Ellen's Chrysler Speedometer Rollback Story

The year was 1987. Ellen was investigative reporter or KTVI in St. Louis. Because she had a reputation for digging into viewers' tips, a state trooper called her one afternoon.

"You know the old alibi when you stop a speeder that the speedometer is broken?" the trooper said. "Well, yesterday I stopped a guy who used that story, and sure enough the odometer read zero. And it was a brand new Chrysler."

As it turned out, the driver was an executive at the local Chrysler manufacturing plant. He told the trooper all the executives at the plant drove new cars whose speedometers were disconnected.

As Ellen investigated, the story grew. She found that some of the cars had been in accidents. After they were repaired, they were shipped to dealers and sold to unsuspecting customers as "new" cars.

The story went national, and eventually Lee Iococca, then president of Chrysler, apologized to the entire nation in a series of double-page ads (below) that ran in virtually every national magazine.

Iococca must have read the Ten Commandments of Media Relations in the First Edition of Winning with the News Media. Especially Commandment # 8. Just kidding.

left page of magazine ad right page

If you'd like to see the original ad in Adobe Acrobat^® format, click the links above.

Ellen's Story That Became a National Embarrassment for Chrysler

Ellen's Story That Became a
National Embarrassment for Chrysler