Chevrolet wants to know if you have an old truck — probably not hooptyfied, Fred Sanford-style wheels but a good ol’ Chevy Silverado with 200,000 or more miles. If your pickup qualifies, you can put it into the Silverado 200,000 Mile Club, which is way higher than you have to go for the mile-high club (we have the rules for that in our pocket, if you want to get them). The GM brand has hired some “journalists” to drive across country in their ’06 Silverado and find those old-time Silverados and their drivers and blog about them at a Web site, www.trans-americas.com. If you’d rather avoid the media, just log in at www.chevy.com/200k and save some mental space for Sept. 29, which is when Chevy will pull the tarp off the ’07 Silverado at the Texas State Fair.

The Queen of Mean meets the Dean of Design! It has the ring of a heavyweight bout, no? But when Martha Stewart rolled into GM’s design studios for yesterday’s installment of her syndicated home-lifestyle show recently, all apparently went well. Stewart visited GM’s design studios to get a look at the 2007 Chevy Suburban and a personal studio tour by Ed Welburn, who gets paid well enough to take those kinds of personal risks. We haven’t checked our TiVo yet, so we can’t substantiate the rumor that Stewart was fed a junior designer to appease her before being allowed to roam the studio halls.

Look at some of GM’ sedans very closely. Check out the back doors of the Buick LaCrosse, Saturn Aura and Buick Lucerne, for example. Does your eye, like mine, go straight to the ugly window gasket that stares back at you? The gaskets round the corners of the upper left and right parts of the window. It’s the automotive design version of walking around with toilet paper stuck to your shoe.

At the Saturn party in New York during Auto Show week, I listened in while GM’s design chief explained the problem to a reporter. Welburn said it was too expensive to fix, that the company put its money elsewhere, such as the leather insets in the back seats of the Aura. He also said that it was a tricky manufacturing job to clean it up.

Too much money? I thought this was the type of thing that drove Bob Lutz nuts. When you go up to a car to open the door, as a vehicle owner will every day, the eye is right on this ugly and sloppy job of packaging. It will be reinforced every time the car owner goes to open his or her door.

I walked around the show floor looking for anything like it, done as badly. I didn’t check out every car, of course. But I was struck by the fact that not only did I not see the same sloppy door/window treatment on Toyotas and Fords, but I also didn’t see it on Kias. I stopped and asked Kia marketing chief Ian Beavis about it. “If it was expensive to do it this way, we wouldn’t be doing it.” There must be another reason for the GM lapse. Mr. Lutz?—Jim Burt

BMW had planned to wait on releasing news about the upcoming 3-Series Coupe, but some photos were leaked and published today. More news will follow next week, but what we know is that the 3-Series Coupe will initially be available in Europe with three gas engines and a diesel powerplant. The petrol engines are all in-line sixes. The 325i has the 2.5-liter 218-hp engine and sprints from 0-60 mph in 6.7 seconds; the 330i is equipped with the 272-hp 3.0-liter variant and accelerates to 60 mph in 5.8 second; and the 335i, with its 3.0-liter turbo engine with 306 hp, takes in 60 mph in only 5.3 seconds. Alle engines are limited to a top speed of 156 mph. The diesel is a 231-hp 3.0-liter. The new Coupe will arrive this summer, while next year a new M3 with a 4.0-liter V-8 and over 400 hp will be available.--Henny Hemmes

There's an entertaining war of words up on morning drive-time radio between Business Week senior correspondent David Kiley and GM head of sales and marketing Mark LaNeve.

A few weeks ago, Kiley was interviewed on syndicated morning radio show Imus In The Morning by host Don Imus about GM's recent woes. In the exchange, Kiley rattled off GM's tanking stock price, declining market share, junk bond rating and miserable market capitalization. He also said GM has a few brands that are unfashionable, such as Buick, Pontiac, Saab and, to a lesser degree, Chevy cars.

Imus chimed in, "Yeah, who's buying a Buick?" Kiley responded a bit hyperbolically, "No one. No one is buying a Buick." This exchange apparently sent LaNeve and product boss Bob Lutz over the edge. LaNeve had previously given Imus a few HUMMER H2s for his ranch for kids with cancer, which Imus recently said he would have to replace because of poor gas mileage and the fact that New Mexico drivers were flipping him and the kids in the SUV "the bone" as they drove by him on the highway.

LaNeve seized the opportunity, called Imus, and offered to give him four Suburbans that will run on ethanol to replace the HUMMERs. That got him a guest spot on Imus, which is simulcast on MSNBC, to defend GM's honor and to add Kiley to the list of media whom Lutz and other GM execs feel are biased against Detroit in favor of the Japanese.

Last week, LaNeve was back on Imus, filling a slot Kiley had to turn down because he was emceeing the keynote speech at the auto show given by Nissan-Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn. LaNeve and Imus needled Kiley for being pro-Japanese and anti-Detroit. Kiley was on the next day, though, and joked that he was surprised that LaNeve was able to make it on the Imus show by 8:30 a.m. since he had seen the GM exec stumble out of (gentleman's club) Scores at 5 that morning (obviously kidding). And taking on Lutz, whom Kiley says had sent him a letter of protest about his previous Imus appearance, Kiley suggested that Lutz may be too old to make brands like Buick appeal to younger buyers. It was Lutz, Kiley jabbed, who designed the Buick Lucerne to take any driver straight to Boca Raton without having to steer, and that the right blinker would automatically stay on the whole time.

It's unusual for a reporter and industry executive joust, even in fun, back and forth in a national forum. "When you are on Imus, you have to be truthful, which I was, but you also have to be amusing if you want to be asked back," says Kiley. "LaNeve gave a good account of himself, and he is a very solid, ethical guy with a good sense of humor...otherwise I wouldn't have gone for a laugh at his expense."—TCC Team