Salesman-In-Chief Hawks Opel Ampera
Isn’t it great to have the government as your biggest shareholder? Makes for good photo-ops. For the second time, Barack Obama went behind the wheels of a Chevy Volt, with the world press in attendance. Actually, it was the Volt’s European twin, the Ampera.
The Prez. had to weigh national security and time at the NATO summit in Lisbon against checking out the range extended Opel, and the Opel won.
According to Reuters, “Obama found himself acting as salesman-in-chief for GM Opel’s Ampera model just days after he declared in Washington that U.S. taxpayers would get their money back for saving GM in a bailout that was broadly unpopular.”
Then Obama said something that won’t go down well with Opel workers: “This is a car made in America. We’re going to start selling it in Europe.”
Actually, the Volt was designed with heavy input from Saab and Opel engineers. The brains of the Volt were developed at Opel in Mainz-Kastel. The Ampera production had been shopped around by Nick Reilly in Europe to attract government money. For the time being, it looks like the Ampera will indeed be built in the U.S.A., after European government denied to pay to play. At $59,000 MSRP, it probably won’t turn into a volume model real soon.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
More by Bertel Schmitt
Comments
Join the conversation
Well, his "hosts" were giving him a hard time about the Dollar, so he saw a chance to duck that for awhile. The Volt/Ampera is a terrific, world-class piece of engineering, wherever it was done, and "our" GM deserves props for it. Nice bit of globalization there.
The Chevy Volt won 3 car awards this week so maybe he is a little a pumped up by that. Either way his comment is hardly newsworthy.
@Hank - Hypocritical beats WAR CRIMINAL any day.
@ "BS" Finding it hard to find a pupose for this "hack" post other than to b*tch about the POTUS... Is the point you're trying to make is that saving hundreds of thousands of American jobs is a bad thing? Or are you asserting that preventing the American auto industry from total collapse was an error? Maybe the point is getting our money back from the government's short-term investment shouldn't happen, and we should just write it off as a taxpayer loss so TTAC can b*tch more about the bailout? Or is it that manufacturing goods IN the USA and shipping them overseas is a mistake? Is your belief that our President shouldn't promote our corporations and products in foreign media? Hack post.