GMiography #1: Introduction

Welcome to my lifelong journey with The General.

Back in early 2007, Davey Johnson convinced then-editor-in-chief Mike Spinelli to hire me at Jalopnik (then Gawker’s car website). As that year went on, Ray Wert’s ability to monetize the Stefan Eriksson Ferrari Enzo crash story (remember, this was the late pre-smartphone era, when turning a viral story into money was more art than science) caught the attention of Gawker boss Nick Denton, who made Wert boss.

General Motors, having never really bounced back from the Vega-Citation debacle of the 1970s and 1980s, did a rapid downward spiral into bankruptcy during my years at Jalopnik, which provided plenty of opportunities for good storytelling. I left Jalopnik in 2010 and didn’t hear much about Wert after that… until a few years later, when he landed the job of “Storyteller in Chief” for GM.

Good for him, I thought, but I also thought: Ray is more of a car business guy than a car guy, so what kind of stories would he tell? They should have hired me! Yeah, in reality I would have gone insane and quit within about four hours of exposure to post-bankruptcy GM bureaucracy, but I have extensive GM stories from a lifetime of riding in, driving, and wrenching on GM iron. On the day I was born, just to give an early example, my mother drove to the hospital in a 1955 Chevrolet and I went home in a 1956 Oldsmobile.

In the decade-plus since then, I’ve been thinking about how I would tell the story of the GM vehicles I’ve known, loved, and hated since that cold Minnesota morning. The title was always going to be “GMiography,” and in fact that name inspired my Screwdriverography series here (plus the Mopariography, which will feature my Chrysler storytelling).

The tale of my 1965 Chevrolet Impala sedan will be told in depth here (the GM storytelling about that car on TTAC was just a warmup, and I’ve scanned hundreds of Impala negatives since I told that GM story), and you’ll get to know my $113 GTO, the family Beauville, some non-Detroit machinery from the far-flung GM Empire, and much more, with no corporate overlords to water down my GM storytelling in order to appease The Man.

Hold on, though: Stellantis is hiring for the position of Head of Digital Media and Creative Production! I think I should apply, so I can be the Humber DeSoto Talbot Singer Plymouth Simca Commer Hillman Sunbeam… uh, Fiat storyteller. My first move there will be to insist that RAM shall become Humber, and the 1500/2500/3500 pickup series must take on the sales-enhancing name of the Greatest Humber of All Time.

But before I move to Hoofddorp for that job and the Humberization of Stellantis, get ready for the Murilee Martin GMiography.

For more GMiography articles, go HERE.