For the last few days I’ve been reading the official “GM FastLane” blog, usually written by vice-chair Bob Lutz. The site, like other corporate blogs, is an interesting experiment in direct interaction with the public. Here, the best part of many posts is the comments, where GM backers and detractors fight it out.

I love that Lutz will take the time to respond to comments, and the man clearly has passion for his field. But I don’t know that his site will become a part of my bookmarks, because he also tends to fall back to marketing-speak. Take a recent post, Best in Class? Taste for Yourself.

He starts out by quite rightly noting that it’s silly to select a car based upon country of origin:

First of all, just as with cigars, wine and gin, you are making a potential mistake if you are basing your decision solely on country of origin. Sure, reputation plays a big role, but check it out carefully, and go drive, or sip, or puff, and then decide.

Then he complains that U.S. automakers have not been recognized for making major quality strides. OK, maybe. But who has failed to recognize this? Consumers? No, it’s the evil media:

It’s largely because the general press in this country has fallen into a depressing but easy pattern of “foreign good, U.S.-produced bad.” They perpetuate conventional wisdom and don’t report the latest state.

Anyone else tired of this straw man? The monolithic “media” serves as a target for just about everyone these days, but it seems particularly weak coming from a company with a $3B annual ad budget. Could it be that GM marketing isn’t telling the story? Nahh. Must be Newsweek‘s bias. (Of course, we’re totally ignoring the question of which manufacturers actually produce in the U.S.)

Worse, Bob then tries to have it both ways:

In short, we are all trying to live down a reputation that was probably at one time deserved, but is no longer justified.

So which is it: there was much improvement made, but the media doesn’t report it, or there was “probably” a problem once, but you can’t recall?

It’s interesting to read what Lutz has to say from time to time, but I wish he was a little less constrained. I remember my friend Pech sending me a CNN story in which an (unnamed) Ford executive admitted that the Camry was a better product than the Taurus. Now that person would have a blog I’d like to read.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 26th, 2005 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.