GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz: Saturn Must Die
Now that GM’s Car Czar is slinking off into the sunset before his bankruptcy-proof pension becomes a bone of contention (“I’ll have to check with my accountant about that”), the man of Maximum is shooting off his mouth in the great Lutzian style. “My personal favorite would be to see Saturn survive and prosper,” GM’s vice chairman told Automotive News [sub], “But frankly, the reality is that that is probably not going to be the outcome.” Does this sound a bit like finding out you were dumped via a batch e-mail? AN somehow managed to find a doomed Saturn dealer (as they all are, now) who didn’t use expletives when hearing of the multimillion-dollars-per-year executive’s casual execution of the Rethink brand. “That really seals our fate,” said Lasser, owner of Saturn of Denville, Saturn of Mount Olive and Saturn of Livingston. “I think they knew this fact months ago, and they never shared it with us.” So who killed the non-electrifying cars?
Bob says . . . [Ed. paraphrasing?] “hell if I know.”
“We spent a huge bundle of money in giving Saturn an absolutely no-excuses product lineup, top to bottom. They had a better and fresher lineup than any GM division, and the sales just never materialized . . .
Lutz doesn’t fault dealers: “We have some very excellent Saturn dealers who’ve made a commitment to the brand.”
Lutz said he isn’t sure why Saturn has not done better.
“The fact is,” he said, “we don’t have the time or the resources to take 10 years to figure it out and possibly turn it around.”
That’s our Bob! Non-commital waffling and “it wazzunt me” accountability all the way to the end. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. The media may love the Czar, but history will not be kind to this man. Meanwhile, Saturn dealers get the shaft.
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RF, I think you are to blame (or to thank!) for MB retiring now. That accountant quote was the best ever, and apparently he did check with his accountant and realized he had better get with it while he still could. I honestly believe he never thought about it until you brought it up.
"When something unique in the Astra finally came along, they charged too much and didn’t offer the higher-spec powertrains." Hear, hear! I drove one. I loved it. I even considered the 24-hour clock as a plus. My wife hated it, but I didn't care. I was ready to buy it, but couldn't get past three issues: - A little too slow - A little too expensive - No iPod support (not even an audio jack) Then I stumbled across the Nissan Versa, which was just as slow, but a bit cheaper and came with an audio jack *and* an iPod connection. So I bought that.