General Motors shocked the automotive community on Sunday by announcing that marketing chief Joel Ewanick had been asked for his resignation.

“We’ve told a few press outlets that we had issues with his Manchester United deal,” said GM spokesguy Teddy Cardigan, speaking on the condition that we write a positive review of his brother’s restaurant on TripAdvisor. “But the truth is that we never expected him to stay as long as he did.”

Ewanick is best known for inventing the Hyundai Assurance program that helped the South Korean automaker grow sales in a declining market. He came to Hyundai from Porsche, and was then hired by Nissan before jumping ship to General Motors.

“He was at Nissan for, what, ten minutes?” Cardigan said. “And that was after he ran away from Hyundai like his ass was on fire. We figured he’d stay in the job for a couple of months, maybe come up with something snappy like he did for Hyundai, and then take off, and we could say we hired the hottest marketing guy in the industry. If you’re a car company, hiring Ewanick is like banging J-Lo.  But then the guy just wouldn’t leave. We moved him to a smaller office. We gave him the most crotchety personal assistant we could find. We even tried giving him a Chevrolet Aveo as a company car. I guess some people just can’t take a hint.”

Sales grew during Ewanick’s tenure at General Motors, but their growth trailed the rest of the industry.

“I guess he was just out of good ideas,” said Cardigan. “Okay, maybe he was right about Facebook, since junior high school students don’t buy cars, but dumping the Super Bowl for English soccer? And ‘Chevy Runs Deep’? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

© Autoblopnik