General Motors Co.'s deal to sell Saturn to the Penske Automotive Group has fallen through, forcing the automaker to shutter the brand altogether.More empty dealerships coming to an auto mall near you.
The sale had been expected to be completed as soon as this week.
"Penske Automotive Group . . . has decided to terminate discussions with General Motors to acquire Saturn," GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson said in a statement. As a result, "we will be winding down the Saturn brand and dealership network."
The news is a blow to GM, which had made selling three of its brands, along with shutting Pontiac, a key component to its post-bankruptcy restructuring efforts.
GM has come to final terms on a deal to sell Saab to a Swedish maker of exotic sports cars, but it has not yet finalized the sale of Hummer to a Chinese heavy manufacturer.
Instead of selling Saturn, GM will now close the brand altogether. It said today that its Saturn dealers had already signed a "wind-down agreement." Under terms of a similar agreement signed by some other GM dealers, all new-car sales operations must cease by late 2010.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
GM to Shut Down Saturn
How's that federal bailout going, GM?
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3 comments:
Well, I would really like to take this time to thank GM, Penske Automotive Groups, and the unspecified automaker (otherwise known as Renault) for ending my college career! So thank you, thank you, and thank you! No, really its okay I didn't really want to become anything. To those of you thinking that I am overreacting, well I am not. My father has been a loyal employee of Saturn for over 10 years. He is a senior citizen and regardless of his very extensive resume it will be nearly impossible for him to find a reasonable job anywhere else, solely because of his age. Ergo, no job = no money = no college = no chance in hell for me to do anything. Why don't I get a job? Well I do, 3 to be specific but I do not earn enough to sustain my role as a full time student... anyway this isn't about me, it's about all 13,000 other families affected by this act of (pardon my French) piss poor planning done by Penske Automotive Groups. The decision makers will be haunted in their sleep due to their unbelievably benighted plan to try to make a deal with only one automaker, do you think they have ever heard of the phrase "putting all of your eggs in one basket?" Sure does not seem like it. You know, for a group of this stature how irresponsible… truly unbelievable Penske, once again congrats. Another semblance of irresponsibility is that they broke the cardinal rule; never try to make a deal with the French, everyone should know this. Well good luck to all 13,000 other families that these companies have sandbagged. GM will now always be known as the company that left an unprecedented amount of its employees out to pasture, oh yeah I almost forgot that everyone sees them (with these alarming numbers) as the largest ever company failure. Nice work guys! I may only be a college student, but it doesn’t take too much of a genius to tell how messed up this situation is
http://seekingalpha.com/article/140417-40-000-jobs-lost-as-gm-becomes-biggest-ever-u-s-company-failure
http://247wallst.com/2009/05/15/gm-gm-dealer-closings-another-100000-jobs-lost/
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hzJ6l3NJeV0Fmp6mjz25GNJ89AagD9B22KU00
While I sympathize with your situation, I think your anger at Penske is misplaced. They didn't drive GM into the ground and they were under no obligation to purchase Saturn and bail out the employees. Their obligation is to do a deal that works for them and if they couldn't make that happen, well, that's the way it goes sometimes. Penske has a history of running very successful businesses and it's clear they didn't think the Saturn deal was going to meet their requirements.
I think your anger would better be directed at the unions and auto manufacturers that created the unsustainable compensation packages that put American cars at a price disadvantage with their foreign competitors. In order to cut costs American cars lost quality and were deemed less reliable than the Japanese or German brands. They've been in a death spiral for years.
I will be sad to see saturn go. They finally started to come out with some stylish body styles instead of the old sl series.
pontiac is gone.
buick is gone.
saturn is on its way out.
what next GM hopefully not but it doesn't look good
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