Thinx and others, most customers won’t pay more for a Chevrolet if you call it a Pontiac, Buick, or GMC. They’re just Chevys with a different set of dealers. The honest thing would be to pull the plug on Pontiac/Buick/GMC if dealer lawsuit costs were not a problem.

Cadillac is a real not just a Chevy brand in GM. I like the idea of moving the Corvette to Cadillac dealers, but there are more important issues to worry about right now.

Saab and Saturn are effectively part of Opel. If GM sells Opel, maybe they can throw in Saab and Saturn brands with the deal like free floor mats with a new car purchase.

Pontiac and others – Get GM into Ch.11 and kill Pontiac as a division.

Chevy – turn into a bargain basement “new Chevy” brand – trendy sub-20K XB type cars. Pontiac maybe comes back as a tuner-badge for Chevy.

Buick – takes on the conservative middle-range – 18K-40K.

Cadillac – gets the top-end – 35K and above – only sedans, rebuild the image without the hideous Escalade. Offer superior quality, technology and luxury at value pricing – prepare to rebuild reputation over a decade. It is a par-five hole, needs dedication and focus – a hole-in-one strategy won’t work.

Corvette – becomes its own brand, with a two or three car range – imported Opel Speedster, a Camaro and a super-Corvette.

GMC – becomes the truck brand, producing badge engineered SUV versions for Chevy and Buick.

Saab – Sell.

Saturn – hybrid and electric versions of select “new Chevy” models. The brand had a reputation for bold-ish innovative thinking – try to revive and nurture it. Alternatively, offer Saturn and its dealer network as a sweetener to whoever buys Saab.

I think “Who Will Walk Away With Saturn, Saab, Pontiac, Hummer?” should be replaced with:
WHY WOULD ANYONE Walk Away With Saturn, Saab, Pontiac, Hummer?

However, Oldsmobile had a huge percentage of their sales going to fleets (>50% if I remember correctly) and they had the fewest stand-alone dealers, so while it was still expensive to terminate franchise agreements it was cheaper than it would have been with other divisions.

Similarly, Pontiac seems to be lost with consumers. What does it stand for? They have many of the exact same products as Chevy (Cobalt/G3, Torrent/whatever Chevy calls their small SUV). They do have the G8 but it’s a lone wolf in that lineup of badge-engineered mediocrity.

And, more importantly, thanks to GM’s dealer reorganization, has very few stand-alone dealers to pay off.

There should be a library of books written about how GM screwed up on Saturn but their dealer network is still a model for how to establish a distribution network (if you must use franchisees). I’m still not sure if this is a reason to keep them when GM simply can’t afford to design and market so many overlapping products, but at least it’s something.

I like Saabs and am embarrassed to admit that I’ve actually owned a couple over the years (and lost a fortune on both of them, by the way). They make interesting cars for masochistic gearheads but have never sold in volume, have horrendous resale value, and have almost zero brand presence in the U.S. Oh, and they tend to sell or lease at tremendous discounts because Saab leaders in the U.S. still harbor the fantasy that they can charge as much as BMW on their stickers. Saab probably could have had a future as a niche player with fuel-efficient luxury cars but they haven’t even had that to brag about in years. Their small turbocharged engines have promised the power of a 6 with the fuel efficiency of a 4 but never really delivered either. They could have been an ideal candidate to try out hybrid-electric technology for GM but Smith/Wagoner and the rest of them decided to buy Hummer instead of continuing the development started by the EV1 program (yes, there were hybrid prototypes in the works even back then).

Sadly, I just can’t see the value of Saab to any potential buyer. As lost as Jaguar may have been over the years, they can at least point to their heritage with racing, the E-types, XKs, and other iconic cars as the basis for a prestige brand. How many contemporary car buyers even know what a 99 or Sonett are? And, even if they did, would these be the basis for a luxury brand? GM has never made money on Saab and I don’t think anyone ever will. And I’m a fan.

Hummer should be an expensive write-off and a future Harvard Business School case study, but other than that, it should be shut down and forgotten. Maybe my perspective is screwed-up by living in California as long as I have, but I think the market for overweight and overly conspicuous SUVs is dead even with gas prices back down as they are today. That trend was fueled by poorly written CAFE standards, expired tax loopholes, MTV and SEMA. Kids interested in pimping their rides are now focused on Hybrids and veggie oil and SEMA jumped the shark when their show started focusing on 24″ wheels with real $100 bills glued on under the clearcoat (I kid you now, they had them there a couple of years ago).

surprisingly, Buick is very successful in China

There is nothing surprising about this. Mao and Deng Xiaoping cruised around exclusively in Buicks, and the Chinese are not soon to forget the stylings of their dictators.

