(before it went very far south )

With the GM bankruptcy forging ahead, and news of plant and dealership closings and sales of companies formerly part of the GM family (can't say the loss of Hummer is any sort of tragedy) pending, I got to thinking about the impression GM made on me as a kid - growing up and getting my first car (it was, in all honesty a 1956 Plymouth, but that's another story) and how the American auto industry, the whole car culture in fact was such an integral part of our lives. How commercials were as much of our culture as the cars themselves and how indelible some of those commercials were to our place in time. I've assembled a montage of some of the memorable ones, not all of them - but enough to make the events of the past few weeks just a bit sad.