Chrysler has been taking a beating lately, what with rumors of a GM take over, but you have to give their designers credit for not giving up. The people who brought you lots of cool cars in the last decade of designers gone wild, have come up with another looker, the Dodge Demon, to be unveiled at the 2007 Geneva International Motor Show.

Some people can say that the bean counters don't know what they're doing at Chrysler, but no one can say that about the design team.

If numbers say anything, the Demon's does. The Demon will have a front engine, rear-wheel-drive setup with 172-hp in a 2.4L I-4 engine. It'll match up to a 6-speed manual transmission which Dodge designers say will generate peak torque of 165 lb.-ft. (224 Nm) at 4,400 rpm to spin those 19 inch wheels wild. And then there's those looks that could kill (for more pics, click here).

If it put this concept car into production, estimates are that the Demon would sell for somewhere just north of $18,000 stripped down. In a market populated with new ’07 Miata cars that sticker for $21,030, that's plenty competitive. Even the Pontiac Solstice – which stole Miata’s U.S. sales crown in 2006 – starts at $21,995, leaving plenty of room to pack a few options onto the Dodge Demon and still compete on price.

The Dodge Demon is a concept that excites and that's what Detroit needs more of nowadays. With great concept cars like these, how come they don't start building 'em?

After a 2 year probe of Delphi's accounting procedures, the SEC sued the bankrupt auto parts maker and 13 persons for fraud and other accounting violations on Oct. 30.

At the same time, Delphi Corp. and some of the individuals settled with the SEC, under which Delphi won't pay any fines or admit any wrongdoing. Last year Delphi restated 3 years of earnings to correct its accounting problems and only months later it filed for bankruptcy protection. Now Delphi successfully avoids getting fined by basically crying poverty.

Former CEO JT Battenberg III and 8 former Delphi executives were accused of fraud or aiding in accounting violations. 3 of the nine, including former Finance Chief Alan Dawes, agreed to pay fines.

The SEC justified its agreement with Delphi by saying that "Despite engaging in widespread fraudulent conduct, Delphi took significant remedial steps and cooperated extensively" said the SEC's Washington office.

Okay, so big business gets away with it again. Delphi cooks the books and, when they get caught, Delphi files bankruptcy and avoids having to pay any fines and doesn't even have to admit they did anything wrong. Sure, some of the players in the game got fined for helping Delphi use accounting tricks to inflate net income numbers by $202 million while hiding a $237 million claim, along with improper inventory accounting methods that bosted income numbers by $80 million. But most galling is the fact that high level executives and business people were in on the scam that inflated Delphi's numbers by hundreds of millions of dollars in nonexistent profit.

Not mentioned in any press release was how much money the "Delphi gang" was paid by Delphi to cook the books. Cooking the books is serious because investors rely on standard accounting practices and basic honesty in the decision to invest in a corporation's stock. Apparently some people at (or with) Delphi took a page from Enron's "playbook for accountants" and learned a trick or two.

So corporate shenanigans cost investors and consumers millions again while big government watches the back of big business, each one helping out the other at the expense of the rest of us. Something isn't just rotten in Denmark --- it's rotten in Detroit and Washington DC too. Maybe it's just all part of the GM Death Watch...

Delphi was spun off by GM several years ago and one can only hope that Delphi's accountants didn't learn their job from GM's accounting bosses, because if they did then this may be a good time to sell your GM stock!

If you've got a lemon GM car or truck, now may be the best time to do something about it (before someone counts the bean counters).