Saturn dealers ignore the plea. Or, so reports the Wall Street Journal. Word is that GM has asked Saturn to keep the Pesnke-fuelled optimism to a minimum “lest it overshadow the Saturn brand name.” After all, the deal isn’t expected to wrap up until Q3 of this year. But The General might as well be whistling into the wind. “We were on death row,” Saturn Marketing Director Kim McGill tells the WSJ. The brand is in “remission,” thanks to Mr. Penske, but “is not yet totally cured” is she adds, for emphasis. Which makes GM corporate the cancer? Someone’s gotta take the rap for the 58 percent drop in sales (and counting . . . June’s results should come this week). But is Samsung (or???) gonna make buyers glad the Opel era is over? Not that it will be any time soon. And GM is right about one thing: the deal ain’t done yet.
GM is the cancer. Penske should not only take over Saturn, he should take over GM. Caddy is dead man walking, there is one truly good Buick, Fritz killed the Pontiac G8 which should become the new Caprice.
God, GM needs leadership, not Fritz.
Maybe GM should just pay attention to the BK at hand? Why worry about what the buyer of one of their “dead” brands is doing and concentrate on it’s own restructuring. They never knew what to do with Saturn. Maybe Penske does.
GM should be grateful a buyer showed up at all. Dolts.
Dear GM:
FOAD.
Sincerely,
Saturn
Yeah, seems Gov Motors is elbowing for market share already… boy, that’s fair.
Saturn as a sales channel for Renault-Samsung cars seems like a very, very long shot to me. Speaking of which, why would Nissan be cool with this plan? All of Renault Samsung’s lineup is based off Nissans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Samsung_Motors
The local Saturn Dealers in Central Ohio have been trumpeting the Pesnke (if you spell it like Ed does) deal though their pitchman “Jungle” Jack Hanna (Letterman devotees will know him).
The old song that this puts me in mind of is “Hold On, I’m Coming”.
When I read this in the WSJ this morning it struck me as ridiculous. First, GM has in theory sold Saturn, so what difference does it make to them what happens to the brand? Second, clearly GM doesn’t get it (so what else is new?), the Saturn brand name doesn’t mean much to most people anyway. And third, this is what got them into trouble in the first place. GM’s arrogance that RenCen knows better has not gone away with BK. The one dealer in the story said it well: people don’t want to buy a car from GM, but they will buy one from Penske.
The sooner that GM goes away forever the better. What bothers me more than most things about this whole mess is that we’ll be hearing this kind of garbage indefinitely into the future courtesy of our own tax dollars.