Never get car industry news from someone who can't spell "Acura"..

Via WSJ OpinionJournals' sarcastic "everything is spinning out of control! feature comes these "exclusive pics" of foreign cars parked in and leaving a GM technical center in Michigan.

First of all, the article states that the photographed lot is The parking lot is private for visitors, people doing business at the facility and for others, but it was easy to see the cars through the fence - which, if I understand correctly, means the cars could have belonged to vendors or other non-GM employees. Also, it's not unusual (and is chronicled in such books as Taurus) for car companies to buy competitor's vehicles to compare them to their own.

But the biggest thing is that the magazine doesn't seem to realize what a foreign car is, or what brands GM makes. My favorite one is this one, which includes the caption Many foreign model cars are parked at a private parking lot in the GM building. From left: Acua,[sic] Saab, Saturn, VW, Hummer, Chevy, Buick, Ford and Mercedes. So out of 9 vehicles, 5 are GM brands - Saab, Saturn, Hummer, Chevy, and Buick are all GM brands. Or there is this pic, captioned with We see an American- made truck leaving GM! Of course, it's right behind a Nissan. Actually, except for the older XTerra in the pic, the other vehicles I can make out are all GM's - to the left of the Silverado behind the XTerra is another Chevy full-size truck - either a Silverado, Suburban, or Tahoe - and in front of that is a Saab, which is also a GM brand.

I'm not a big fan of the auto bailout, but I also think that some of the attempts to find scandal are finding things that aren't there. This seems like one of the silliest of them - but what do you expect from someone who can't figure out that there is an R in Acura?