So Long Saturn and Pontiac
- Thread starter cigaretteman
- Start date
Really? I could have sworn I saw a G8 with an arrow head on the front. Yes, I'm aware that it was designed and engineered by Holden, a GM subsidary. Holden doesn't sell cars in the US. If we want nice Aussie cars here, we need to put different badges on them.
It's an Australian car - the Holden VE Commodore, built in Australia.
Pontiac G8 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Saturn brand was a bad idea for GM from the beginning. If they had used the money they spent to get Saturn up and running on R&D for there current offerings they wouldn't be in nearly as deep of a mess as they are in now.
It's not "captive import". It's blatant brand engineering.
No different than the Daewoo Kalas/Chevy Aveo.
You can say it's a pontiac, but it doesn't make it so. And if it isn't really a pontiac you're buying, why should it make a difference that it has a pontiac logo on the front of it?
Pontiac has been nothing more than a marketing ploy for sometime now.
Id keep my Mitsubishi over 90% of the American garbage that passes for cars anymore. cys_av8r isn't too far off the mark here IMO, Im not terribly fond of the G8s design either.
Saturn was a great idea. The biggest problem was that GM just couldn't divest itself of the legacy crap that is dragging them down currently and focus on building Saturn into what it should have been - a true Toyota killer.
GM would have been WAY better positioned at this point if it would have said bye bye to Chevy, Pontiac, Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile GMC and every other one of it's badge-engineered product lines back then and just focused on building Saturn. It had a new, sustainable labor deal with the UAW, it had a fresh set of dealer networks and a refreshing way of doing business.
The initial product offerings didn't help much. Crappy plastic body panels and ugly cars to boot, but it had potential.
Unfortunately, GM's past continued to shackle it and it's in the mess it's in now largely because of it. Saturn was too little, too late.
Amen. Saturn had great cars at a low price and was getting better. The newer Saturns are good, although I do think they are now tied too closely to other GM cars, like the Aura-Malibu comparison.
I have owned 2 Saturns with pretty good success. My last Saturn was under 14 grand sticker and got me about 180k miles. I wish other GMs from 10 years ago could say that.
Yup, they should have keep right on going when they dumped Oldsmobile. There should be a base GM line (Chevy or whatever you want to call it), luxury (Cadillac prolly), and then Saturn. That would have saved some coin and likely been competitive with Toyota, Lexus, and Scion.
Nah, probably not. Two things that killing badges wouldn't have helped - the UAW contracts and the cheap plastic parts. GM's finally starting to get away from the cheap plastic, but the UAW's got them so tightly squeezed by the nuts that killing product lines isn't going to help them any.
It's a good article. I don't know of very many other car company's that have more then two product lines and GM has how many?
It may be too late for them anyway. I drove GM for 25 years, but have a Honda and Ford in the garage right now and have no regrets.
It may be too late for them anyway. I drove GM for 25 years, but have a Honda and Ford in the garage right now and have no regrets.
Last edited:
I guess I don't get your point. Are you opposed to importing the Commodore or do you think GM should add yet another brand to it's North American division? Or would you prefer it be rebranded as something else? It's also sold as the Chevrolet Lumina in the Middle East and Vauxhaul in England. Maybe if we called it one of those names it'd be ok?
My point is that axing pontiac isn't a big deal because they haven't actually designed or manufactured a car in a very long time, aside from arguably the G6 (which is essentially a "sporty" Malibu). The G8 is just as much a chevy or buick as it is a pontiac.
Same could be said of the GTO. Pontiac hasn't acutally MADE a car worth buying in a very long time. It's just a fluff marketing brand.
How is this really any different than any automaker out there? Sure, Lexuses might have some significant upgrades over Toyotas, but when you get right down to the basics, an E-series is no different than a Toyota Camry, an Acura TL is really no different than a Honda Accord, a Nissan Maxima isn't really all that different than an Infiniti G/M, and Hyundais aren't all that different than Kias. So why is it that GM gets crucified for doing the same thing that every other automaker does?
The Pontiac Solstice is worth buying if you are in the market for a 2 seater roadster. It isn't as great as my Audi TT, but it is about half of the cost. It beats out the Honda 2000 and Nizzan Z by a mile if you are over 5'8" or bigger than 180 lbs. It also has some very high tech engineering involved.
