My youth and inexperience may sometimes be a liability. Sometimes, I haven’t been on this earth long enough to place certain events and new model introductions in their proper context, ala Jack Baruth. But what I am good at, is listening to rap music. Today, the countless hours of pretending to be an inner-city drug dealer can finally be monetized, as Jeep’s Twitter account was hacked by some hip-hop loving cyber-vandals.

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Dayna Hart, GM China’s Director of Communications, and resident of Shanghai, has been shanghaied as a spokesperson for an amazing new weight loss product on Twitter. (Read More…)

Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! If you have enough followers on Twitter and the like, Chevrolet might give you a free 2012 Sonic. Not for keeps. But for 3 days. It’s the new long-term tester of the 140 character age.

According to Automotive News [sub], General Motors has hired Klout, a company that ranks a person’s “social influence.” Well, social networking influence. In the past, people with high Klout scores received free review copies of software, deodorant, or coffee. Now, they get a car. (Read More…)

Today might be the day the car industry loses its unconditional infatuation with social media. Like congressmen (especially half clothed congressmen), the auto industry could soon avoid social media like we avoid social diseases.

“This is all very annoying,” complains an exasperated Mark Carbery from London. “This Twitter matter turned into a real problem, for us and for other companies in the industry.”

Eterniti spokesman Carbery is a seasoned industry veteran. He started as the PR Manager for Toyota UK and worked for Daewoo and Michelin before hanging out the shingle for his own consultancy shop in bucolic Barnwell, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire PE8 5PS, UK.

Today he may be rethinking his career choice. (Read More…)

The Detroit News reports that Senator John McCain (remember him?) has declared Chrysler unlikely to survive. Mr McCain, who was serving as grand marshal of the NASCAR Sprint Cup series race at the Phoenix International Raceway, even went as far as to argue

No, I don’t think we ever should have bailed out Chrysler and General Motors. We should have let them go into bankruptcy, emerge and become viable corporations again. It was all about the unions. The unions didn’t want to have their very generous contracts renegotiated so we put $80 billion into both General Motors and Chrysler, and anybody believes that Chrysler is going to survive, I’d like to meet them.

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