GM Marketing Maven Maximum Bob Lutz: One Car Returned Under 60-Day Guarantee

OK, so, was GM’s 60-day guarantee program a success or another California eBay-style unacknowledged flop? Here are the facts, according to failed Car Czar and current Marketing Maven Maximum Bob Lutz [via Automotive News, sub]: “GM has sold about 150,000 vehicles since the program began. Of that, just over 100 customers have opted to take a 60-day money-back guarantee, Lutz said. The rest turned down that option and instead took a $500 cash incentive. ‘Out of hundreds of thousands, the people who’ve selected the 60-day guarantee were in the hundreds,’ GM’s marketing chief said during a media event here today. ‘We have had one substantiated return of a vehicle.’” So less than one percent opted for the money-back guarantee. Flop. BUT only one percent of the one percent went on to return a vehicle. (A buyer who regretted opting for an autobox ‘Vette instead of the stick, apparently.) Success! So . . . a successful flop?

Who cares? Not Lutz. The nationalized automaker’s main marketing man is already re-re-focusing his attention on the last next big thing. Here’s the man of maximum himself, reaffirming GM’s unique, unswerving and unshakable combination of ADD and self-delusion.

“The new advertising campaign, “May the Best Car Win,” is intended to compare GM vehicles against the best of the competition to show that the automaker’s products are better in all areas and value-priced, he said.

“We now can comfortably encourage the public to come take a close look at our products,” Lutz said. “It’s to shock Americans into the reality of GM’s products.”

Yeah, well, the real shock will come when taxpayers wake-up to the fact that GM is dead. Again. Still.