RIP Saturn & Pontiac
- Thread starter Barbados Slim
- Start date
I'm on my phone so I can't look up the data but in 2007 the Toyota Camry surpassed the Ford F-150 as the best selling vehicle in the US. It was the first time the truck wasn't #1 since 1976.
Also in 2008, Toyota surpassed GM as the #1 auto maker in the US.
I wouldn't read too much into the sales figures for full size pickups. Their numbers are always high because there are so few choices in that market segment. Whereas the market share of compact passenger cars is larger, but spread over a lot more makes and models. And the market has swung toward smaller cars in the last year or two, with the share of compact cars and compact SUV's growing the most.
--Justin
GM made sense back when it was put together. Each of the brands were distinct and each was indeed a step up. If the company were what it is supposed to be, Cadillacs would be half-million dollar cars today, Buick would be about where Aston-Martin is, and so on. For a variety of reasons the divisions ended up competing for the same territory which is where it all fell apart. The business model could still work, but not with these brands because they're so damaged no one would ever consider them in the market segments they should be in. Except for Chevrolet, that is.
Yes, they were very loud. There was always some kind of rattling or banging that you could hear both outside and inside the car. It was awful! The bucket seats really bothered me. But most of all, they were too low to the ground. I am a pretty small person but even I had a difficult time getting in and out of the thing.
By the way I am speaking of Saturns from the 90s. I have no idea what they are like after the turn of the century.
There you have it, the problem all along was GM never actually implemented
everything SATURN innovated over the years. IF they had they may
not be in this mess. And when they finaly started to put some money
into SATURN they essentialy took away all that made it different and better
and made it a Just-Another-Name-For-A-Chevy brand.
My first car was a '97 SL2, my second and current car is an '07 ION.
Both were/are excellent cars and very reliable and fun to drive.
And most of all, both were actually built by SATURN people at the SATURN
plant in Springhill Tennessee. The new ones are just rebadged Opels and
Chevy's.
But I'm going to miss SATURN being around as a brand.
The others? Meh, but I also don't have much attachment to them.
I am sad to see great American brands being done away with though.
Glad to have my 2007 SATURN ION 2 though, and plan to keep boarding
this ship till she just don't fly no more, and since it's a SATURN it's a good
chance she'll fly well over 100k.
By the way both have always handled well in even near blizzard conditions.
And it's all about the owner, I worked at SATURN and drove many
different years and models and the only ones that had issues were
the ones owned by people who didn't take care of them, which was
quite common when it came to SATURNs. Mine was never a "rattle trap",
never had mechanical issues and was generaly as good a car as any Honduh
out there. Many friends and other members of the SATURN community
would tell you the same. And that's of all years SATURNs, including the '90s.
It's all in the driver, the same as any car.
There is this by the way that I just got in an email earlier this evening from SATURN:
I'm interested to see what products they get in the future beyond GM.
But I'm good with Calypso, my ION. Have no interest in owning ANY other
brand, they took the one worth owning away.
If GM had pushed the Camaro rather than the Solstice the company would have been better off. Look at the Mustang. Not a fantastic seller, but the nostalgia and style buffs have been buying them in droves.
I also forgot that the H3 is a TrailBlazer chassis/powertrain with a restyled body...
Right, and remember you get to pay 15K extra for it too...
I'm guessing that means vehicles that may not be greatly profitable or high volume (think of backbone vehicles like Camry is for Toyota) but fills a small market segment or a vehicle can showcase the latest GM technology.
For instance, the Pontiac G8 GXP is kind of a poor man's BMW M5 so that may soldier on for another few years and the Solstice is a very good competitor to the Mazda MX-5 (Miata). Again these are not particularly high volume vehicles but they probably make some decent money.
Depending on the year, it's more than likely I made parts for that.FWIW, my Dodge Ram was built in Mexico and it turns out that Mexican built Dodge pickups are better in quality than the one built in the US.
I put in a lot of OT in the Dodge Ram line.It was frightening, though, watching our shipping department start changing all the shipping signs from US destinations to Mexican ones.
^^ The PT Cruiser was slated to be discontinued to be dropped anyway. It just makes the announcement seem more dramatic.
That's old news, actually. Chrysler decided to kill these cars off a while ago. I'm more interested to see what other nameplates might get axed. I heard that they're going to reduce overlap and redundancy within their brands. Hopefully this means that crappy cars like the Jeep Compass and Dodge Nitro will soon follow.
Plecostomus
Commodore
I understand that the PT Cruiser is expensive to produce because of the shape of the bodywork, the forming presses/dies are more complex or something like that.
They'd want to ax that one just to get rid of a specialized production cell.
They'd want to ax that one just to get rid of a specialized production cell.
I doubt that was the issue since the dies were already produced. I read a lot of automotive news and my understanding is that sales were down, which means they aren't a money maker anymore.
The PT Cruiser was hot when it first hit the market. But the novelty has worn off and sales have plummeted.