The Wall Street Journal interviewed GM sales and marketing chief Mark LaNeve on January 16. Topic – are rumors hurting GM sales? During the course of the interview Mr. LaNeve made some comments that were quite unnerving:

Cognizant that a recent study shows that almost 75% of
Americans wouldn’t buy a car from a bankrupt company, Mr. LaNeve
envisions salespeople at Nissan and Ford dealerships telling customers
they’d be crazy to consider a GM vehicle because the company might not
be able to honor its warranty.

"As much as I hate to do this, we’re probably going to
have to do something proactively on the marketing side just to address
that issue," he says. "How you do that, I don’t know. It’s a tough
thing because you really don’t want to go there."

Mr. LaNeve just figuring out on January 16, 2006 that they "PROBABLY are going to do something" certainly supports the notion that GM is totally out of touch. More from LaNeve:

In the midst of the seemingly never-ending bad news
about his company, Mr. LaNeve says he doesn’t want to trumpet a
defensive message that is the equivalent of "GM isn’t dead yet," but he
is struggling to come up with something that will "get America rooting
for us again."

"I’ve always been pretty sanguine about press coverage because I
believe you get what you deserve," Mr. LaNeve says. "But when analysts
say our problem is we have cars nobody wants, it drives me out of my
mind. Do they realize how bad that hurts us?"

If LaNeve believes that you "get what you deserve" in the press he needs to change careers. This interview recalls many of the issues I have with auto marketers and is an indicator of the problems GM will have going forward.

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