General Motors announced yesterday that it will be selling its Saturn division to Penske Automotive Group, the Roger Penske owned company that has over 300 dealer franchises mostly here in the US and in the UK. Penske already is the US distributor for the MCC Smart vehicles and the new Saturn would be operated in a similar manner. This is good news for the 13,000 folks working in the 350 Saturn dealerships, who would have been SOL if the General had not found a buyer and asked the bankruptcy court to allow them to break those contracts and just shut the whole thing down. It also saves jobs at GM, as a plant that was scheduled to close will now stay open at least another two years as it continues to make three of the existing models for the Penske owned company.

Hummer is going through the same type of deal, if the Chinese allow it, and that will also keep some GM workers working, as they continue to assemble vehicles for the new Chinese-owner Hummer company.

The next big hurdle for Saturn will be to find a new manufacturer to replace GM when it stops making Saturn product in two years. That’s not enough time to design and develop a single model, let alone a vehicle line, so shopping for appropriate existing products to restyle and badge will be the main focus of this new group or it will easily run out of time. One could ask the question of why not continue making for Saturn if the deal is profitable for GM? Funny business, this car business. There are safety and CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) regulations far into the future that must be met in order to sell here, and when models are originally designed and engineered to meet/exceed the regs for a span of time, when that time span is done a significant re-engineering effort is required and that takes mucho bucks! Enter the Koreans and the Chinese for new Saturn products.

So, is this what the auto industry is about to become? Will it lead to more, or less diversity of products for us to consider? One thing is certain though, with the Democrats firmly in control, and with the intense hatred of cars by the D.C. elite, as shown every time these jokers regain power, there’s gonna more, not less, regulation and meddling from Uncle Sam. Especially now that he’s (we’re) the majority stake owner in GM. Hey, Prez Barry O’s appointed a 31-year-old college dropout to be the Car Czar and run this deal.

What could possibly go wrong?

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 6th, 2009 at 10:13 am and is filed under Automotive Survival. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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