Remember that one reason Olds was killed is because Olds and Buick occupied the same market segment. However, now, Cadillac has moved upscale. Buick is moving upscale to the niche once occupied by Cadillac. This leaves a hole where Buick is currently, which is why Saturn is moving there.

Randy

 

You mean the same hole that the newly purchased Saab is currently in?

 

For the love of God, this makes no sense whatsoever.

CHEVROLET = IMPORT KILLER, PROVIDER OF WORLD-CLASS APPLIANCES
PONTIAC = THE EXCITEMENT DIVISION
BUICK = OLD FART CARS AND "NEAR LUX"
CADILLAC = THE STANDARD OF THE WORLD

Trucks aren't included in the above.

Saturn was a bad idea when Roger Smith thought of it...

 

I am for it...

Reason being, Old's was generally percieved as an old person's car by anyone near my age. I remember a girl I knew looking at a Alero when they first came out and saying "I would have bought it, but Old's are granny cars". Hell, even the term "old" is in the Oldsmobile name. One thing we forget as car enthusiasts is that a car brand is like any other brand. It takes a lot to make a brand and very little to ruin it. Once it is ruined..resurrecting it is VERY hard. Sure old people like Old's because they remember when they were cool cars....but it doesn't amout to a hill of beans when all the old people die, and the younger generation knows nothing but "granny" Old's.

Upscale Saturns will sell IMO because most previous Saturns are entry level cars young people owned. This means many people have had a Saturn as thier first car, so there may be some brand loyalty there. As these people get older they generally have more money. So now you have people with brand loyalty and money, but not one Saturn that appeals to them in thier price range. This is where an upscale Saturn fits in.

 

There is the GTO and thats it. Nothing else. One car does not make up an entire line-up. Pontiac needs to do a lot of rebounding yet if they want to be considered in the same league as BMW. Even a Poor mans BMW.

 

GM is doing the right thing with Saturn (*lone voice in the wilderness*).

Why?

1. Saturn is pulling in import buyers for GM.
2. Saturn has a quality reputation, as odd as it seems.
3. Saturn buyers outgrew their cars, and moved on to import brands higher up on the scale.
4. Chevrolet has a low priced "value" reputation.
5. Saturn selling the same cars as Chevy in the same market doesn't make sense.
6. Nothing else in GM's lineup will do the job, Saturn has a built in reputation.

For those of you who feel Oldsmobile would have done the same thing, need to understand GM felt the same way in the 90s:

*Oldsmobile recieved billions of dollars to rebuild itself.
*Oldsmobile recieved a ton of cash for advertizing.
*Oldsmobile recieved it's own new body via the Aurora
*Oldsmobile recieved the highest quality levels of any US car, and topped many "luxury" imports.
*Oldsmobile had their own DOHC V8 & V6 engine, derived from GM's then new high tech Northstar.
*GM did everything for Oldsmobile that it is now doing for Cadillac.

Yet in the end, Oldsmobile still sold less models combined than what the Pontiac Aztec has been selling alone!

GM did a commendable job trying to keep Olds going, but the public simply wasn't buying them, and Oldsmobile simply wasn't supporting the cost of it's marketing network or covering it's investment.

GM had no choice but to let Oldsmobile go.

GM is looking to use Saturn's reputation to slingshot it upwards in sales.

EXACTLY what I would have done in a simular situation.

 

Oldsmobile failed because it threw away its history and heritage (changed the logo, got rid of all the old names, "This is not your father's oldsmobile" campaign, etc.) in an attempt to change its stodgy image. It ended up losing all of it's old customers while failing to attract new ones. If Saturn is not careful, it will repeat the same mistakes.

 

See funny thing is, I thought the new Olds was pretty cool. Now if you start talking Delta 88's or what not...might as well be selling me a VW Cabrio cause I want nothing to do about it. I think Old's did the best job it could rebuilding itself, but the brand simple lost it's viability.

One thing that I think is a huge mistake in the auto world is that brands in the auto industry have been much slower than brands in other sectors to evolve to a changing market.

 

Kind of sounds like what is happening across GM even today. The Saturn move is kind of unexpected. Some of their problems are because of the limited dealer network and limited lineup (so far). Will they lose repeat customers with this move? The biggest issue (mistake) for Saturn is dropping the plastic panels-they are just as much a hallmark of Saturn as the no haggle sales process.

 

It kind of makes sense to move Saturn upscale if it's going to be an import fighter. Honda & Toyota have a more upscale image and these are the customers GM wants to lure with Saturn.

Saab isn't exactly a factor in the US and could be thought of more like Holden. They are for different markets, just sharing some components for GM's greater good.

