GM: fact and fiction

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Sticks and stones may break General Motors Corp.’s bones....

The giant carmaker, apparently tired of being the subject of ever-growing rumor and speculation, has launched a new website designed to set the record straight.

The site, GM Facts and Fiction, offers up a series of what it calls ‘myths’ about the General, along with cheery rebuttals showing how, in fact, the company is made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and not a wit of snips, snails, puppy-dogs’ tails, gas-guzzlers, liquidity woes, declining market share or slumping stock prices. The site’s motto: GM Tells It Like It Is.

Doubting Thomases are encouraged to submit assertions about GM they’ve heard or read for rebuttal. And the site’s ‘Overheard’ section is peppered with positive quotes about GM pulled from the reader comment areas of websites such as the Wall Street Journal and Autoblog. One example: ‘our new cars and crossovers are proof that we can compete.’ Curiously, every single one of the quotes was penned by an employee in GM’s communications department.

According to GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson, the site was inspired in part by looking at websites of the presidential candidates and seeing how they deal with negative press. ‘A few of us had looked at the [Barack] Obama site,’ Wilkinson said. ‘Political candidates go through the same problems of being attacked.’ (Paging Sarah Palin: Maybe GM can help you run a blog.)

GM Facts and Fiction was publicly unveiled today, but has been live for about two weeks, and it joins a roster of seven other GM blogs. It debuts with 17 busted myths, including entries on how

• GM didn’t kill the electric car (‘the EV-1 program ended due to the lack of suitable batteries’).
• It isn’t going bankrupt (‘GM has a robust plan for weathering the downturn’).
• It doesn’t have too many brands (currently 12 worldwide).
• The Volt isn’t vaporware (‘we can assure you, the Volt is for real’).
• GM’s cars are plenty fuel-efficient (‘segment for segment, GM vehicles are competitive with any vehicles in the market’).

According to an Internet domain registry search, the domain was created on Aug. 6, just days after Senate Democrats introduced a plan to appropriate up to $6 billion of the $25 billion in loans to automakers written into last year’s energy bill. That was right around the time that GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler began turning up the juice in their campaign to get the full $25 billion in loans funded, plus get another $25 billion in loans approved.

That might explain why the topmost myth being busted on the site is this one:

• GM isn’t looking for a government bailout (the ‘federal direct-loan program is a powerful and appropriate incentive’).

According to one Ford employee who asked not to be quoted, the Big Three are paying as much as 20% interest for their borrowed money. The government loan program, which is structured to be almost exclusively available to U.S. manufacturers and suppliers, would offer guarantees on loans with rates as low as 4.5%.

Ah, GM, so that’s how it is.

--Ken Bensinger