BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Heh. My comment a few seconds ago: "I'd be offended, but, frankly, being dissed by a company with a track record like theirs feels more like a compliment."

I guess I would be offended if their vehicles weren't pieces of shit.

The advertisement still sucks....... I'm pissed!

Maybe that woman is checking out his crotch and thighs and he's missing out on a perfectly good opportunity

Hilarious. Reeks of The Onion!

That advertisement is a perfect example of how GM and its management are out of touch with the general public.

Can we have our bailout money back now?

An ugly ad for ugly cars from an ugly company.

@Greasefoot

i hope youre right... i fear, though, that they might not be

I am thinking a parody ad needs to be made. Anyone want to have a photoshoot?

Wasnt that a GM fail at Park-ing day too?

Strike two with the bases loaded...

A FB friend came up with this idea:

.....Maybe we should do a Flock of Cycles event at every GM dealership in the metro.

Most effective if done DURING their hours of operation, of course.

One could also organize a large number of people to go in, take some test drives, tie up the sales force and the finance team, then walk away at the last minute citing the ad as your reason to buy a Subaru instead.

If one were so inclined, of course.

Subaru? Bah.

Get yourself a BMW: http://www.bmwblog.com/2010/03/15/the-bmw-m-bike/

Theres one of those BMW bikes on eBay for like $3k lol

As much as I would like to stick it to GM, I don't believe tying up their sales force (your neighbor trying to put food on the table) is the way to do it.

And BMW bike >>> GM anything.

As much as I would like to stick it to GM, I don't believe tying up their sales force (your neighbor trying to put food on the table) is the way to do it.

Agreed...'twas intended as a facetious suggestion.

Stop pedaling and start driving to get started on that debt right away!

I figured as much.

If I had $25K+ to buy a new car, there's a lot of other things I'd do with that $25K+ before buying a new car. I bought exactly one new car in my life, and looking back on that, it was not a good move. Pay interest on a depreciating property? Um, no. Get a decent used car for $12K, and save/invest/avoid the rest.

Side note, it is possible to make money buying new vehicles. I made a few grand on my last car (2008 VW R32) and should be sitting pretty decent on my 2011 GTI. Plus I get more than 18mpg now, combined with saving 150 miles a week from riding and I am looking good.

The R32 trade in paid for my CAAD 10 and might get me another bike better suited for winter riding here shortly.

Now we know how drivers feel when they read "get out of your car and on a bike" biking propaganda.

My girlfriend and I were just thinking about how if we won one of the McDonald's Monoploy grand prizes, a Nissan Z, we would probably just sell it straight away for money to help pay our debt...

...and I don't even own a car currently.

http://autos.yahoo.com/news/bikes-from-car-companies.html

I love the Venge, and McLaren for that matter.

I'll take a Maserati bike, thanks. And a car, too.

Someone told me that one of the big hotels in town loans out BMW bicycles to a customer if they stay in the presidential suit. I can’t remember which one??

There's always bikes outside the Fairmont, but I've never paid attention to what kind they are.

Apparently they pulled the ad.

I can't say I was terribly offended by it.

I think it bothers me most because I think GM has the talent and resources to be a great car maker, but instead they stoop to lows like this (and have been for the past 20+ years).

@ Nick D they stoop to lows like this (and have been for the past 100+ years).

Fixed it for ya.

Irony, from the Google machine:

This is from a bio of Louis Chevrolet, the man for whom Chevrolet (a GM brand) is named:

"Chevrolet began a career in bicycle repair and soon the muscular six-foot youth was racing bikes. In his first three years he won 28 competitive events. He built bikes until he discovered cars. Chevrolet became an auto mechanic in the pioneering French auto industry. He jumped from job to job, gaining valuable experience, before coming to Montreal in 1900."

Really Mick? I'm pretty sure GM of the 50's/60's/early 70's was THE car company of the times.

Also that Venge + McLaren bike is incredible.

Read the book On a Clear Day you can see GM written by John DeLorean in the mid 70's

They made horrendous product safety decisions in the 60's like the Corvair. It's questionable safety was well documented and debated inside GM long before its introduction. It's production was only stopped because the son of an executive was killed in one after it flipped over.? 

They had sinister business practices, GM executives were regularly required to make substantial and illegal ?political campaign contributions.? 

They also made serious management blunders, hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted annually in bad executive decisions which would have ruined smaller companies, but were regularly absorbed by GM in the 1960's

Buying a car in the 1960s was like watching TV in the 1960s. You only had three choices: GM, Ford or Chrysler. Well, four, if you counted American Motors (and for that matter, Studebaker). Like four, if you count the PBS station (and for that matter, the experimental TV station with the 10-watt transmitter at the high school).

Too big to have a failure noticed.

I wasn't aware that John DeLorean wrote a book about corruption and imcompetence at GM. That's pretty funny, in an of itself, in light of his later efforts to raise money for the DeLorean Motor Company via drug trafficking.

Giant responds.

Oh, yeah!

I dislike both ads. They're really both pretty obnoxious.

I dislike both ads. They're really both pretty obnoxious.

true, but one is about bicycles. and it's responding obnoxiously to an obnoxious ad. i approve.

The more obnoxious an ad is, the more effective it is, a sad but true media basic.

@ Boostuv I'm pretty sure GM of the 50's/60's/early 70's was THE car company of the times.

Of COURSE they were.

You wouldn't want to spend a few hundred million corrupting elected officials to gut public transportation unless that would put you right on top, would you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal

I'm making the assumption that the thieving attempts of GM to rob the US of rational transportation alternatives that have been documented and proved in court are but a small minority of those thieving attempts.

Perhaps I'm mistaken...

that is quite an assumption. one that doesn't appear to have any evidence in favor of it.

indeed, "most authorities agree that trolleys bit the dust in LA and elsewhere not because of a conspiracy but because they were slow and inconvenient compared to autos, and in the long run just couldn't compete."

I will avoid Giant for a while now, not that my missed sale matters. While attacking ads work, why can't people sell products on their own merit/

@orionz06:

...because that's just not the Amuurican way.

re: "...why can't people sell products on their own merit?"

Because people don't make purchases based on need or rational decisions, haven't for a hundred years (See "Walter Dill Scott").

@ hiddenvariable doesn't appear to have any evidence in favor of it.

The trolleys did not die solely because of some GM conspiracy, for sure. BUT there is plenty of evidence of many GM conspiracies.

Saying there isn't any evidence of that?

Are you sure you know what the word "any" means?

Kinda fun to read their Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/#!/GM

oh, i forgot about this ad until I was looking for a bigger picture of the giant ad and it came up... according to GM the buses are full of "Creeps & Weirdos"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/9006896/

The Giant ad, if they'd come up with that in a vacuum it would be pretty dumb but given the circumstances I'd say it's pretty appropriate. It's also nowhere near as obnoxious as the GM ad considering it's not portraying a driver as some kind of loser who has to hide their face in shame.

@ Salty:

Got to agree. It's short on thinking, but given the landscape they were in, the Giant ad wasn't super out of line. And I wouldn't be surprised if they ran this because they (or their agency partners) were ticked off, not because they thought it was strategically smart.

Somehow I don't think a picture of people stuck in 10 lane traffic is going to resonate with the mid-western college student whom is in the market for a truck.

@ salty ...it's not portraying a driver as some kind of loser who has to hide their face in shame.

Ads are never realistic.