QOTD: How Many Times Has GM Made This Claim Before?

Automotive News reports, with their usual straight face, that "GM sees new models spurring rebound from lower U.S. market share." The question isn't whether GM has made this claim before, but how many times it has made it. For me, flashbacks from the 1980s and 1990s continue to roll in. Some of those times I believed that promising new cars actually would turn GM around. But at this point I'm with Alex Taylor III, who recounted in his 2010 memoir: "My first cover story for Time, dated September 9, 1980, quoted [Roger] Smith, then an executive vice president, as likening the company to a hockey team in the midst of a line change. As soon as all the players are on the ice, he was certain, GM would be competitive again. It was an excuse I would hear again and again from GM: 'We're not doing so well right now, but wait until you see the new models we have coming next year.' As often as not, the market ignored the new GM models when they did arrive." After basing a few too many stories on GM's predictions, Taylor eventually lost faith in them. One can only be proven wrong so many times…unless you're a GM PR exec. Perhaps we can have a contest. Who can track down the most previous GM claims that upcoming models would reverse its market share slide? To keep it simple, we'll only count a max of one per model year. Bonus points: which models were supposed to save GM's bacon? from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

puts the internet to work for you. via task 680102