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Happy New Year, all. It’s been a while. It’s always difficult to find time around the holidays, it seems. Click through through to read my comments…

I’m in unfamiliar territory today — the football team at my alma mater, Vanderbilt University, was actually invited to a post-season bowl game for the first time in 26 years. We won. The last time that Vanderbilt won a post-season game it was 1955. 53 years ago. To let you know just how long ago that was, consider this: Winston Churchill was still prime minister of England, General Motors became the first American company to gross US$ 1 Billion in a year, and Saab, during the fifth year of automobile production, unveils the 93 for the first time. We are long-suffering fans.

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but I’ve got to do something with the 900. Since I completed the intial repairs and minor restorations four and half years ago, the car has developed a few nasty issues. At the moment it is completely lifeless, having developed a serious electrical issue that I’ve not yet diagnosed, nor have I exactly tried. It completely quit on the highway returning home about three or four weeks ago. I’m guessing that it’s either a a failed alternator diode or something failed in the ignition circuit due to the way that it quit. Heap in top of that its long-time need for ball joints and front shocks, cracked windsheild, right headlight assembly held together at the moment with a clamp, some inevitable rust, slow-window syndrome, failed cabin fan, failed air conditioner, creaking/failing convertible top motor and all of the “normal” 900 issues (cracked dash, iffy ingition switch, etc.) the time and dollars start to add up. I’ll always have a 900, but I’m not sure at this point if it will be this specific car. I’m going to be pricing all of this up in the near future to see where I stand. At what point is it obvious that the car should die a donor’s death so that others may live?

In a word of relief, auto dealers in the United States are seeing an uptick in sales, mostly due to incentives and pent-up demand.

Finally, I spoke with my own Djup Strupe last night that works at the General Motors plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee. This was formerly the manufacturing center and headquarters for the Saturn division, but has recently been re-purposed to manufacture the newest full-sized SUV/CUV models in the General Motors family. In keeping with slow demand for the Chevrolet Traverse, Buick Enclave, Saturn Outlook and GMC Acadia the plant will be shut down not only for the planned 4-week period set to end the first week in January, but it will definitely be shut down through mid-February as well. There are a number of options here, but with the plant’s flexible manufacturing arrangement, in theory the plant could build virtually any US-built GM car or truck with only a few modifications. My thinking is that once these outages become commonplace within the GM family that production would naturally consolidate in plants like this one in Spring Hill rather than operate dedicated plants at partial capacity. With the infamous UAW Jobs Bank program out of commission, this could save the General billions. Something to watch.

So, eat your black-eyed peas today (mine are cooking now). I suggest some chow-chow to top them, but I understand that it’s an individual taste.