looks like the mutant offspring of a Olds 88 and a Lincoln town car.

BPG needs to go; Buick has one foot in the grave. Saturn sold cars to people who don’t like cars and making it the Kermit brand of GM won’t work as merely sticking a hybrid engine in an existing body shell isn’t green enough.

Hummer could become GMs Jeep and sells Saab, just the one model called the 900 has a hatch, 4wd and a turbo, goes after the STi and the lancer

It should not be news to anyone watching the auto industry that GM has too many brands, models and dealers chasing too few customers.

GM is organizing 8 Brands in 4 Divisions. http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/general-motors-death-watch-173-eight-into-four-does-not-go/comment-page-3/

thetruthaboutcars.com above does a great job explaining the reorganization.

Divisions 4/08 Sales * Models CR **
Recommended

Cadillac, Hummer, Saab 18k 11 4
Buick, Pontiac, GMC 68k 14 1
Chevy 157k 14 4
Saturn 17k 5 2
Total 260k 44 11

Toyota, Lexus, Scion 217k 27 17

*http://www.autoblog.com/2008/05/01/by-the-numbers-april-2008/

**2008 Consumer Reports, Annual Auto Issue, April 2008

Like I said, too many divisions, brands and models chasing too many customers. Toyota sells about the same vehicles as GM with 3 divisions and about 1,700 dealers compared to about 6,500 GM dealers.

WARD’S 10 Best Selling U.S. Cars and Trucks
4 Months 2008
Cars Trucks
1 Camry 147,018 F Series 192,951
2 Accord 122,430 Silverado 160,010
3 Civic 111,695 Ram Pickup 93,068
4 Corolla/Matrix 99,482 CR-V 69,058
5 Altima 99,037 Escape 59,299
6 Impala 98,478 Sierra 57,403
7 Focus 72,920 Tacoma 55,363
8 Cobalt 66,660 Tundra 54,134
9 Prius 64,664 Econoline 49,196
10 Malibu 59,133 Caravan 47,936
Source: Ward’s AutoInfoBank
©Copyright 2008, Ward’s Automotive Group,
a division of Penton Media Inc.
Redistribution prohibited.
http://wardsauto.com/keydata/USSalesSummary0804/

When you look at top Ten best selling model through April 2008, Chevy and GMC are winners, but all GMC models are clones except Acadia.

Summary:

GM should consider going to 3 Divisions, Chevy, Cadillac and Pontiac. Fold GMC into Chevy and eliminate the clones. This the perfect time to eliminate GMC because their entire line of trucks are not desired by buyers . All Buick clones go bye bye. Pontiac is kept because of its sporty reputation. Saturn goes away. Cars that are recommended by Consumer Reports should be keep and folded into one of the three divisions. All clones should be consolidated into one world class car or truck, i.e. Malibu, Impala are the winners and Lucerne etc. is a loser.

Focus on the best sellers and the best quality cars and trucks and eliminate the rest in a hurry. Brutally get all dealers below 2,000 and support the hell out of them.

Tall Man
http://www.tallmanblog.com

The same bums are still the Chevrolet dealer, as well as Honda and Kia, and that’s why I am kind of two minds about moving to Honda. I love the idea of going to Honda cars – but this dealership? errrr. NO.

I had the same problem with my Honda Civic that I took to the dealership for a scheduled oil change. The dealership is a Toyota, Honda and Ford franchise. They did not clean up the oil that came out of the oil filter and when I got it home, there was an oil spot on my garage floor. I took it back and complained and they cleaned it up. There is a diverter that is used to divert the oil away from the car and they did not use it, instead letting it run onto the engine. It happened two other times and they eventually fixed the problem by not allowing a Ford mechanic to work on the oil changes.

Others I have talked to had the same experience, while those that took their cars to a dealership that was not contaminated with a dom2.8 service department did not have this problem.

IMO that would have been a brilliant move in the late 1960s before the various divisions were neutered. Now it is just about impossible as there aren’t really even divisions any more, just some marketing managers with fancy titles. Back in the day each division had it’s own factories, it’s own engines and a fiercely independent spirit. In the 1970s and 80s that all got “rationalized” away.

Of all the questionable divisions today the one which I think make the most sense to keep is GMC because it costs bupkiss to keep alive. It is to Chevy trucks as Mercurys are to Fords. Maybe Pontiac could be kept on life support with a similar nose-jobs-only engineering mantra. No way keeping Buick, Pontiac and Saturn makes sense. They are all after the same customers. WTF is up with making both the Sky and the Solstice?

I don’t think the swedes would want to work for a russian. Just say’n.

And actually, the standard four cylinder engine in the Eagle Premier (and I’ve never seen a single one) was the iron overhead valve lump four cylinder cut-down AMC six also used the the Jeep Wrangler.

I wonder what my local BPG dealer will do if they pull the plug? He also has the Saturn store, as well as Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep and Hyundai. I actually wrote to the owner and said – yeah, I’m a happy customer you must be aware that GM and Chrysler are on the ropes – what about bringing in a Mitsubishi franchise to fly wing to wing with Hyundai? (That may all he ends up with).

My father and I were both in the category of those who would cringe at the very thought of buying a Chevrolet. My father literally bought a GMC Suburban but would not consider a Chevrolet Suburban. I bought a Pontiac new in 1984, even knowing it was a badge engineered Chevette (hey, I was just out of college and had no money, give me a break!) The one Chevrolet I did buy had such terrible after-sale service at the Chevy dealer, that I swore of GM for ever. And I wrote them, and told them I was, and why. The same bums are still the Chevrolet dealer, as well as Honda and Kia, and that’s why I am kind of two minds about moving to Honda. I love the idea of going to Honda cars – but this dealership? errrr. NO.

