the Detroit automakers are seeing their market share trend up, while Toyota and Honda see theirs trend down. But hey, a trend is a trend!

When exactly did the U.S. become the land where most families have, at minimum, two cars? Well, if you believe the June 1955 issue of Woman’s Home Companion magazine, it was in the booming postwar period. But the magazine’s anecdotal analysis makes perfect sense: As families moved to the newly developed suburbs, husbands had to get to work while wives need to squire the kids around, shop, run errands, etc.

Apart from sending folksy Chairman Ed Whitacre on a stroll through a design studio, General Motors (MTLQQ) hasn’t seen much happening on the ad front since Bob Lutz unretired himself to take over GM’s marketing efforts. Lutz reportedly has been displeased with what the various ad agencies that produce work for GM have been cranking out.

General Motors (MTLQQ) is getting knocked around for announcing that it wants to build 2.8 million cars and trucks for North America in 2010. According to the Detroit Free Press, that’s “about 1 million more [vehicles] than the company expects to assemble this year.”