SaturnFans.com Links

Craig McEwen from INFORUM: A preliminary agreement between General Motors and Penske Automotive Group to buy Saturn has put a lot of people at ease, said Andy Boen, owner of the Fargo Saturn dealership. On June 5, GM said it had agreed to sell Saturn to Penske Automotive Group, one of the nation's largest automobile dealers and owned by famous race car driver Roger Penske. "I think Penske’s going to finish up the deal with General Motors by the third quarter of this year," Boen said. Nobody kn...

Edward Lapham from Automotive News: Bob Maguire has always seemed sensible and reasonable. The former chairman of NADA is a family man, a proud patriot and has been a loyal second-generation General Motors dealer in Bordentown, NJ, for decades. So it jolted me when I got a call from Maguire telling me that he and all Saturn dealers are being betrayed by GM's leadership. In a tone of voice that sounded as if he were back on active duty in the Marines, Maguire told me GM is starving its Saturn dea...

Justin Hyde from the Detroit Free Press: Telesto Ventures said it would not build vehicles and would only keep a skeletal design crew on hand to adapt models from other automakers to a Saturn look. It also said it would focus future models on fuel-efficient and electric vehicles from other automakers. While such a business model doesn't exist today, Telesto's backers say the global overcapacity among automakers and the growing number of start-up firms in China and elsewhere would give the reform...

Heather Stauffer from the Sentinel: John Sutliff's family has had a good run with Saturn, and he said Monday that even news General Motors is closing down the brand won't entirely change that. Sutliff said Saturn was "wildly successful" in central Pennsylvania, with the five area dealerships delivering more than 48,000 new Saturns since 1991. And year after year, he said, Sutliff consistently ranked in the top five of Saturn dealers nationwide in terms of new car sales volume. In addition to the...

Don Hammonds from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: When Rikki Kirchner of Santa Clarita, Calif., heard that Saturn was going out of business, she marched out to her Saturn Astra and ripped the General Motors emblems right off the car. "I know a guy who did that too. Heck, Saturn's an orphan right now, and it's a sad day," she said. "When I heard that Roger Penske was buying it, I danced around my office. Me and some other Saturn owners were giving each other high fives, we were so happy. Now, when I...

Robert Snell from the Detroit News: Saturn dealers nationwide have received new sales and service agreements from Roger Penske, a sign the auto icon is close to finalizing a deal for the castoff General Motors brand. The two-year agreements, which are subject to completion of a deal for Saturn, were sent to about 340 U.S. dealers, who had until Sept. 11 to sign and return them. The agreements have one-year automatic renewals if dealers meet certain conditions. There are no major changes from dea...

Gregory Jackson turned on his television shortly after 5pm Wednesday and was surprised to find out that what appeared to be an imminent sale of the Saturn brand to businessman and racing legend Roger Penske had collapsed. "I am hoping that somehow Penske pulls this thing back together," said Jackson, owner of Prestige Automotive, a St. Clair Shores-based company that has three Saturn dealerships in Jacksonville, Florida. "I, as well as all the 357 Saturn dealers across the country, either need h...

Jamie LaReau from Automotive News: Late this week, Saturn dealers likely will get a narrowed-down list of options for the troubled General Motors brand. Last week, GM marketing chief Mark LaNeve said those options include "everything from a new dualing pattern to a spinoff to a partnership to an outright sale." In a two-day meeting late last week, GM and members of the Saturn Franchise Operations Team narrowed the options. The automaker and franchise team will refine those options and tell Satur...

Steve Manning from the Associated Press via MSNBC: Charlie Eickmeyer says he was a fan of Saturn vehicles years before he was able to drive. Today he's in shock. So were employees at Day Automotive Group in Pittsburgh when they read the news online that a deal to rescue Saturn had fallen through. And Mike Martin is left wondering how he can move the Saturns left on his lot or what to do with the employees at his Manassas, Va. dealership now that the brand is apparently doomed. "It seemed like th...

Steve Manning from the Associated Press via MSNBC: Charlie Eickmeyer says he was a fan of Saturn vehicles years before he was able to drive. Today he's in shock. "It seemed like the deal was going through," said Eickmeyer, 34, who started following Saturn when he was 10 years old and now runs a Web site for enthusiasts of the brand. "I was really excited about the next chapter in Saturn's history." The chapter was supposed to be a future under former race car driver Roger Penske with the novel a...

Angus MacKenzie from Motor Trend: Auto plants cost staggering amounts of money to build and to run. And in an era where the manufacturing process no longer delivers major differentiators in terms of the finished product - all vehicles have to meet similar safety and fuel economy mandates, and the cost and quality differences between the best and the worst are getting smaller all the time - that's money many auto industry insiders wished they no longer had to spend. Which is why Roger Penske's Sa...

Seth Livingstone from USA Today: The next step is to close the transaction, which we hope to do at the end of the third quarter. We'll be dealing with GM on future product. Then we have the opportunity to source product from around the world as we go into future years. First, we're putting an organization together and closing the transaction. The great news is that we have 350 dealerships that will be alive and well and will not have to be shut down. I think that's a real by-product of this. For...

G. Chambers Williams III San Antonio Express-News by way of the Akron Beacon Journal: Don't write the obituary for Saturn just yet. Plans are under way to spin the brand off into an independent distribution company, which then would contract with other automakers to build the vehicles. Saturn's dealers and GM managers say any plan they decide on would maintain the dealer network — but eventually field a new line of non-GM vehicles. GM has said that it won't provide vehicles to Saturn dealers b...

Allan Sloan from the Washington Post: Until last week I had been one of General Motors' most reliable customers for more than 15 years. But my relationship with GM ended the very day the company announced that it was closing its Saturn operation — something I learned when I came home from trading in my 2003 Saturn Vue for a new, spiffy 2010 SUV with an Asian nameplate. However, my decision to abandon GM had been made months earlier, after GM made it clear that it was going to drop Saturn. That...

In a story about the dubious future of the Saturn brand, Chrissie Thompson from Automotive News talked to George Nahas, owner of two Saturn stores in Alabama and Florida. Nahas "owned only an Oldsmobile dealership when General Motors announced in 2000 that it would kill the brand. So he moved on - to Saturn," she writes. Now Nahas "again faces the possibility that the struggling automaker will take away his livelihood. 'I feel violated,' Nahas said. 'Just a couple of weeks ago they were telling ...