If GM’s future is to be anything other than Organ Donor, it will take a massive infusion of cash and a drastic, back-to-basics reorganization. Start all over again, with a focus on quality, design and efficiency. Develop one or two really good platforms that could support five or six different models under the Chevrolet and Cadillac brands, and then… oh, wait a minute. This is GM we’re talking about. Never mind.

I don’t see how Saturn or Pontiac would survive without GM, though. They’re all joined at the hip. And if nobody bought Hummer by now…

* Keep Chevy and Cadillac only.
* Ax Pontiac
* Ax Saturn
* Ax Buick in the US and sell to SAIC in China. Enclave and EpII-based car go to Cadillac. Comfort is still important to Cad buyers.
* Sell Saab to anyone with cash stupid or egotistical enough to take it.
* Reposition GMC for Medium Trucks only and prepare to spin this business off. Maybe Isuzu would be interested.
* Ax HUMMER but sell the brand name for licensing purposes like Chrysler does with Jeep. Any number of sporting equipment or retail apparel companies could be potential buyers.

*Grow the GOODWRENCH brand by offering franchises to former Pontiac/Buick/GMC/Saturn/HUMMER dealers. GOODWRENCH SERVICE outlets would offer repair, maintenance, accessories for ALL MAKES and sell “certified” used cars. Used cars and service should do well in bad economic times. This could be a growth business (for a change!) for GM.

If GM splits from Opel, these two are effectively Opel’s presence in North America. Think about it:
* GM ships over Chevrolet to compete with Opel on the low, and Cadillac to compete with Saab on the high.
* Opel owns most of GM’s worthwhile engineering, and has little need of GM-DAT, Holden or GMNA’s products
* GMNA is actively moving away from Opel’s work. A lot of the NA product is coming from GM-DAT.
* GM has been effectively supporting it’s North American blunders on the back of Opel and it’s Chinese partners.

At some point, Opel’s going to get sick of the lopsided treatment they’re receiving and split, probably five minutes after GM files for Chapter 11. An independent Opel/Saab has more than a fighting chance. GMNA can crank out GMT900s, W- and G-Bodies while importing bottom-feeders from GM-DAT and engage in the occasional platform sharing with Opel, but I’d kiss the formal ownership goodbye.

Once this happens, Saab and Saturn become, should Opel choose, an American dealer network.

Pontiac

No one. They’re the next Plymouth or Oldsmobile, if Mercury doesn’t beat them to the punch. There’s no point to Pontiac, unless, say, Holden is cut loose in the same fashion as Opel probably will be.

Hummer

I’m not sure. If times were better I’m sure there would have been any number of buyers, but now, I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t try to buy Jeep from Cerberus first.

As a brand, Saab is done. All of their platforms are old. Nothing worth saving.

Yes, why does Detroit deserve money now? When they had plenty of it back in the 1990’s they wasted it adding these brands to their already bloated portfolio of marques.

I’d say you could split that up into groups, though:

1. Personal/Private cars

2. Transport/Haul

3. Vanity LuxuryBrand Purchases due to temporary insanity in the boardroom.

OK, in my humble opinion …
GM should take the VW group model (pre porsche).
2 brands, Chevrolet and Cadillac. Chevy = VW,
Caddy = Audi. That’s the solution Mr. Wagoner.

Pre-Porsche VW had 10 brands, not 2

Audi
Bentley
Bugatti
Lamborghini
SEAT
Škoda
Volkswagen Cars
Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles
MAN
Scania

1) Ford has sold Aston Martin to Kuwaiti investors
2) And they sold Jag and LR to Tata
3) GM got out of Suzuki
4) Ford has divested itself of some Mazda
5) Porsche has jumped into Volkswagen
6) GM is looking for a buyer for Hummer
7) And by now, generally, everything’s up on the auction block.

And guess what: Toyota, Honda, GM, Volkswagen, BMW and just about everybody else have long been building cars in China. It started more than 20 years ago ….

http://www.hifisentralen.no/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=29059.0;attach=58545;image

There is massive overproduction of cars in the world, and the chart kind of explains what a mess it’s all become. GM’s brands would be worth a lot more if this wasn’t the case, and if the company wasn’t insolvent.

