The "new GM" (which looks amazingly like the "old GM" that went bankrupt last year) has adopted at least one chapter from the Mercedes playbook. However, Mercedes should not consider imitation the sincerest form of flattery.
Advertising for the new Buick Regal concentrates on it being a reskinned version of the 2009 Eurpoean Car Of The Year, the Opel Insignia. And with that, there's an underlying assumption that people think if its German it has to be good. Well, the Germans aren't Smuckers.
The Opel reference would be lost on potential customers of, for example, a Chevrolet Malibu. They're too young to remember Opels in the US. But potential Buick owners, who are on average somewhere between retired and dead, do remember Opels. And their memories of the last Opel branded car sold in the US, a derivitive of the Chevette made by Isuzu, can't be good ones.
Those negatives aside, GM should have considered Mercedes experience trying to associate Germans with Chrysler. The Dr Z ads reduced sales every time they ran. While some Americans respected the German reputation for engineering and assembly quality, few considered any car the Germans were involved in to be a good value.
Those who investigated further found how hollow Dr Z's claims of German superority were. Chrysler was the first all front wheel drive American car company. Yet when potential customers visited showrooms, they found Mercedes had converted the big Chryslers to rear will drive so they could install truck engines in perhaps 10% of the production.
All in all, GM advertising the German origins of the Regal is a mistake on the magnitude of the old "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" campaign, which offended the few customers Oldsmobile had left at the time. At least GM has one thing to be thankful for. Dr. Z has been demoted from President of Chrysler to CEO of Mercedes, and is unavailble to do any German superiority commercials for GM..