With the presidential campaign getting hot by the day, General Motors' (GM) buyers are reportedly snubbing the `Obamamobile' Chevrolet Volt, especially since the conservatives have been associating the plug-in hybrid car with things like government bailouts and drastic left-wing environmentalism.

Republican politicians began their tirade against the Volt soon after the vehicle was reported to have performed poorly in the government's crash tests, when its batteries burst into flames and were deemed a potential fire risk for the car.

Noting that GM had equipped the Volt with "state-of-the-art safety features," the automaker's CEO Officer Dan Akerson said during a Congressional hearing on the car in January that the company "did not engineer the Volt to be a political punching bag," which it has unfortunately turned out to be.

While conservative group called American Tradition Partnership has been referring to the Volt cars as "exploding Obamamobiles"; Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has lashed out against the vehicle for its lack of space for a gun rack; and front-runner Mitt Romney has termed the vehicle as "an idea whose time has not come."

Meanwhile, understandingly outraged at all the politicized trash talk which has severely hit the Volt sales, Bob Lutz - ex-vice chairman of GM, and a notable contributor to the Volt's development - said that it was a "totally outrageous" on the part of the politicians "to tell outright lies to advance your political purposes and damage an American company that is greatly on its way back, hurt American employment in Hamtramck, Michigan."