General Motors has announced that it will begin offering a 60-day “Satisfaction Guarantee” to eligible buyers of new Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac vehicles. The above ad, featuring GM chairman Ed Whitacre, gets the point across very succinctly.

The program, which is seen as a way to get consumers to consider GM products, will start on September 14 and run through November 30. It will allow customers to purchase and – in the event they are not completely satisfied – return a vehicle to their dealer between 31 and 60 days of purchase and receive a refund. There are a few conditions:

• The vehicle must be a new 2009 or 2010 Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet or GMC
• It must be returned between 31 and 60 days from purchase
• It must have no more than 4,000 miles
• The buyer can’t be behind in payments
• If the purchase loan included an additional amount to pay off the loan on a trade-in above what the trade-in was worth, that portion won’t be refunded

These terms are meant to be very simple for consumers: “We’re not going to have a screen full of warnings like in those drug ads where you see the happy geriatric couple and a guy is telling you, ‘Taking this medication while eating grapefruit can result in loss of eyesight’,” said Bob Lutz. I think a better example from pop culture would be Apple’s “Legal Copy” ad.

We here at GM Authority believe that most vehicles in the GM product stable are – quite frankly – better than those of the competition. The key word there is “most,” meaning that we think the following vehicles are outclassed by their competition:

GM's weakest products

We know these vehicles will soon be replaced with the following products, which will strengthen GM’s product portfolio in those respective segments:

GM's weakest products - redesigned

However, one has to wonder about the timing of the program: will the fact that the aforementioned vehicles are out of date compared to the competition influence their return rate for the worse? If it does, then it will cost GM (and US taxpayers) a pretty penny.

We will be taking a closer look at the models spied in the ad shortly.