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My beef with GM is personal. In 1989, when everyone in my suburban California high school was driving shiny black Beemers, cute little VW Rabbit convertibles or some such, the parental units stuck me with a 1979 Caprice Classic station wagon, a lumbering behemoth that got 20 MPG highway, 14 in the city.
Dad hadn’t sprung for the wood paneling — ours was silver with red vinyl seats, a memorable sensory experience on a 104° summer day. You could indeed fit three kids, a German Shepherd, 17 bags of groceries and a pup tent in the back. By the time I inherited it, there was a big dent in the rear door (from when my mom reversed into the Pet Barn sign) and burn holes in the red velveteen ceiling (from when my brother found a flare in a side compartment and said “Hey, what’s this?”).
I digress. My focus is not the two-ton griefmobile that impeded my ever learning parallel parking, but GM’s PR predicament and current communications strategy.
In November 2008, Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli assured Congress that giving the U.S. auto industry taxpayer funds wouldn’t be a “real” bailout. No, indeed — this was for innovation. Good old American inventin’ and developin’ and engineerin’ and optimizin’ and road testin’ and ….
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