CAR CRAZY

There’s more to those George C. Scott Renault Alliance commercials than meets the camera.

After the current three spots end this summer, new ones will be shot for fall airing--just as CBS airs “The Last Days of Patton,” with Scott picking up his famous “Patton” role. And guess who’s sponsoring the whole three hours of “Last Days”? Chrysler. That is, Chrysler will send Renault’s spokesman grandly into America’s living room--as an American legend.

The folks at American Motors claim they were unaware of this when they sought Scott as a spokesman. But veep Peter Guptill told us, “It’s great news! But we’re not trying to win debating points with Chrysler.”

Ad exec Werner Michel, who put together the Chrysler sponsorship, called Scott’s Renault deal “funny timing,” but declined to say more. An exec on the TV pic, who asked anonymity, was more direct: “I would question Scott’s judgment. After Chrysler spends all that time and money and then he goes and signs with Renault. . . .”

Guptill pointed out that Scott also will appear May 18-19 in NBC’s “On Wings of Eagles,” which chronicles H. Ross Perot’s rescue of two of his employes from an Iran jail in 1979 during the Khomeini takeover. AMC is one of the sponsors--and Perot is General Motors’ largest stockholder.

Said Guptill, asserting the obvious, “It’s a strange world.”