bloomberg.com — GM is thinking of dropping Saab, Saturn, and Pontiac. When Saturn first came to be, it was the "new way to manufacture and sell cars", Saab is Swedish, I believe, and then there is Pontiac. Selling Saab, yes, dropping Pontiac, maybe, or selling to a Chinese concern, but Saturn, no way.
Nov 27, 2008 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountNov 27, 2008Submitter
I have family that works for Saturn, and they do things a bit different on the floor their than they do at Pontiac. Saturn was to originally be patterned after the way the Japanese build cars. I see, if anything, GM selling Pontiac to a Chinese auto maker who wants to sell cheap cars in America. The dealership network is already in place and it would be the easiest way for the chicoms to market their cars.
phreak79Nov 27, 2008
Stripping out the unprofitable brands is surely a sensible first step.
deadbabyNov 27, 2008
I've never really understood why these car companies needed so many brands. Seems like they really bought into the idea that they could sell cars based purely on social engineering by selling the brand -- not the car. That may have worked once but these days I don't think there's enough variation in the brands to really have strong loyalty. I'm looking at GM's website and it seems the only real difference between most of these cars is the nose style. There are literally half a dozen cars that look exactly the same.