Chrysler breathed a sigh of relief when the auto bailout granted it temporary loans on taxpayers' bill to sustain its business while it attempted to consolidate and turn around.  The funds were desperately needed as Chrysler teetered on the brink of disaster, already having gone bankrupt once and facing another potential Chapter 11 filing amid sinking sales.

Recently, Chrysler gained much press over its deal with Fiat to give the European automaker a large stake in the company in exchange for help and some new deals.  While the reaction to this was generally rather positive, Chrysler has also had its share of negative public relations of late.

Bob Nardelli, Chrysler CEO decided to take out a full-page ad in several major newspapers, spending over six figures.  The ad read "THANK YOU AMERICA" and then included a message thanking American taxpayers for "investing in -- America's Car Company".  The ads ran the week of Christmas in some of the country's biggest newspapers -- USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  However, the move backfired and by the end of December outrage was growing.

While this story is an old one to some, it now has a new twist. 

Many took their anger online, funneling their malice towards Chrysler's corporate blog, which featured a post on the topic.  After hundreds of negative comments, Chrysler exercised a bit of censorship, simply yanking it entirely last week. 

While the blog is gone, posts are still readable using Google's cache of the page.  Most are rather pointed.  Writes one reader:

Mr Nardelli, Fire your PR and advertising teams and execs immediately. We the People did not want to see any more ads and money wasted on ads, be it from Chrysler, et al, or from your own pocket. You should have put up a website thanking the people and just submitted it to various online news aggregators for free. Once again, I am pained to see you are demonstrating a lack of common sense and fiscal responsibility. We supported the bailout of the car companies, even in the face of the horrendously mismanaged and secretive bailout of banks, and you stlil throw money away in the name of your company. Time to wake up. Sincerely, Matt and the rest of the Internet.

While, the ads were obviously a PR disaster for Chrysler, censoring its corporate blogs could turn into a whole new mess.  Rather than issuing a carefully worded response it tried to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened, and in doing so tried to silence the voices of its customers.  However, as Chrysler discovered, such attempts rarely work in the internet world and now it has a new embarrassment to contend with.  Thus far Chrysler has not issued a statement on the ads or its censorship of its blog comments.