Ads Ask Japanese to Compare GM Autos to Domestics : Vehicles: The U.S. company hopes to dispel the image in Japan that its products are poorly built gas guzzlers.

General Motors Corp. has heightened the competitive struggle to crack Japan’s auto market with ads imploring consumers to compare GM and Japanese cars in size, price and performance.

The ads mark the first time that an American auto maker has used such a blunt advertising approach in Japan, where U.S. cars have a serious image problem because many Japanese perceive them as shoddily built gas guzzlers.

“Please compare Cadillac Seville’s fuel cost with that of Infiniti’s Q-45,” said a full-page ad in four Japanese newspapers. It shows a Seville and a Nissan Infiniti parked side by side at a gasoline pump.

President Bush made selling American cars in Japan a focus of his visit in January, saying he wanted to create jobs for Americans.

Bush brought along the chairmen of the Big Three U.S. auto makers: GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp.

Autos and auto parts account for about three-fourths of the United States’ annual $43-billion trade deficit with Japan.

The GM ads, which depart from the traditional soft-sell approach in Japan, will run for two months.

James E. Steinhagen, GM Japan’s vice president for marketing, sales and service, said the campaign is designed to persuade Japanese consumers to compare models to judge for themselves which cars are better.

The first ad says the GM car gets 16.2 miles per gallon in the city and 25.4 mpg on the highway, compared to 16.2 mpg and 22.3 mpg for the Nissan car.

“We want to put to rest the decade-old image of huge American gas eaters that persists in Japan,” Steinhagen said.

“Our studies show that many who hold those opinions have never driven or owned one of our cars. We’d like to encourage them to try the new GM U.S. cars and form their own opinions,” he said.

The full-page fuel economy comparison is appearing in the newspapers Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, Sankei, Nikkei, Chunichi and Tokyo Shimbun, which together have a combined nationwide circulation of more than 20 million copies a day.