Saturn to close

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Penske backed out of his deal to buy Saturn from GM. Couldnt find a manufacturer to supply cars.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090930/AUTO01/909300417/Penske-calls-off-Saturn-deal-with-GM

Detroit auto icon Roger Penske has terminated a deal with General Motors Co. for the Saturn brand, because Penske could not find an automaker to supply new vehicles.

The deal's unraveling dooms about 340 dealers and the Saturn brand, which appeared to be saved this summer when Penske announced he had reached a memorandum of understanding with GM.

The deal was expected to be finalized as early as Wednesday, and dealers already had signed and returned new two-year sales and service agreements to Penske. Instead, GM will gradually wind down the dealerships, with details expected to be announced soon

 

[boosted gt]

damn, i thought the brand would sputter on a few years under penske. sucks to see more jobs that are going to be lost

 

[cjmatt]

well at least anyone who loved the saturn vehicles will have the option of buying versions of any one of them under every other GM brand

 

[QUASAR]

I was wondering how this was going to work had the deal gone thru. Import china cars here and slap saturn badge on them??? It still sucks though, like we need more job losses.

 

[boosted gt]

I was wondering how this was going to work had the deal gone thru. Import china cars here and slap saturn badge on them??? It still sucks though, like we need more job losses.

i thought they were planning on buying the current cars from gm for a while and after that who knows? the writing was on the wall for saturn when they stopped designing thier own vehicles and using thier own engines.

the whole idea of saturn was to be an american company building small cars to compete with the import brands and they did fairly well. then they had to get into midsize cars nobody wanted and eventually morphed into another badge engineered GM division.

 

[Joe]

Too bad. Saturn has the best looking lineup overall in the GM fleet

 

[QUASAR]

i thought they were planning on buying the current cars from gm for a while and after that who knows? .

The who knows part is what I was referring to. Penske was essentially buying a distribution network (the dealers) but no guts (engineering/development). It was obvious he would need to get cars from somewhere and I just don't see Fomoco and Chiz-ler stepping up for that. I was betting on them being cookie cutter china cars. Maybe its better this way, it would have been a slap in the face!

 

[kaspeed]

I was betting on them being cookie cutter china cars. Maybe its better this way, it would have been a slap in the face!

the only one who would have made out on that deal would have been penske...i could see the cars coming from china or korea....I thought penske would have been better off buying viper from Chrysler since he could have had the plant right here too.... oh well....sucks either way...

and I heard Beaumont hospitals laid off 400 people today... out of work people cant afford to go to the doctor.... they said that would be the one field that wouldn't get hit....