Why the Saturn story isn’t yet done
Posted on October 1, 2009 at 11:11 amPhil LeBeau says the Saturn dealers GM so successfully wooed in the late 1980s are likely to throw their weight around in an attempt to save the brand and their business.
They will likely try to force GM into doing one of two things: 1) give them money to go away or, 2) get back in the room with Penske and work out a deal. And with the U.S. Government now owning a majority of GM, you can bet the Saturn dealers will press their case in Washington.
Penske pulls Saturn’s plug
Posted on September 30, 2009 at 6:54 pm
After his deal with General Motors didn’t pass muster with the unnamed company that would have taken over manufacturing operations, Roger Penske has cancelled his planned purchase of Saturn. Without the assurance of someone to take over production, “the risks and uncertainties related to the availability of future products prohibit the company from moving forward.”
For its part, GM isn’t even going to try again to save Saturn. Its operations will be completely wound down by next fall, shutting off the lights at dealerships in Rivergate and Cool Springs.
SEE ALSO: Very randomly placed at the end of a Bloomberg story, this quote from an analyst on what coulda been for Saturn.
“Saturn is the brand you wanted to like,” said Rebecca Lindland, an analyst at IHS Global Insight. “It is the little brand that could have and should have” been great.
A lot of people around these parts would agree with that.
GM to offload Saturn to Penske
Posted on June 5, 2009 at 9:54 amFrom the Detroit Free Press:
General Motors Corp. this morning announced a tentative deal for renowned Detroit businessman Roger Penske to acquire GM’s struggling Saturn brand and distribution network.
SEE ALSO: Penske says he plans to branch out and sell other brands, including Renault and Samsung. No wonder on whether sibling Nissan will be in the mix, too.
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16 bidders for Saturn and May sales numbers
Posted on June 2, 2009 at 6:14 pm
General Motors says more than a dozen companies have expressed interest in the car brand that was born and raised in Spring Hill. Among them are Penske Automotive — which has been said to partner with Renault-Nissan — and a group led by private-equity player Black Oak Partners.
On the sales front, the world’s auto makers reported their May sales this morning. And while the numbers for several of them were better than expectations, they still made for tough reading.
Ford executives cautioned against reading too much into their better-than-expected results.
“It’s like less awful,” Ken Czubay, Ford vice president of sales and marketing, said in a conference call today. “This is still a very fragile industry. This isn’t any time to rejoice. It’s just a slight uptick.”
Oh no, says Ghosn
Posted on May 6, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Carlos Ghosn, the boss of Nissan and Renault, said reports of his interest in a future iteration of Saturn aren’t entirely correct.
A source close to the proceedings told BusinessWeek that confusion on the newswire and daily newspaper resulted from talks between Penske and Renault-Nissan, as well as between private equity firm Red Oak Partners, which is looking at acquiring Saturn, and Renault-Nissan about the French and Japanese automakers supplying Saturn with vehicles after 2011 when GM has said it won’t guarantee supplying cars and SUVs to Saturn showrooms.
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Saturns made in Smyrna?
Posted on May 5, 2009 at 11:38 pm
A day after auto dealer and racing team owner Roger Penske said he’s interested in acquiring the Saturn brand, Bloomberg News reports that Nissan officials are interested in teaming with Penske in an interesting arrangement that might borrow from the latter’s approach to distributing the Smart in the U.S. – and unite the two auto brands most closely tied to Middle Tennessee.
Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn may want to put Nissan’s North American factories to work producing vehicles under the Saturn nameplate after Nissan and Infiniti sales in the U.S. fell by a third.
…
Unlike most other vehicle-distribution networks, Smart takes customer orders and deposits via a Web site, allowing dealers to keep fewer cars in inventory. Penske executives refer to such a vehicle distribution method, sidestepping the traditional U.S. franchises in which only dealers can take retail orders, as “plug and play.”
Bringing back Saturn’s retail experience
Posted on April 16, 2009 at 10:36 am
A private-equity firm interested in Saturn’s brand would use it a platform to sell foreign and energy-efficient cars. That, says BusinessWeek’s David Welch, would revive the spirit behind the company reared in Spring Hill.
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Born in Spring Hill, headed for Turin?
Posted on January 19, 2009 at 5:41 pmBusinessWeek’s David Kiley brainstorms on how Saturn might fit into the U.S. expansion plans of Fiat.
It may sound a little goofy, but given the seriously nice product line in Saturn today, and the quality of the dealerships, it seems like a better fit than using Chrysler dealers to me.
UPDATE - It looks like the Italians have their eye set on Chrysler.
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