Review- NBC’s American Auto Is An Effortlessly Smart Comedy That Takes Aim At Corporate Culture

When family-owned Payne Motors finds itself fading into obsolescence its board members decide to try a more modern approach to running the company by using woke culture to fix its problems with less than stellar results. Starring Ana Gasteyer as the newly hired CEO Katherine Hastings of Payne Motors (with no love for or experience in the auto industry) the series focuses on Katherine’s inability to handle anything auto-related while her extremely competent team of executives handle damage control duties while she tries to learn the ropes. While it sounds like a typical dumb boss + smart employees= comedy the series never goes down the troupe road with each character just being themselves and conveying their angle and purpose in the show as such.

One struggle that becomes exceedingly clear with Katherine is how ignorant she is of presswork which leads to some fantastic failures, the best involving an interview with the widow of a pastor who was murdered by a local serial killer who just happened to own a Payne Motors van and was using it in his murder sprees. In an effort to stop the bad press circulating about the company’s link to the killer, Katherine, her communications officer Sadie, and her Chief automotive designer Cyrus decide to hold a press conference with the widow and offer her a new Payne Motors car to help her through the tragedy, only to find out on live TV just how deeply weird and homophobic she was. Let’s just say the optics didn’t look good.

Another epic PR failure on Katherine’s part involved an innocuous tweet from the company’s Twitter account of a rainbow emoji in support of LGBTQIA rights and an offended Tic-Tok celeb who not only made a video condemning the tweet but demanded the company do better for representation, which then kicks everyone into inclusivity over-drive to the point of doing more harm than good. Acting on what is trending on social media rather than focusing on what is really being asked for by consumers never ends well.

Overall American Auto is a fresh take on the automotive business that addresses inclusivity, social media boundaries, inter-personal boundaries and the importance of not allowing an industry to destroy your humanity.

American Auto season finale airs on February 22 on NBC.

For more information on the cast and crew please visit the American Auto IMDb right here.