 

I honestly don't see a place for Saturn ANYWHERE in the existing GM lineup. it's like that car that wants to get into the exit lane, but nobody's letting it in.

I think for all of GM's burocracy and such, the higher ups really have a soft spot for draining cash into "projects" that have little chance for success. It really pisses me off (well irritates anyway), because it's like watching your dog sitting in the middle of the highway ready to be hit by a car that's coming. You KNOW what's about to happen, you regret it already, but you can do nothing but watch it happen.

 

Hmmm....who does that sound like???

Ahh, yes, NOW I remember!!

PONTIAC

This strikes me as interesting. I have a roomate who is a BIG import fan. He is a former Saturn owner. He hates Saturn. To him, Saturn=a big, steaming pile of crap, anything japanese or european=value and quality. One final note, he says that before he bought his Honda, he told himself he'd NEVER be cought dead in an import.

 

Saturn should stay a lower level import fighter they should be head to head with Chevy but with different feeling cars. There is room to have similar GM cars compete with each other in size and price but not in feel. Think VW and Subaru. similar in price but differnt in feel and apeal. They are trying to move Saturn into the slot that SAAB should be in. Didn't Saab used to be a BMW alternative before the GM took them over. They were always percieved to be high quailty quarky (sp.) cars in the BMW 2002's,3,5 and 6 series levels. Now they are a less silly looking Subaru. GM is making there divisions the same again.

Chevy is the GM oddball. GM wants you to think that Chevy is the cheaper car company but thats BS. they have more 40k plus cars in the line up than any other division besides Caddy. Soon they will have a 60k z06 and some SSRs option out to 52K. The silverado ss is 40k plus with some options as some of there duallys are past the 40k point. Heck SS camaro verts were creeping on 40k sticker.

This is how I think it should be....
Chevy- lower to mid with many exceptions...
Pontiac- Mostly RWD up to 5 series level cars
Saab- Should go back to being a silly well built FWD turbo cars.
Saturn- lower level econoboxs with some cool "redline" cars (overstyled).
Saturn Alt.- rebaged opels and holdens if they want to gp upscale.
Buick- Conservative lexus like cars
Caddy- Benz but minus the lower cars that MB cant seem to sell

 

[QUOTE=guionM]GM is doing the right thing with Saturn (*lone voice in the wilderness*).

I have to agree with guionM about the merit of this strategy by GM, in fact if you scratch the surface you can see that this is a brilliant move.

Riddle me this, how does GM on one hand give Oldsmobile a fresh image and a new name, eliminate Oldsmobile’s dealer contracts with it’s 2800 strong dealer network, maintain Olds’ place in the GM’s hierarchy (above Pontiac, below Buick) and exploit it’s recent mission as an import fighter; while on the other hand eliminate a brand of import fighting, small, cheap cars that overlap with cars in Chevy’s lineup, preserve Saturn’s 400 odd dealers with their high customer satisfaction ratings and give Saturn owners something to “trade-up” too?

Oldsmobile was at one time not to long ago the purveyor of the most popular car in America, the Cutlass Supreme, which held that number one spot for several years in a row. Olds dealers came to number around 2500 nationwide. By the late nineties Olds was on life support due to reasons that have been detailed here in this forum. It was no secret that GM wanted to change the name of the division to Aurora or possibly merge it with Saturn. But there would still be one problem that a new name, well designed product and even the OSV performance models couldn’t fix, the problem of those huge numbers of dealers, 2800 as of December 2000.

Meanwhile, at Saturn, Roger Smith’s baby was finding little support at GM, and Chevy dealers could not have been happy that Saturn was receiving product that competed with their own. It was widely felt at the time that the ax should have fallen on Saturn instead of Olds. Saturn’s greatest asset was the network of 400 odd Dealers with their high Customer Satisfaction ratings and high sales per dealer numbers.

So, back to that riddle. Let’s see, how about discontinuing Oldsmobile and terminating the contracts with it’s 2500 dealers, then announcing that Saturn will move “upmarket”, essentially occupying Olds’ former slot and mission statement, but with a mere 450 or so dealers. Problems solved. Brilliant!

If I were a former Olds dealer though, I’d feel a little bamboozled, after all they were told that Olds was gone forever and asked to sign a termination agreement with GM only to learn now that Saturn’s are to be marketed in Olds’ former slot.

 

Thats just it though...Olds is gone. Just because Saturn is taking the Olds spot in the line-up and sapposably going to sell well, doesnt mean that Olds would have done just as good if they were still there...becasue they wouldn't have, and everybody knows that.