HUNTINGTON BEACH : Vehicle Promotion Traded for Free Fleet

The city will be receiving free vehicles for its lifeguard beach patrol fleet--but there’s a catch.

In exchange for use of new Geo Trackers, the city will help Chevrolet promote the jeeplike vehicle in what a city official described as a “precedent-setting case.”

Chevrolet will give Huntington Beach eight new vehicles a year for the next three years, starting this summer. After using the vehicles for a year, the city will return them to Chevrolet, which will sell them as used cars and replace them with eight new Trackers.

The city operates six lifeguard vehicles at a time, along with two reserves, so the Trackers will replace the city’s entire beach patrol fleet.

The city will allow Chevrolet to shoot TV ads on the city beach, hang its banners at city-sponsored events and use the city’s name in advertising.

The city had previously bought two new lifeguard vehicles each year, which would have cost about $34,000 this year, said Ron Hagan, the city’s community services director.

The city will sell its existing fleet of lifeguard patrol vehicles, he said.

Hagan said the city’s promotion-for-equipment exchange will probably be the first of many such arrangements with corporations. “This is kind of a precedent-setting case. We’ve never really approached the whole idea of seeking out corporate sponsorship in this manner,” he said.

The city, for example, will offer free advertising to city softball-league sponsors in exchange for new backstops and other equipment, or to heavy-machinery companies that provide beach-maintenance tractors, he said.