Will the new GM be as pathetic as the new GMAC?

Another reason to dislike GM?

Not that long ago, but before the gas price boom of 2008, GM’s Bob Lutz stated that GM could have used a fraction of one year’s marketing budget to produce a Toyota Prius competitor. Instead, GM invested that money into ads promoting its latest round of gas guzzlers as Toyota went onto sell more than 1,000,000 Prius hybrids and counting.

Today, GM’s largest shareholder is the government, via the US taxpayer, and the government has vowed to put billion more into the new GM beyond the many billions it put into GM to save the automaker from bankruptcy. Hopefully, this time, GM is smarter about the way it spends money.

But, if the new GM is like the new GMAC, also known as Ally Bank, I think it might be time for liquidation.

The new Ally Bank commercials portray Ally Bank as this fair, new bank, unlike all the other banks that screwed over customers and then needed massive bailout money. Unfortunately, however, Ally Bank is GMAC, the same financial unit of GM that received some billion from the US government to keep the doors open.

This is the kind of of company – the kind of ethics – that the government is going to invest, ultimately, almost 0 billion into?