April 10, 2005
Ad nauseam
The news that GM has pulled its ads from the Los Angeles Times, in retaliation for a negative review (URL no longer available) of the Pontiac G6, capped a miserable week for the auto maker, which on Monday demoted GM North America chairman, Bob Lutz , and president, Gary Cowger.
The Times review—subtitled “The Pontiac G6 is a sales flop. At General Motors, let the impeachment proceedings begin”—wasn’t pretty:
The Times review, subtitled “The Pontiac G6 is a sales flop. At General Motors, let the impeachment proceedings begin,” wasn’t pretty. Having flung barbs such as “It is because of [the G6’s] powertrain that the phrase ‘thrashy and unrefined’ has become the hackneyed cliché that it has,” the review concluded: “When ballclubs have losing records, players and coaches and managers get their walking papers. At GM, it's time to sweep the dugout.”
We’ve been here before. Back in February 1968, Car & Driver took a more-than-mild dislike to GM’s new Opel Kadett L station wagon, and penned what may be the finest—and certainly most despairing—auto review of all time. Sadly unavailable online, the four-page diatribe pulled few punches:
It’s an electric car without batteries, a paragon of Naderian virtue, a eunuch on four skinny tires. It stands for nothing; it’s your definitive noncar, a limp, unending mass of tapioca, an embodiment of zeppelin-sized boredom on an economy scale… the Opel devastates with inconsequence and numbs with boredom… Panic stops are a panic… Slam on the brakes, and the rear drums lock up instantly, an occurrence followed by the loss of all directional control as the rear end tries to end up in front of the front wheels… And so on and on. It’s a never-ending stream of the third-rate and the underdone, a rolling potpourri of mediocrity.
GM’s response was to pull advertising not only from Car & Driver, but from every Ziff-Davis publication, which meant that Modern Bride even lost its ads for Frigidaire, then a GM division. And not so long after, Opel (GM’s German division) was gone from these shores, never to return.
Seems that GM has learned little since then—which is one of many reasons why brands like Pontiac and Buick aren’t long for this world.
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