It is well-known that the universal cover $\tilde G$ of a connected Lie group $G$ has a Lie group structure such that the covering projection $\tilde G\to G$ is a Lie group morphism. Of course $\tilde G$ might not be linear even though $G$ is, but this is not the point here.
My question is: assume that $G$ is a not necessarily connected Lie group. Does there exist a Lie group $\tilde G$ and an onto Lie group morphism $\tilde G\to G$ whose restriction to the identity component of $\tilde G$ is the universal cover of the identity component of $G$?
I assume that the answer is "no" in general, but I could not find any counter-example.
@Jim: Of course, the terminology "universal cover" would have been inappropriate even though such a cover existed (which as you and André pointed out, is not the case).
I came to this question from some other direction. Namely, the $PSL_2(R)$ action on $RP^1$ lifts to a $\widetilde{PSL_2(R)}$ action on the universal cover of $RP^1$, and this action extends to an action of a two-sheeted cover of $PGL_2(R)$. It is tempting to denote this cover by $\widetilde{PGL_2(R)}$, and I wondered whether such a construction was standard.