GM held meetings about dealing with their defective cars in 2008, but workers were instructed not to use certain words to describe the defects. The banned words included dangerous, life-threatening, crippling, and many others. The list also included words like death trap, decapitating, and rolling sarcophagus. Despite this, GM promotes their cars as safe and non-defective.

In light of General Motors' recall of 11 million vehicles and recently-leaked public relations memo, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver made a new, honest ad for their cars.

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-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Just this Friday, we learned that GM was holding meetings at the time about dealing with their defective cars.

But you'll never guess what they were talking about.

These are slides from a PowerPoint presentation given in 2008.

Workers were told not to use the word defect or defective, but rather does not perform to design.

And GM had judgment words that were banned, including dangerous, crippling, life-threatening, hobbling and 65 others.

♪ How did they even come up with that list?

Was it just word association at that point?

Okay, everyone, say the first word that comes to mind.

There are no bad ideas here, just bad cars.

There were a lot more words on that list than just those 4 mentioned, because the banned words include, and I'm going to show you the document to prove that they are real as I read them.

They include death trap, decapitating, grenade-like, Hindenburg, Kevorkian-esque, powder keg, rolling sarcophagus, and you're toast.

When demons have sex, those are their safe words.

We don't technically have commercial breaks on this show, but frankly, after this, I think we all might just need 1 just to get away from this story altogether.

So if you'll excuse us, we'll be right back.

General Motors makes cars that America can be proud of.

Cars you could never describe as defective or catastrophically flawed.

Gruesome, potentially disfiguring rolling sarcophagi?

We make sleek, non-grenade-like anti-Hindenburgs that are the very opposite of Kevorkian-esque.

So why not tell your family you love them and come test drive a GM car today.

Driving a GM car is so smooth it's like butter and you're toast.

General Motors, why walk through the valley of the shadow of death when you can drive?


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Just this Friday, we learned that GM was holding meetings at the time about dealing with their defective cars. But you'll never guess what they were talking about.

Speaker 1: These are slides from a PowerPoint presentation given in 2008. Workers were told not to use the word defect or defective, but rather does not perform to design. And GM had judgment words that were banned, including dangerous, crippling, life-threatening, hobbling and 65 others.

Speaker 0: -♪

Speaker 2: 00000... ♪ -♪ 0000...

Speaker 0: ♪ How did they even come up with that list? Was it just word association at that point? Okay, everyone, say the first word that comes to mind. Cadillac XDS. Life-threatening.

Perfect. The new Chevy Sonic. Crippling and dangerous. Fantastic. Keep them going.

There are no bad ideas here, just bad cars. And... And there were... No. There were...

There were a lot more words on that list than just those 4 mentioned, because the banned words include, and I'm going to show you the document to prove that they are real as I read them. They include death trap, decapitating, grenade-like, Hindenburg, Kevorkian-esque, powder keg, rolling sarcophagus, and you're toast. -... When demons have sex, those are their safe words. -...

We don't technically have commercial breaks on this show, but frankly, after this, I think we all might just need 1 just to get away from this story altogether. So if you'll excuse us, we'll be right back.

Speaker 2: General Motors makes cars that America can be proud of. Cars you could never describe as defective or catastrophically flawed. Gruesome, potentially disfiguring rolling sarcophagi? That's not our cars. We make sleek, non-grenade-like anti-Hindenburgs that are the very opposite of Kevorkian-esque.

So why not tell your family you love them and come test drive a GM car today. Driving a GM car is so smooth it's like butter and you're toast. General Motors, why walk through the valley of the shadow of death when you can drive?

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