Retired General Motors executive Robert Dean Burger, an outspoken advocate for auto dealers who led Chevrolet during its "Heartbeat of America" era in the 1980s, died on Friday, May 25. He was 93.
Burger was born in Ionia, Mich., in 1924 and spent his entire 43-year-long career at GM. Burger took on top brand positions for the company in more than a dozen cities across the country.
"He was a straight-shooter. No games. No hidden agendas," said longtime friend Tony Hopp, former CEO of Campbell-Ewald, Chevrolet's longtime ad agency, in 2011. "He was great to work with as a client because straight shooters are always the best."
Burger attended General Motors Institute in Flint, Mich., where he joined the Fisher Body division and trained as an industrial engineer. Sponsored by Oldsmobile, he graduated from GMI's Four-Year Cooperative Engineering Program in 1946.
Burger joined the Oldsmobile sales department in 1949. He was promoted to assistant general sales manager in 1969.
Five years later, Burger was named general sales manager of Buick, and then was promoted to vice president in charge of the GM sales and marketing staff. In 1982, Burger became vice president/general manager of Cadillac. Burger assumed the same position at Chevrolet in 1984.
Burger oversaw many product launches at Chevrolet as well as the "Heartbeat of America" advertising campaign during the mid-1980s. The 30-second TV advertisements showed cuts of every Chevy model during the time when the company's was sliding. Burger also experimented with joint ventures and captive imports during his tenure in the 1980s.
Burger gained further notoriety at the 1989 National Automobile Dealers Association convention in New Orleans, when he rode into the dealer party in the Superdome on a Mardi Gras float and tossed fake coins to the dealers.
The longtime GM manager was an , especially by supporting used cars as a way to maintain the franchised dealer system, despite the nascent computer revolution emerging at the time. "You've got to remember that nobody ever offered you anything for that TV set that wore out," he once said.
Burger's obituary says he understood that dealers "were the lifeblood of General Motors' success."
Burger retired from GM in 1989 at age 64. He was succeeded by Jim Perkins.