GM’s Chevrolet takes shots at Ford’s mettle
Web ad questions costs of repairs to aluminum F-150
The rivalry between General Motors and Ford intensified on a key battlefront: the pickup truck wars.
GM released a stinging Web commercial taking direct shots at Ford over the costs and speed of the Blue Oval automaker’s pickup truck repairs.
The Web hit — which may turn into a full-blown TV ad campaign — features NFL broadcast personality Howie Long interviewing an expert about the costs of fixing the aluminum-bodied Ford F-150 full-size pickup truck.
In the ad, GM claims it costs an average of $1,755 more and took an additional 34 days to fix the F-150 than its GM competitor, the Chevrolet Silverado, following a simulated low-speed accident.
“So if I’m a guy that uses my truck for work, every day I don’t have that truck, that costs me money,” Long says. “In addition, you got higher repair bills. I’d be interested to know what happens to insurance costs. I got to tell you — all that certainly makes me think twice about an aluminumbodied truck. Seems like you’d be taking a risk.”
The Web scuffle joins a storied tradition of marketing jabs between GM and Ford — sometimes all in good fun, sometimes not so much. A few years ago, GM took a few digs at Ford in a Super Bowl commercial, eliciting a ceaseand-desist letter from Ford that GM promptly ignored.
The flare-up in the rivalry be- tween two of Detroit’s Big Three automakers comes amid a scrum to grab the attention of U.S. pickup truck buyers, the most profitable segment of the industry.
It also exposes the diverging strategies of the world’s largest pickup truck makers.
Ford bet heavily on aluminum when it released the redesigned F-series trucks last year, believing that consumers would embrace the lighter metal, which translates into better fuel economy. But Chevy stuck with highstrength steel in a strategic bet that it can squeeze out fuel econ- omy gains through a more traditional route.
One sticking point with aluminum vehicles is higher repair costs — at least while repair shops and parts makers adjust.
That gives GM a marketing edge, which the automaker is now exploiting.
“We think at this point highstrength steels is the best material for a full-size pickup,” GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson said in an interview.
The ad is curious because industry observers believe GM may integrate more aluminum into its pickup trucks when they are redesigned in a few years.
It’s been a tough year for the F-150. Sales of the F-series truck fell 8.9% to 357,180 units for the first six months of the year, compared with the same period in 2014. Meanwhile, sales of the Silverado rose 18.4% to 275,822.
“These are the truck wars. There’s a lot of money at stake”
Kelley Blue Book analyst Karl Brauer