GM kills Saturn after Penske ends deal. Obama Motors announces "Yugo" rebirth.

No, there ain't no damned Yugo.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/30/news/companies/penske_saturn/?po
stversion=2009093019

Auto dealer terminates agreement with General Motors, citing
concerns about supplies of the vehicle after GM stops producing
Saturns.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Car dealership operator Penske
Automotive Group announced on Wednesday that it has cancelled
plans to acquire General Motors' Saturn unit. As a result, GM
said it will wind down the brand and dealer network, potentially
putting 13,000 Saturn dealership jobs at risk.

The announcement comes nearly four months after Penske agreed to
buy the rights to the 19-year old brand from GM when the
automaker was in bankruptcy.

As part of the deal, GM would have continued making Saturn's
three best-selling models -- the Aura sedan, as well as the Vue
and Outlook cross-over SUVs -- for the rest of this year and
next. Penske, which is an auto distributor and not a
manufacturer, would have sold the cars on behalf of GM. Penske
said it would find another third-party manufacturer to make new
Saturns in 2011.

But negotiations with another, unnamed manufacturer fell through
after an agreement was rejected by that manufacturer's board,
according to Penske. According to a report in the Wall Street
Journal, the manufacturer in question is Renault.

"Without that agreement, the company has determined that the
risks and uncertainties related to the availability of future
products prohibit the company from moving forward with this
transaction," the company said in a statement.

End of a brand
As a result, GM said it would begin to wind down the brand and
its roughly 350 dealerships nationwide. Penske's deal with GM
was expected to be completed in October.

"Today's disappointing news comes at a time when we'd hoped for
a successful launch of the Saturn brand into a new chapter,"
said GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson in a statement. "We will
be working closely with our dealers to ensure Saturn customers
are cared for as we transition them to other GM dealers in the
months ahead."

A spokesman for GM said the broken negotiations with Penske
would have "no anticipated impact" on plant closures or job
losses.

GM makes Saturns at plants in Fairfax, Kan., Lansing Mich. and
Ramos, Mexico, all of which also make other GM brands, so GM
doesn't expect that Saturn's closure will affect employment
levels at those plants.

"In all three cases where [Saturn] products are produced, there
are other products, and GM will shift resources to those," said
the company spokesman.

The automaker said Saturn owners will still be able to have
their cars serviced at GM dealerships after Saturn is shuttered.

A tough job
Some experts were skeptical about the risks inherent to Penske's
deal with GM when it was first announced back in June. They
argued that Saturn had led the auto industry with customer
satisfaction, but that the brand sold poorly because the
underlying car wasn't great.

As a result, auto industry experts said Penske had its work cut
out for it in finding a manufacturer who could make a great car
for the Saturn brand.

"The Saturn dealership network represented a unique opportunity
for Penske," said Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of Edmunds.com. "The risk
was sourcing product and that proved to be too much to overcome
to complete the deal."

Penske (PAG, Fortune 500) is owned by former race car driver
Roger Penske, who owns NASCAR and IndyCar racing teams and
distributes Daimler AG's Smart cars in the United States.

Shares of the auto dealer fell 10% after hours.

 

I remember the Yugo. A real people's car. It took four people to
push it around.

-Al-

 

I'm sure Opel is listening.

 

I agree, it was a unique opportunity at Penske- to lose a lot of
dough; I think that that late halt to negotiations was the plot as
there was no public warning or indications that that might happen- a
deal was always "expected to be finalized soon"-however, a foriegn
maker might want to buy the brand at a fire-sale price to gain
distribution into north america> and who has money right now ? and who
would like but can't get into the north american or european market
because aspects of their technology is lacking ?

 

What's really amazing is how Obama has brought out the sore loser in
so many people. I'm seeing stupid little digs like the one in the
subject line in message fora all over the Internet. The level of
bitterness is unreal!

The election is over, and Obama is our President now. You losers need
to get over it and move on with your lives.

 

I would also add, if conservatives don't like Obama, they can always
put forward a viable candidate to oppose him. You know, someone
articulate, intelligent, and not a religious right nutbar.

nate

 

I believe they would like to do that, but BO is getting into their lives in
ways no one imagined, when he was campaigning.

The problem seem to be they were not really listening to what he was
actually saying during the campaigning. The things he is screwing with
were the things he TOLD them he was going to "change," but few ever thought
they would be such terrible changes.

