GM to Wind Down Saturn Brand, Dealerships on Penske Decision – Bloomberg.com — Some deal’s afoot is my guess. For cheap cars, that is.
Penske Automotive Group Inc. said it has terminated its discussions with General Motors Co. to acquire the Saturn brand. GM responded by saying it will wind down the brand and its dealership network.
Penske said it had concerns directly related to the future supply of vehicles beyond the supply period it had negotiated with GM.
“This is very disappointing news and comes after months of hard work by hundreds of dedicated employees and Saturn retailers who tried to make the new Saturn a reality,” GM Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson said in a statement on GM’s Web site. Henderson said the schedule for the wind down “will be communicated shortly.”
That’s a shame. I had a Saturn SC2 a few years back and I loved it. I wanted to buy a used one in Canary Yellow.
Maybe now it will be cheaper……
This makes since for GM, Penske getting a hold of the Saturn Dealer network intact would make it easy for a lot of world class cars that are not currently marketed in the US to become available and GM would have even more to compete with in a hurry. My guess is GM did not want this deal to go down but had to play along for awhile. Penske will find another way perhaps franchising Penske Dealerships to a lot of the defunct Big Three franchise owners who want back in the game and they will be able to have their pick up of best real estate. In my town the Saturn showroom is sweet and the Chevrolet dealership is still looking like its from the 70s
This move will only buy GM a few years lets hope they have learned there lessons and will use there time wisely because most of us are looking forward to the shopping from the best the world has to offer be it GM or whoever.
Aw, come on, guys.
GM killed Saturn long before now.
I think it’s funny that in recent Saturn commercials, they’ve been making a big deal about how successful Saturn has been. Sure guys, so successful that you’re now a defunct line.
Good ideal but poorly implemented. Saturn had a great following at first but like the Dodge Neon the quality never reached the import status.
More importantly GM never let Saturn be the independent company they envisioned. Never did enough engineering of exclusive products like engines to the Saturn brand. Saturn ended up with transplant engines from companies like Honda? I thought they were competing against them? So in the end Saturn was dead because GM and its management ( don’t forget the Union too) managed to screw away any good opportunity to compete.
Silly name, Saturn. Homer Simpson, once said that a car needs to be named after a ferocious animal. i.e, Jaguar, Cobra, Hummer (a bee), Lexus (an antarctic antelope), etc.
Oh boy! Maybe I can get a manual transmission Sky turbo like, cheap!
They didn’t keep the unique image of Saturn alive, so the customer base left.
Saturn started out as GM’s answer to imports. It was to show the rest of GM how to build a great small car. But I believe the snipping and backstabbing began after 1 year. No upstart outside of the corporate (and union) hierarchy could be allowed to succeed.
#2 I believe GM started negotiations while in bankruptcy (and thus under court jurisdiction) and dragged their feet ever since leaving bankruptcy. Certainly makes it easier to believe a conspiracy on GM’s part.
The naming of the brand Saturn was a big mistake. They should have called it Uranus.
I toured the Saturn plant in Tennessee in the late 1990’s. Being from Canada I was shocked that the average wage was $55000 per year and skilled maintenance people made $110000 per year. At the time the average wage in our Canadian factory was $30000 CDN. Saturn was a UAW facility and they were quite proud of their factory etc. My impression at the time of the tour was that this was an unreal situation … took a while for reality to set in. I actually wrote down all of my findings in a trip report at the time and still have it. Once again UAW members get decimated. I am not anti-union … all our plants are unionized … but you have to be real. And those wages made by the people at the Saturn plant in Tennessee were totally UNREAL!!!
Saturn was a moronic idea. Build the same cars that Chevrolet does, but build them properly.
If GM wanted to survive, they should have built ALL their cars properly.
jittqm,
Bullshit. In the late ’90s Canadian auto workers were represented by the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union. They were independent then and still are today of the United Auto Workers (UAW).
The average wage in the late ’90s was about $20 /hr and seldom did any CAW worker make less than $40k /yr but $55k is too high. American rates were similar or slightly less dollar wise. The Canadian workers benefited by having universal health care coverage. So even though they were usually paid more, they still cost the automakers less per vehicle. Even today, both the CAW and UAW have forsaken raises to keep their troubled manufacturers afloat.
The $110k figure is an often touted number from the Glenn Beck crowd but never had any basis in reality. That would be the salary of a senior Foreman. Most Foremen were also Engineer grads.
Saturn was moved to a GM plant in Mexico in 2004. It is the Mexicans losing the manufacturing jobs. The Saturn plant in Springheel TN made a Chevy crossover called the Traverse. It looks like the plant is to be closed.
Such a shame. This product line had so much promise when first released in the early 90s, but GM failed to capitalize on its initial successes (surprise, surprise).
To see Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Saturn thrown to the wolves is disheartening.
#12, the UAW hated Saturn because they didn’t follow the standard union work rules. They were much more productive.
