Saturn should be perfectly positioned for the market we're in right now. It has a full lineup of recently designed cars, including one of the best selling small vehicles in Europe. And yet, it's still under performing.

Is there any thought within GM as to how they might fix this?

It seems clear GM needs to do one of two things:

A) Launch a MAJOR ad campaign to trumpet Saturn's product and it's overall fuel efficiency. Is GM trying to answer the age old question of whether a tree fell in the woods if no one was there to hear it? It really amazes me every time I mention Saturn's new product and people react with complete bewilderment. A great number of Saturn's target buyers still think the brand sells plastic-bodied econocars. This is not a matter of buyer perception, mind you. People really don't know Saturn sells the products it does.

B) Give up and spread it's product among the other brands - Astra would surely sell in Chevrolet showrooms even if it were completely unchanged, and Aura would likely see sales gains packaged as a G6 (as it is the aging G6 sells a lot more briskly than the new Aura).

What GM cannot do is simply ignore these figures and continue to pour in the cream of their product crop into their smallest, least known brand.

I just hope the brand's performance does not make the suits think it's not worth investing in good product. You can't expect folks to buy something if they don't know it exists.

 

I sold Saturns for a little over a year (06-07) so I'll give my thoughts:

-Since I've left, it's good to see they have started to accept the GM card points, that was a major sore spot being we werent as integrated in GM as the other brands.

-The brand has a stigma, (plastic sided crappy integrity economy cars) People are shocked that they cost just as much as any other car.

-They have strayed from their routes: the Relay (POS) and now the Aura/ Outlook seal the deal that they are the same car just re-badged. People know that! Consumers choose a car based on looks a deal.

-The Malibu and Acadia look better!!! and in this tough economy= you can negotiate the price on them. Everyone's looking for a deal! Customers look at you funny trying to sell a $43k Outlook at MSRP, even though that is how they have always been.

As far as I know, Saturn has never turned a profit for GM. They made their mark being the squeeky clean division of car sales appealing to folks who "dont like cars" so that is another hurdle to jump over.

 

Poor advertising. Vue sells very well, but many people still don't know the Aura and Astra are out there.

On top of that Every car GM sells you can get at any other GM division. Astra is there only real exclusive product and it has to compete with the Vibe and more fuel efficient Cobalt.

The next Aura they better give something the Malibu doesn't have, like a diesel or AWD.

 

I see zero ads for Saturn... We have posters for Cobalts, other Chevrolets... Where's the poster for the Sky? The Aura? The Astra?

The Astra is a good car for the current state of gas prices... It's quite economic, and is great for city dwellers. Its only competition, it seems, is the new 3- and 5-door Rabbit. I regularly hear advertisements about VW on the radio, yet there's nothing about Saturn.

 

I'm not GM, but I thought it's worth mentioning that a lot of people I speak to avoid Saturn just because of their no-haggle pricing gimmick. It's not about the cars for them, it about the dealer-experience.
If you're not allowed to bargain, then it must mean you're getting ripped off, right?

But like many have said already, I see virtually NO ads for the brand. That's the ultimate weak point.

 

The Astra has always been intended to be pretty low volume - around 20,000 cars a year - at least until they can get them built in North America for the next generation. However, the Astra probably won't make that target. The biggest problems are low awareness, modest gas mileage and price. The Astra is a cool car, but to get one equipped the way I would want one you hit the mid 20s pretty easily. That's a very competitive price point. And if fuel economy is your main concern, the Cobalt XFE gets significantly better highway mileage (36 vs 32) and is a much cheaper car. The Cobalt is also significantly quicker than the Astra. I really want to like the Astra, but it would probably take 0% financing for 60 months before I'd really consider one. GM has no deals on them whatsoever right now. You can get an Aura for way less money.

 

I agree that their no-haggle up front pricing is a killer for most intelligent consumers... especially with the way car sales are right now. All of GM's other divisions are just about giving SUVs away right now but Saturn lacks the ability to adjust for supply/demand.

 

Why is everyone assuming that Saturn isn't doing exactly what GM is wanting it to do? You can't really compare G6 sales to Aura sales when Pontiac has far more dealers than Saturn does.

I have 3 Saturn dealers with in about 20 miles from my house. There are 10 Pontiac dealers within 20 miles. I live right in the middle of DFW.

Also, am I the only one that sees Saturn commercials? They had a huge Presidents day sale. They are advertising the Vue a lot. They had commercials with people coming into the lot, seeing the new line up, going back outside to make sure it was a Saturn dealership and coming back inside. The sales people saying, "yeah, we get that a lot."

I haven't seen any numbers on how much money Saturn makes/loses as a brand for GM. If anyone has a profit/loss breakdown by brand, I would be interested in seeing it.

I will say I haven't seen a single commercial for the Astra.


I also think the Aura looks better than the Malibu. Everyone has their own opinion of what looks good, but I know I am not the only one that feels that way. I am really not liking the new chevy face on products.

I think if Saturn loses the no haggle pricing gimmick, that they will do better, but how do we know that they are doing badly?

 

most of the dealer by me wont haggle to much on price its not even worth it and the cheaper the car the less they are willing to haggle. when i bought my first cobalt they wouldnt take any thing off the car i got them to give me a little more on the trade in.

when i bought my second car i got 3200 off between incentives and gm points and i knew right there and then i really wasn't going to get much i got them to take 200 bucks off and give me back my new snow tires.


my freind who is a import guy just bought a saturn ion he was impressed with the plastic body panels the guy took him out back and let him throw soft ***** at a demo car they had on the lot.

 

One review of Astra has 1/4 mi at 16.6 seconds @ 84 mph. Cobalt XFE is optimized for fuel economy, including gearing, I expect it to be slower than regular Cobalt. XFE and Astra are likely very similar in their acceleration capabilities.

 

So GM's plan was to dump a bunch of money into the brand with the expectation of watching sales drop 15% since last year? I can't imagine that there's a lot of high-fiving going on at GM headquarters over those numbers.

In articles I've read in Forbes and Auto News, it seems that Troy Clarke is not happy with the latest marketing campaigns.

 

XFE only differs in engine calibration, final drive, and low rolling resistance tires. It is still a bigger engine (2.2 vs 1.8) rated at 148 horsepower. I wouldn't anticipate it to be much, if any, slower than a regular cobalt.

 

This is one of those situations where looking at numbers in terms of what-is-wrong is misleading.

Y-T-D numbers:
Aura sales are up 10% (5k delta volume)
Outlook sales are down 10% (1k delta volume)
Sky sales are down 20% (1k delta volume)

The big difference is GM sold 23k IONs last year, and 230 of them this year, while only adding 3400 Astra sales... so the single car difference is where you make up your entire decline of sales.

The real question is why are the Astras not selling: marketing, availability, price, or a combination of the three? If I had to guess it'd be the second of those three.

 

Are you sure? I have yet to see a comercial on the Astra. If it weren't for this site, I would not have even know that it existed. I even own a Saturn.

 

Year to date sales of every GMNA division is down. Caddy had the least fall of 8%. You can't tell me there was any high-fiving going on at GM HQ over this years numbers so far. I wouldn't say Saturn is a failure because of this.

Saturns cars went up a good bit, and with better advertising of the Astra, probably would have been better. They total cars went down because they quit selling the ION. They took a mild hit in truck sales because their trucks aren't bad. You could consider that the truck fall was only less to Buick, which only sales one truck now and that one wasn't widely available last May.

I think the numbers for Saturn aren't bad compared to the rest of GM. Overall, GM is down 16.1% year to date.