Autoline After Hours with John McElroy: Demise of Saturn Edition
On this week's Autoline After Hours, John McElroy, Peter "Autoextremist" DeLorenzo and BusinessWeek's David Welch are joined by Erich Merkle, President of Autoconomy, to discuss the week that was in the world of automobiles. We suspect a large part of the discussion will center on the imminent demise of Saturn after Penske pulled out of its deal with General Motors to take over the ailing brand and its considerable dealer network. Make the jump to get in on the insider conversation, and be sure to posit your own thoughts in the chat window below the video.Free Videos by Ustream.TV
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
roadkillrob 8:17PM (10/01/2009)
Another GM brand that won't be missed much - they had actually progressed to making a few decent vehicles, but having 27 different brands making basically the same cars was half the problem with GM to begin with! GM needs to loose all the brands, rebrand itself as GM, one brand, take 10 of their best vehicles and sell them with limited variations (like 2 trim levels and 3 or 4 option packages each).
They have gone bankrupt and still barely get it!
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Solstice 10:12PM (10/01/2009)
One brand is too few. After all, what self respecting Rapper/CEO/Politician/Rich-Jerkoff is going to "roll" in their Yukon or Malibu?
GM's primary brands should be Chevy (vs. Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, etc) and Cadillac (vs Lincoln, Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, etc). Secondary brands could be Pontiac (aside from the whole being dead thing) or Holden to tackle "youth" and performance (REAL performance, please) stuff if they think they can turn a profit... kind of like Scion if Scion didn't miss the mark. Oh and GMC can do the heavy duty, commercial, fleet, junk as long as its not advertised to the general public.
Buick can go sit in the corner with Olds. Daewoo can do it's "emerging markets" thing if it has to.
Tada. GM made to be like everyone else.
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Matt 10:17PM (10/01/2009)
God that DeLorenzo guy is a hack.
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Zerk 12:00AM (10/02/2009)
Toyota is on it's third generation full size truck, Nissan is on it's first. There has not been time for Nissan to fail at full size truck.
What a pompous ass.
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Zerk 12:04AM (10/02/2009)
Chevrolet and Cadillac and nothing else or Chevrolet and Cadillac as separate channels and Pontiac-Buick-GMC as the third channel. With no Pontiac there is no reason for Buick and GMC to exist. It is like Neopolitan ice cream with only two flavors or a triangle with only two sides.
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xcrunk 7:37AM (10/02/2009)
McElroy, I've missed your show on SpeedTV. One day I noticed my TiVo wasn't recording anymore, so I figured your show was not picked up by Speed.
Anyways, just got hooked onto the podcast and am loving it. GREAT SHOW. Same format as the TV show and as usual, very informative and insightful.
As far as Saturn is concerned, GM blew it. They had the perfect opportunity to create a real import killer with the Saturn brand. And with the EV1, they had the perfect opportunity to make Saturn into the "green" brand it should have been. But once again, the parent company, GM, just didn't know what to do with it and fumbled the brand.
Good job GM.
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tanooki2003 8:32AM (10/02/2009)
tsk tsk GM
Such a shame. They had all of the opportunity and resources, but unfortunately due to their poor, or lack of, management they yet again have messed up another brand.
Great job GM.
And now I will continue to look at the hopeful Ford NA and give them my thumbs up.
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