Consumers just want a practical or fun car, and couldn’t care less about the game of musical chairs these companies have been playing.

The thinking – Saab/Volvo – has an underlying logic.

But both brands are a hodge podge of platform and component universals from GM and Ford. If Saab had to develop a platform of its own, from scratch, instead of using the ones they get access to from GM, that would be a strain as they were reconstituting.

Alfa is today’s Saab, Saab is Opel. Take Opel out of Saab, and you’re left with paper and some memories.

And I wonder what the deal btw Saab Holding and GM looks like. According to reports in Sweden, now that it’s all falling apart, the brand name Saab is owned by the aircraft and weapons manufacturer SAAB, and GM has the right to manufacture cars under the name, but not the transaction rights to the name itself.
Wonder if Saab’s holding company can actually sell the name to another car manufacturer, if GM stops making cars under the brand …

You cannot determine differences between Pontiac, Saab and Hummer? Ok…

That’s not a valid point.
The issue is one of “which are the real, transactionable assets, that would bring value to GM in a sale?”

Go into the cars, and you’ll find a lot of shared components, in some instances enough to have you begin laughing. In other words, the brand differences are often paper only.

Some commenters in the thread posit that furriners would want to buy the GM dealerships – well, they better sit down with the dealers, then, because GM doesn’t own those dealerships.

GM owns (has borrowed to the hilt on) its plants, its design facilities, and its “brands.”

But those brands are watered out shells of what they once were, and that makes it a valid question to ask: what exactly would GM be selling?

This is the curse of platform sharing and “cross-platform” synergies – the essential differences of the brands have been watered out.”

You cannot determine differences between Pontiac, Saab and Hummer? Ok…

Saab 9-1: Small, fun, 3-door FWD 2.0L, priced in the high teens
Saab 9-3: Either a 3 or 5-door, FWD 2.0L base, 2.3L turbocharged “Turbo” sporty model, priced in the lower twenties
Saab 9-5: Midsized 4-door sedan, FWD 2.3L turbo base, V6 and AWD options, priced mid-twenties to $30k or so
Volvo XY: 4-door midsize built on the 9-5 platform (though easily distinguishable, not just badgineered), V6 standard, AWD option, buncha features you can’t get with the Saab models, priced in the mid thirties
Volvo XY+Z: Full-size 4-door, RWD platform, V6 standard, V8 option (AWD option on the V6), sport version available, priced low forties and up
Volvo XCUV: Your typical luxury CUV, with Volvo’s safety twist, V6 AWD standard, priced in the high thirties

You don’t really have to read all that crap (too late), but the point is my underlying philosophy for a proper automotive brand: overlap. At the extreme end of the overlap concept you have problems like badge-engineering, which are bad for obvious reasons. But properly implemented overlap can be successful I think. The high end of the lowest model overlaps in slight ways (engine options mostly) with the lower end of the next model up, whose high end overlaps slightly with the next model up, etc. It could lead to the same “aspirational” effect that GM had back in its heyday — that is, a 9-1 owner would aspire to own a 9-3, whose owner would aspire to own a 9-5, whose owner would aspire to own a Volvo, etc. It creates a natural heirarchy that keeps owners loyal to the brand. Blah blah…

None of that has much of anything to do with this post, but I was thinkin it regardless. I guess I’d just really like to see Saab and Volvo come out of this whole ordeal in a positive way.

I truly think that the only answer lies in closing the big shiny doors and restructuring (separately) Caddy, Chevy, Opel and Holden to sink or swim on their own. If their vehicles don’t reach the concept of true “brand” without the false (obviously) support of the General, then there won’t be enough of an investment pool out there to keep them in the water.

If the US wants to keep the Dream Castles that are the factories alive then we have to actually nationalize them and retool to produce the stuff we really need here now – wind turbines, maybe construction equipment toward rebuilding our infrastructure- maybe true R&D toward battery technology. Sadly with oil cheap now the impetus is going to be away from all that.

I love cars but there are plenty out there. GM was always a myth created by Will Durant and with the growth of the quarterly profit concept it totally lost its way – not 20 but nearly 60 years ago. The individual car companies have been gone since then and in the long run there is no escaping ennui.