#PR

With ballot initiatives and other possible legislative action threatening to put a major photo enforcement company out of business, an effective public relations strategy has become the firm’s top priority. Redflex Traffic Systems on Friday had its former corporate spokesman, Michael Ferraresi, return to writing about the industry for the Arizona Republic newspaper, which covers the battleground market of Phoenix.

Look at this car, it’s horrible. How did this get through so many people?

We’ve all thought something along these lines when we first sat in a Chevy Cobalt, but few GM employees would ever say it out loud to a reporter. At least they wouldn’t until a much-improved replacement was waiting in the wings. But because the Cruze launches this year, GM execs like VP of global vehicle engineering Karl Stracke can bash on the old Cobalt to his heart’s content, knowing the Detroit News will dutifully report it as a sign that GM “gets it.”

GM’s now-infamous advertisement touting the payback of government loans “may have elasticized the reality of things,” in the words of Steve Rattner, but stretching the truth apparently pays off. Automotive News [sub] reports that a London public perception-tracking firm surveyed some 5,000 consumers, and found that The General’s image has improved since the ad started running. Of course, on YouGov’s brand image scale of 100 to negative 100, GM is up only five points to “17.” Clearly there’s still work to do.

Today, we’re setting the way-back machine for 1999 for an ABC “exclusive” behind the scenes of General Motors. Rick Wagoner is in charge, market share is dropping and the Aztek still hasn’t emerged from its camouflage. It’s a more innocent time, as evidenced by ABC’s breathless, toothless reportage, and it makes for good nostalgia and good schadenfreude. Does it get any better than that?

Bob Lutz may have left GM, but TTAC’s not through with the man of Maximum just yet. One quote in particular, from an “exit interview” with gm-volt.com, exemplifies the kind of candor that seems likely to disappear from GM along with Lutz. Possibly for good reasons. Well, good PR reasons, anyway. After all, with Lutz unable to deny that GM will lose money and/or battle sticker shock with its forthcoming Volt EREV, he’s the kind of guy who will tell the unspeakable truth instead of playing coy like a good PR man. To wit:

How do we get the cost down without in any way diminishing the value of the car in the eyes of the customer? By just doing some more elegant engineering than we did the first time around where we inadvertently did some belt and suspenders stuff because we wanted to move fast. Now as we look back at the car we say ‘gee I wish we’d done his different,’ …’ gee I wish we’d done that different’ because this is a very expensive solution and we could have done that for a lot less money.

That faint sound you just heard was Ed Whitacre expelling fillet of rattlesnake out his nose after reading that little nugget. Meanwhile, you’ve heard it from the horse’s mouth: the Mk.1 Volt will be expensive, unprofitable, and unpolished. Or, to use a PR term, “belt and suspenders.”

To say that Chrysler’s 25 percent year-over-year sales increase last month came as a surprise would be pushing the boundaries of overstatement. Chrysler’s sales and market share have been in decline for a long time, but over the past several years, the tailspin seemed to have become terminal. So, how did the Pentastar (barely) make its 95k minimum volume level and increase sales by 25 percent over April 2009? Fleet sales, for one thing: according to The Freep, TrueCar.com estimates that a full 40 percent of Chrysler’s April sales went to fleet customers.No wonder made a big deal about publicly finding Jesus on the fleet sales issue… at the end of the month (to say nothing of the conspicuous absence of retail sales numbers in its April report and massive increase in Sebring sales). And the bad news doesn’t end there. Not only did Chrysler top all automakers in per-vehicle incentives last month according to Edmunds’ monthly True Cost Of Incentives index with $3,374 on the average Mopar’s hood, they’re actually increasing incentives even further.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a public interest group dedicated to free enterprise and limited government, has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that a recent advertisement from GM claiming to have “paid back government loans in full” is deceptive [ full complaint in PDF here]. You might be able to guess why the CEI finds the GM ad so misleading, but if not, their explanation is after the jump.

Nissan does not condone the comments made by this particular employee. While seemingly well-intentioned, many of the remarks are regrettable and do not represent the company’s views. Nissan’s policy regarding internet commentary is that an employee’s personal opinion must be preceded by a disclaimer that identifies their remarks as such and not necessarily the views of the company.

Ruh Roh!

Personally, the lack of a blue “Mark of Excellence” was the last thing I noticed about GM’s latest advertisement. Over at GMInsidenews.com, however, they picked up on it a little quicker. GM’s trademark “chiclet” has already been removed from all of its future vehicles, and Cadillac has publicly announced that it’s distancing itself from the GM name. In fact, post-bankruptcy, everyone at GM has said that the “GM brand” should take a backseat to Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC. But will The General go as far as get rid of its little blue box altogether?

In response to Senator Chuck Grassley’s concern that GM’s claim to have paid back taxpayer loans was misleading, the US Treasury is now saying that it has no problem with The General’s statements. According to the Freep, a Treasury letter to Grassley explains that:

GM’s decision to pay off the loan signaled the automaker did not face “extraordinary expenses,” and that Treasury approved the loan payoff.

“The fact that GM made the determination and repaid the remaining $4.7 billion to the U.S. government now is good news for the company, our investment and the American people,” said Herbert Allison, assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability.

Strictly speaking, GM’s claim to have paid back all US Government loans is correct. The only issue is that GM’s ad touting the payback makes no reference to the fact that it still owes the Treasury upwards of $40b. If that misleads folks, well, apparently the Treasury Department isn’t going to do anything about it.

Fleet sales were up 47 percent in the first quarter of this year, driving sales at a number of automakers. Ford, in particular, is targeting fleet sales unapologetically by touting a recovery in resale values for the Blue Oval Brand. Ford’s Mark Fields tells the Freep:

We love fleets at Ford…Ford remains focused on our disciplined approach to daily rental, making sure we help keep growing residual values

At Chrysler, which suffers from some of the lowest resale values in the business thanks in part to a longtime addiction to fleet sales, the response seems a bit more… conflicted.

Unlike long-wheelbase luxury, the other major theme emerging from coverage of the Beijing Auto Show was hardly unique to the Chinese market. Electric vehicles and talk of automotive electrification have become a highlight of every auto show, with politicians joining executives to push EVs whether the show is in Detroit, Paris or Beijing. And yet, with a power grid that is said to be upwards of 80 percent coal-powered, China isn’t exactly the ideal candidate for an electric car offensive. China’s BYD F3DM was arguably the world’s first plug-in “on the market,” and yet the Shenzhen-based automaker only found 48 fleet sales last year, and still has yet to report a private sale. Conventional wisdom suggests that most Chinese buy at the lowest end of the market (if they’re lucky enough to afford it), while the “coastal elites” tend to spend their hard-earned profits on vehicles that convey prestige rather than eco-optimism. This is a model the global carmakers know how to work with… so why all the talk of EVs in China?