Auto bigs hit the pavement
Posted: Thursday, December 04, 2008 11:26 AM by Carrie Dann
Filed Under:
Congress
From NBC's Carrie Dann
In the television age, there's only one antidote to a high-profile public relations disaster that jeopardizes an industry's very survival.
Photo-op.
At least 19 video cameras, seven branch-like boom microphones, and a dozen still photographers waited outside of the Dirksen Senate Office Building this morning to capture the much-publicized arrival of America’s most uneasy cross-country road-trippers. After the revelation that pricey private jets had carried them to Washington last month for a hat-in-hand request for federal aid, executives of the “Big Three” American automakers endured a PR body-slam. Today, in the effort to patch up their image, the CEOs each arrived for today's Senate Banking hearing in their respective companies’ newest hybrid models – including a white Ford Escape hybrid and a Chevrolet Volt. The execs had traveled to the Capitol Hill hearings in the fuel-efficient vehicles from hometown Detroit.
(Well, sorta. The Volt, a prototype of a plug-in electric car that will hit markets in 2010, isn’t quite ready for a 520-mile, 10-hour road trip. GM chief Rick Wagoner drove a hybrid Chevy Malibu (32 MPG/highway) across the Rust Belt yesterday, but hopped into the Volt for the morning commute from his hotel to the Hill.)
After arriving near the hearing room, Wagoner addressed throngs of jostling reporters on Delaware Avenue to make the case that America needs a “home team” in the global transportation industry. “It would be a shame for the U.S. to fall out of that race,” he said.
The fuel-efficient road trip was meant to underscore the urgency of as much as $38 billion in loans to the ailing carmakers. But perhaps the best illustration of the pavement-hitting pressure that supporters are under came in the form of one of its top backers. Michigan senator Carl Levin, known as a quarterback of the bailout legislation but not famed as an athlete, was spotted in an all-out gallop between the two locations where cameras were staked out in anticipation of the visual penance of the CEOs.
