Et Tu, Penske? Saturn Gets the Axe
After several months of silence, it appears Penske has opted to retract his offer to purchase Saturn from General Motors.
Following a script so eerily similar to my earlier prediction that it prompted me to buy lottery tickets, Penske had planned to use the Saturn dealer network as a domestic channel for future distribution of Renault-Samsung’s line of rebadged Renault and Nissan products. In the interim though, GM was going to continue supplying some existing vehicles to the Tupperware Car Company through 2012, give or take.
So it’s so long to the plastic-fantastic arm of General Motors. Unlike Pontiac, we hardly knew ye.
Saturn was a dumb idea from the start. They should have focused at the time on Oldsmobile and making Pontiac something other than Chevy's with plastic cladding. But in typical GM fashion they screwed it up. Not to mention that Saturn competed against Geo (GM's OTHER youth/transplant fighter brand) for a while, as well.
Just like Oldsmobile, as soon as it got some halfway compelling products, it got the ax. This seems to be General Motors SOP. Starve a brand, then at the last minute put out a bunch of products that are (at least) class competitive, but too late to save the brand.
I predict Buick is the next follow this trajectory.
Buick has to remain. They can't sell them to semi-affluent Chinese businessmen without maintaining the brand here in the states. In 10 or 20 years it may be different, but Buick needs to stand tall as (in their eyes) an American luxury brand to retain cachet.
Do you really think the Chinese are so stupid that they don't already know Buick doesn't have any cachet in the USA for anyone under the age of 75? And it doesn't seem to hurt sales there. Also, the Buicks they sell there *aren't even the same* as the ones they sell here! They don't realize this already? You think affluent Chinese businessmen would do some traveling.
Another example:
No Lexus brand in Japan, and the Lexi here are sold there as high end Toyotas IIRC. Yet no one cares here.