GM Announces It Doubled Its 6-Month Sales Quota; Sold Two Cars

GM CEO Rick Wagoner told a hastily assembled Detroit news conference today that GM had doubled its 6-month sales quota and had actually sold two cars since the first day of January.

“We’re all really excited about how the first half of 2008 has exceeded all expectations,” Wagoner said, flanked by representatives of the AFL-CIO and dozens of entirely unnecessary GM executives with undeterminable duties.

“The American people has put patriotism in the driver’s seat,” he added, “and they clearly appear delighted with our new safer, greener offerings.”

Wagoner said that one of the buyers was an elderly Ohio woman who bought a new Oldsmobile with the special -2.8 percent financing, under which GM paid her $273 per month, plus tax, for each month she kept the car.

“We’ve found that paying people to have a GM car in their driveway is an excellent way to drive sales and increase consumer interest in our products.”

The Ohio woman was present at the news conference but could not display her car because it was under a warranty recall for brakes, air conditioning, power steering, power windows, the drive train, two MacPherson struts, and “some other stuff that was also wrong with the car that we’re striving to make right,” Wagoner said.

Under close questioning from the press after Wagoner would not reveal the identity of the second buyer, the CEO admitted that “The person in question hasn’t actually committed to take delivery of the car, but he did take it for a lengthy test drive at an Oklahoma Buick dealership and told the salesman that he ‘would be back real soon.’”