On September 16, 2008 GM officially turned 100 years old. You would never have known it, however. There were no grand parades, looks back at its storied history, or even television commercials touting the fact that America’s largest car company had hit the century mark. Perhaps it didn’t want to be accused of trading on its past, or of appearing so old and out of touch that it had nothing better – nothing more relevant to today – to talk about.

This brings me to what GM did talk about on September 16^th: the production version of the Chevy Volt, a vehicle nearly two years past its introduction as a concept and two years from production. Said GM CEO Rick Wagoner: "This is not a time for looking back to what we have done, but for looking forward to what we will do." And those words might have resonated more – and not been followed in my head by a silently cynical, "I’m Rick Wagoner and I approved this message" – if this wasn’t an election year. That's because, to my eyes, GM wasn’t so much celebrating its birthday or painting a picture of its future, it was pandering to a cynical automotive and national press corps, it believes, can change the chorus of voices against GM. It can’t.

While it is true that our "leaders" in Washington refer daily to The New York Times and Washington Post, and spend an inordinate amount of time preening before the cable news cameras, attempting to change their views via the media is about as futile as changing the Vatican’s stand on birth control by referring the Pope to an article in Playboy. Though the Pope bases his decisions on history, dogma, and received knowledge, the Washington echo chamber listens only to itself and takes direction from the special interests that hold the purse strings. That’s why to them E-Flex, replacing conventional driveline components with an electrified drive system, much less Volt, means nothing. And pronouncements that GM will lead the reinvention of the automobile mean even less.

The battle GM – and the whole domestic automobile industry, for that matter – is fighting for is the hearts and minds of the buying public. While no one would suggest it give up courting Blue State America, the sad fact is that domestic car sales are concentrated in America’s Heartland, on the outskirts of which many of the transplants have taken up residence. Better to have taken the message straight to the people in these cities and towns, and trumpeted the past as well, rather than show a vehicle still two years away from production and proclaim that you are the only company to have the keys to the future.

Imagine resurrecting the GM Motorama days, and dropping into a town with significant cars from GM’s past and an easily digested – as opposed to simple – explanation of the E-Flex architecture and how it will debut in the Chevy Volt. In some marketing circles this is referred to as "pulling the string" in that it connects a number of points on a line and weaves them together via a cohesive message, and variants of this underlie what’s now called "guerilla marketing." Subconsciously, the message of past successes and future rewards are planted in the viewer’s mind, with the "Aha!" moment coming when the connection is made that shows how they are related and what it all means.

Imagine the response when the local press and residents are shown how you can drive 40 miles – city or highway or both – on electric power alone, and that the energy required to get you that far costs about 80 cents. Or that this electric vehicle has an on-board generator that will take you and three passengers up to 300 miles and can be refueled using energy sources the motoring public uses every day. Finish with how this technology one day will lead to the day when our vehicles will be powered by hydrogen, and they will think GM’s narrative is almost as compelling as how Mercury led to Gemini led to Apollo led to the moon. Especially when it is backed up by honest-to-God examples of how GM has lead the industry in such endeavors in the past, and followed up with cake and ice cream to celebrate the past 100 years as well as the next 100.

Unfortunately for GM, it went for a message more subtle, more expected, and more conventional. National coverage of the event and what vehicles like the Volt may mean for the future got lost in the continuing troubles on Wall Street. As a result, for most people September 16, 2008 was just another day.