People often buy GMCs and Pontiacs instead of Chevrolets (or other GM brands) because the dealers cut them a better deal on the same product (with a different grille/badge) or similar product than a Chevrolet dealer did.

These dealers practically eat each others lunch by discounting their products against one another, especially if they are within close proximity of each other.

Check yourself. Is your name Juniper? If not, why should we believe you when you say that anonymous authors are not to be trusted? If you are indeed named Juniper, you might want to make fun of Madonna for having to fake having only one name.

At any rate, I don’t put any more credibility in anyone in journalisms name anymore. That ship sailed years ago. The words speak for themselves.

That’s not a bad idea. And you’re right, the “tweeners” don’t have their own identity now, but if GM is reduced to Chevy/Caddy then those two will become indistinct.

But I’ve suggested essentially the same thing TomAnderson said: fold all the middle brands together into one. I don’t think I’d revive the Oldsmobile name, because it has too much baggage. My suggestion was to call the new tweener division simply GM, but maybe the Saturn name could work. As Robert Farago and others have pointed out, it’s still somewhat of a blank slate, so it’s got some potential. And if GM could focus all the advertising money from four or more brands on one, then maybe they could really build it up to something meaningful.

The Day After…

Would send this in as email, but seems more relevant here:

Can you assemble and sythesize for us all that is known about the collateral put up by Ford and GM for its various lines of credit obtained in recent years ?

The big question is what the world looks like the day AFTER a ‘big 2.8′ bankruptcy or implosion.

If Citibank, say, ends up with a whole plant in Mexico, can they, would they keep making the products ?

Can they sell them in the US ?

How would all this go down ?

Possible to ‘reconstruct’ the crash site, do a damage report before the crash, spin a few scenarios for us as a Death Watch ?

‘Hal Holbrook’ can help !

Pontiac is number 3 in sales, so once again we have the question – where do these customers go? And if they go to Chevy, why aren’t they already in a Chevy? Why don’t they go to the transplants?

I’ll have to repeat what I said yesterday in response to the Titanic editorial – I just don’t get keeping Chevy and Caddy. Caddy isn’t doing much better than Buick, unless you can tell me why the magic number at which noise turns into signal is somewhere between 185K and 214K. Saturn, Pontiac, and GMC each sell more than Caddy.

IMO, Caddy is often chosen for keeping because it fits popular branding concepts – something at the low end, something at the high end, stretch both to meet in the middle and the market is covered.
I think the end result is two brands which are indistinct from one another -at least in the middle of the market. If you don’t want the high end and low end product meeting each other, there’s a need for a “tweener” brand.

Again repeating from yesterday, Caddy is a microcosm of GM. Caddy makes luxury barges, sporty luxury cars, pickup trucks, SUVs, and has it’s V series to appeal to performance minded buyers. Caddy is also pricing it’s CTS too low.
So why keep this poor performing muddied confused brand, along with Chevy? I mean, if the goal is to focus, why keep the exteremely unfocused Caddy divison?

If I were taking the slash and burn approach to fixing GM I’d slash and burn all of it, except Chevy.

Slash and burn isn’t the way to go, imo. As someone said above, killing off divisions at least has to be done one at a time to avoid the sudden revenue loss. But I think GM only needs to kill a few brands. I’d keep Chevy, keep the BPG dealers -making GMCs a bit more luxurious than their Chevy cousins (noticeably), making Pontiac the performance division, and keeping Buick as near luxury. Saturn I’d kill. Caddy I’d keep as a direct competitor of Lexus. That’s the brand they need to emulate, and not the silly “F” cars. Saab and Hummer I’d kill. That would leave five divisons, but only 3 sales channels.

Olds was in the middle of Sloan’s division hierarchy, so sould it be a huge stretch (especially in the context of the scenario our anonymous contributor has presented as a very real possibility) to axe BPG, Saturn, Saab and Hummer and revive Olds with a mix of Opel and Holden products? For example:
-Opel/Saturn Astra -> Omega
-Opel Insignia/Saturn Aura -> Cutlass
-Holden Commodore/Pontiac G8 -> Eighty-Eight
-Holden Statesman -> Ninety-Eight

As long as the Cutlass and Omega didn’t step on Chevy’s toes and the Eighty-Eight and Ninety-Eight didn’t encroach on Caddy’s stuff, it could definitely work.
Will it ever happen? Doubtful, but a certain Japanese juggernaut appears (mostly) able to make the whole “cheap brand, midrange brand, and luxury brand” thing work…

1. Deep Throat is a real person.

2. TTAC has MANY sources within the industry who feed us tips anonymously, or point us in a certain direction.

3. This particular entry could also be labeled “informed speculation.” We were given a scenario by an expert. I checked its plausibility with some of our other “friends,” two of whom work for GM.

4. I understand if some of our readers find it unacceptable to call this a “rumor.” As in we’re starting one as opposed to reporting one. But I felt the information was important; and it fit somewhere between an editorial and complete left field-ism. (Certainly not a news item.)

I would also kill Saab (in North America; keep it in Europe probably) and Hummer (both have minimal and falling sales, with Saab being more minimal and Hummer being more falling). But killing BPG would be too much, and would spell the death of GM, because fixed costs can be spread over more sales if they continue to exist.

On the other hand: Buick IS dead as a doornail in the US, without some serious redefinition.

That and the fact that the “PRV” Peugot-Renault-Volvo joint venture V-6 was a reliability nightmare. Volvo lost a lot of customers over that fiasco. More trivia … the same engine powered the Delorean.