- Jan 7, 2002
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General Motors Corp. gumshoes are out to squash the shutterbug who secretly snapped photos of the automaker's upcoming line of large SUVs.
These aren't the garden-variety spy shots taken by professionals who make their living lurking behind trees and fences, hoping to snag a few frames of soon-to-be-released cars and trucks.
The three photos that started popping up on the Internet last week show the new Chevrolet Tahoe and Cadillac Escalade in what appears to be a photo studio or warehouse, giving GM the suspicion this caper was an inside job by someone hoping to make a quick buck.
"We're still trying to understand the who, what, when, where or how," GM spokesman Jeffrey Kuhlman said. "In this case it was a private photo session, and the potential exists the person was involved in the setup or organization of this event."
The practice of capturing images of new models automakers aren't ready to show publicly has long been a cottage industry. Myriad auto enthusiast magazines, Internet sites and newspapers, including The Detroit News, pay to publish spy photos.
But GM is fighting back in cases involving some of its most important and profitable models.
In November 2003, a photographer captured an uncamouflaged shot of the much-anticipated 2005 Chevrolet Corvette. The new 'Vette soon surfaced on the Internet, crimping GM's plans to reveal it to the world at the Detroit auto show the following January.
Then last year, a GM photograph of the high-performance Corvette Z06 showed up online after it was distributed to journalists who agreed not to publish until a later date.
This time, GM hired security experts to track down the source of the leak and warned several Web site operators against publishing the photo.
But the Corvette Z06 had already digitally raced around the world, taking some of the buzz away from the car's premiere at this year's Detroit auto show.
The shots of GM's new SUVs now circulating on the Web are especially troubling to the company. The highly profitable vehicles mean so much to its financial turnaround the automaker killed a rear-wheel drive vehicle program to devote money and people to bring the new Tahoe, GMC Yukon and others to market six months sooner than originally planned.
"We don't want the competition to have any insight into the products," Kuhlman said.
In addition, GM is waiting to show the new models publicly to maintain consumer interest and sales of the current Tahoe and other large SUVs.
But in the age of the Internet and blast e-mails, a giant automaker's efforts to keep a hot model under wraps can go astray.
Automakers typically give photographs to journalists early under the agreement they won't be published until an agreed-upon date. The practice raises the risk that the photographs can leak onto the Internet, which triggers other news organizations to publish in an effort to remain competitive.
And these days, it seems, more photographers are willing to break the rules to bag their quarry. http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0507/25/A01-258139.htm
These aren't the garden-variety spy shots taken by professionals who make their living lurking behind trees and fences, hoping to snag a few frames of soon-to-be-released cars and trucks.
The three photos that started popping up on the Internet last week show the new Chevrolet Tahoe and Cadillac Escalade in what appears to be a photo studio or warehouse, giving GM the suspicion this caper was an inside job by someone hoping to make a quick buck.
"We're still trying to understand the who, what, when, where or how," GM spokesman Jeffrey Kuhlman said. "In this case it was a private photo session, and the potential exists the person was involved in the setup or organization of this event."
The practice of capturing images of new models automakers aren't ready to show publicly has long been a cottage industry. Myriad auto enthusiast magazines, Internet sites and newspapers, including The Detroit News, pay to publish spy photos.
But GM is fighting back in cases involving some of its most important and profitable models.
In November 2003, a photographer captured an uncamouflaged shot of the much-anticipated 2005 Chevrolet Corvette. The new 'Vette soon surfaced on the Internet, crimping GM's plans to reveal it to the world at the Detroit auto show the following January.
Then last year, a GM photograph of the high-performance Corvette Z06 showed up online after it was distributed to journalists who agreed not to publish until a later date.
This time, GM hired security experts to track down the source of the leak and warned several Web site operators against publishing the photo.
But the Corvette Z06 had already digitally raced around the world, taking some of the buzz away from the car's premiere at this year's Detroit auto show.
The shots of GM's new SUVs now circulating on the Web are especially troubling to the company. The highly profitable vehicles mean so much to its financial turnaround the automaker killed a rear-wheel drive vehicle program to devote money and people to bring the new Tahoe, GMC Yukon and others to market six months sooner than originally planned.
"We don't want the competition to have any insight into the products," Kuhlman said.
In addition, GM is waiting to show the new models publicly to maintain consumer interest and sales of the current Tahoe and other large SUVs.
But in the age of the Internet and blast e-mails, a giant automaker's efforts to keep a hot model under wraps can go astray.
Automakers typically give photographs to journalists early under the agreement they won't be published until an agreed-upon date. The practice raises the risk that the photographs can leak onto the Internet, which triggers other news organizations to publish in an effort to remain competitive.
And these days, it seems, more photographers are willing to break the rules to bag their quarry. http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0507/25/A01-258139.htm
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