If the unions had just allowed the work rules to be torn up, they probably would still have the wage and health benefits.
I think jittqm gets to a good point in a round-about way.
Since Saturn is somewhat independent, I bet GM couldn’t care less if it continued, EXCEPT by bankrupting Saturn GM stabs another knife in the back of the UAW.
Throw enough UAW workers on the unemployment line and those left with jobs will certainly be willing to make greater and greater consessions.
I think GM just played us all about keeping Saturn going, until they got the bailout. I’m not surprised they’re dropping one of the few divisions that make a nice economy model. It looks like all GM wants to do is make gas guzzler SUVs, MiniVans and Trucks. Although I just read that they’re going to drop the Hummer line too. I guess their US Army contract is running out, under Obama. And the fact that few US citizens can afford the damn things. So I guess the hydrogen fueled Hummer is history, now. Arnold’s got the only one.
Saturn was the result of GM being handed it’s ass in a handbasket by the Japanese competition. So some forward thinkers in GM, realizing that GM had to change, decided to ‘start over’ with Saturn. But the whole project never received full support by GM because it was a threat to GM itself, making the old management that had led GM in it’s path to failure look really bad. Since there was no support for Saturn within GM, making it’s eventual failure a conclusion by design.
Same thing applies to GM’s handling of SAAB…. how could these little companies be doing something so much better than their bigger wiser parents? They must fail! They make us look bad!
Wholly owned subsidiaries that compete with the parent’s company main product will always fail, because if they succeed it makes the people at the parent company look stupid with their own inferior product.
Penske was smart to move away from this purchase agreement. They saw the future of Saturn clearly… they were buying a brand that had no future because it was tied too closely to a failed dinosaur of a company that has zero credibility.
This news is out of this world.
Saturn died when the workers no longer owned a substantial or controlling interest in it. They started out like a typical japanese company with lower quality but stood the chance of improving only any small chance of that happening died when GM decided to change the business model Saturn used to the same that was used at all GM factories. The only thing that was different at that point was the way they sold the cars with no dickering but a set price. Since then Saturn has been exactly the same as all other GM models, generally a lower quality car that doesn’t last as long as the average. Check Consumer Reports if you don’t believe me.
I feel sorry for the workers but GM hasn’t cared for them in many, many decades. As long as the rich SOBs get theirs they don’t care about anyone else ever. Same thing in government since the neocons got their grubby hands on government around the time Reagan, that thug, came to power.
OK Saturn was a novel idea. But for me, working for one of Saturn’s supplier’s it was pure hell. Your company didn’t get paid until the Saturn used all of the product from a particular KANBAN. Meaning if there were 100 parts in the KANBAN then until they used the all of the parts you didn’t get paid. They abused that system to the max. It was only a few years ago that GM came in and did away with that system.
To those who think that the unions were any different at Saturn they were not. It was more of the same. When there was a slowdown at the plant ie layoffs they still got those union benefits. In what other successful industry does this happen?
Addressing pride in their plant. Sure you can be proud of a plant that is nice shiny and new. They did not permit any cardboard or paper to be shipped into their plant and they had full time cleaning crews. The people on the line never picked up a broom when the line stopped or was down. I did see when the line was down that several team members played basketball.
I do know that Saturn used prototype parts (interior plastic) on their first 2 years of production cars because they refused to pay for the production tools to be made. We actually had to hold parts until they paid for the prototype tools that we had built for them. Prototype tools are never meant for mass production. So to those who think that Saturn was doing things right well you are mistaken, they were just as devious as their parent company was. They were losing money hand over fist because of high wages and inefficient production. They needed to be closed long ago and GM never should of gotten a bailout.
What Saturn got right ,well more right than GM in general, was the dealerships and thats what Penske wanted to buy I doubt he cared much about the plant other than that he could continue to get product until he setup his own supply plans and those models were approved for US sale.
This was never about the Saturn Plant.
Why doesn’t GM just kill all its brands and sell GMs?
The Sky is a good little car, and the G8 is a beast. As far as I can see the only decent car Chevy makes is the Corvette.
Some markets have special connections to a brand, like the Chinese and Buicks. If that was the case in the states GM wouldn’t be in the toilet.
Just take the best of each product line and rebadge them as GM. If GM is just Chevy that’s stupid.
Oh, and bring me an Opel speedster. They are solid. Why do other countries get good quick little cars that sell, and the U.S. gets gashogs that don’t?
yes this is my car after I hit that Jackalope in Wyoming that Dark night..
Considering what a POS my wife’s L100 was (1st year it was out – never buy a car like that again!) and it’s problems with air conditioning, recalls and clutch (the blown engine I blame the teenaged driver at the time), I’d never buy another Saturn. Ever. Good riddance.
Wait. Doesn’t the government own a majority stake in GM?
Why is the government putting so many people on the street?
What will lesbians drive, now?