 

Not too worry, there will be plenty of good Republican that will be elected
to the House and Senate in 2010 is current poles are correct. Particularly
if the goofy Dims pass cap and trade and the currently healthcare reform,
that will cost everybody more money for a government run system. LOL

I would also add, if conservatives don't like Obama, they can always
put forward a viable candidate to oppose him. You know, someone
articulate, intelligent, and not a religious right nutbar.

nate

 

Actually the amount of stupid little digs appears to be far less
than when shrub was in office now.

'our president now'.... it's terms like that I find irritating. A
president should be just some guy who handles the simple business of a
simple government. Now if only the government would just let everyone do
with their lives as they pleased, then maybe nobody would care who the
president was (as it should be). Instead the president gets to try to
take ever more power to interfere and run our lives. That's the problem.
That's why people get so emotionally wrapped up in it.

What I find amusing is how so many people who considered Ron Paul a
crackpot are now trying to sound all libertarian. (their warmongering
still gives their true nature away in most cases) I guess that's always
true of the management team that's out of power at the moment. They get
all warm and fuzzy about people's rights. Then they get in power and
it's 'rights? what rights?'. Democrats were all for keeping the
government from spying on us and against the wars until they got power
agian. Now the spying is okay and they are trying to get a war started
with Iran with the same sort of BS and spin shrub used with Iraq.

 

You mean ways idiots didn't imagine.

Obama is following along pretty much as I thought he would. He's
maintained the power of the executive and is working to expand it. He's
kept all the major shrub policies intact and working to expand some of
them. His health care reform is the creation of a cartel to better the
profits of the insider corporations just as anything else done before
him. In the model of FDR he's had resources destroyed to prop up prices
(cash for clunkers). The list goes on, but he's working pretty much as I
thought he would. Not that McInsane would have done any differently.
Perhaps McInsane would have war with Iran by now but O's working on
that by trying to trump up non-issues.

Just us crackpots, paranoids, and others dismissed as nutcases were
saying what 'change' really was. Looks like the loonies were right
again.

 

Wir sind die Jungs von der Opel-Gang,
wir haben alle abgehängt.
Wir sind die Jungs von der Opel-Gang,
wir haben alle abgehängt.
Opel-Gang!

 

I would also add, if conservatives don't like Obama, they can always
put forward a viable candidate to oppose him. You know, someone
articulate, intelligent, and not a religious right nutbar.

nate

**
Well said... I dont particularly like the Obama regime's trends and tactics,
but McCain stood there like a puppet, saying nothing, no ideas, no light
behind his eyes.

I really dont care much for the two party system. I like multiparty
systems,
coalitions.

 

Which is what McCain would have been had he been elected president - a
puppet with that religious nutjob palin pulling the strings; and palin
is really nothing more than george w bush with a bush...

 

What were the Penske people thinking in the first place? If Pontiac and
Olds didn't have any value how could the Saturn brand have any? At least
Pontiac and Oldsmobile had history, Saturn didn't. Saturn was a creation
of GM's dysfunctional management, it just reminded people how badly
fucked GM was. The Penske name could be used to market performance cars,
but there wasn't anything in Saturn's lineup that remotely resembled a
performance car. They were insane for even thinking about this deal, I'm
sure they regretted making the original offer in the first place and
they've been looking for a way out ever since.

 

So you just fabricated the mention of Obama, right? In other words,
you lied.

 

Are those barber poles? Magnetic poles?

Those "poles" show people want health care reform and want a
government option.

 

Like laws that allow detention without charges or a trial? Let the
FBI demand from a library a list of books you've checked out? Let the
gov't listen in on your phone calls without a warrant?

Uh, who was it who labelled Iran part of the "axis of evil?" Didn't
his name start with "B" and end with "H"?

 

YA' right LOL

Are those barber poles? Magnetic poles?

Those "poles" show people want health care reform and want a
government option.

 

And the big O has embraced that sort of thing as have most of his
followers since the election... well those followers who don't just
ignore it because they trust 'their guy'.

I don't get hung up on the silly words our dear leaders use. the big O
doesn't appear to have any more problem with imperial behavior than GW
did.

 

Uh, who was it who labelled Iran part of the "axis of evil?" Didn't
his name start with "B" and end with "H"?

****
Er, might that be the same Iran that has threatened to wipe Israel off
the map, and has been caught with an illegal fuel enrichment facility
at Gom??