Was fairly obvious it was the universal “you.” Read it again substituting “one.”
I’m not sure Roger Penske has ever failed in business. Yes, Gonzomax, he’s heavily involved in racing, and I would suggest a variety of things can be learned from his racing enterprises.
First, is that people throughout the sport refer to his operations, even his least successful racing endeavors (his NASCAR team, which has only won one championship, but dozens of races), as operations to be emulated. That is to say people who know that business admire how he does it. Second, he seems to know how to identify, hire, and keep very good people. This includes hiring folks who might have seemed to be either past their prime or not good enough (see Al Unser, Sr and Ryan Briscoe). So he’s a very good judge of people. Third, his success has come over an huge variety of technical specifications–from having his own cars designed and built by his staff to tweeking the current standard bodies. He adapts to a business climate very well. Fourth, his hands on commitment. He still calls races in the IRL and serves as a spotter for on of his NASCAR divers on non-IRL weekends. Then, Monday through Friday he is equally hands on with his other businesses. That show huge discipline. Lastly, his leadership. They don’t call him “The Captain” for nothing.
Will he change the nature of Saturn dealerships to make them more like his Toyota dealerships? I don’t know. It depends on how important he thinks the dealership issue was to the success of Saturn.
But if Saturn is to survive, I’d put it in Roger Penske’s hands, in a heart beat.
I have a 2000 SL1 and it gets 32/38 mpg with an automatic. The motor has a timing CHAIN instead of a timing belt and the body is ding free thanks to the flexible panels. In 125,000 miles I’ve only had to change a brake light bulb which was super easy to do. The car is well thought out. Even the heater core is easy to replace without tearing the car apart (mine is giving hints of leaking).
I would like to see Saturn continue on it’s original track of engineering and get back to customer service.
His Formula 1 venture was a bit of a flop.
One stumbling block is that he is short on cash.
If Penske is too succeed he and his people will need to go into Saturn kicking ass and chewing bubblegum. They should only take a very limited amount of bubblegum.
No, I think he’s referring to either GM or Penske (Saturn). I’m just not sure which since the statement is contextless and pretty much not even relevant to anything I said.
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be snarky; I really thought that it would help. Helpful quoting follows:
That is, if GM can’t build them profitably, how are Penske going to build them properly if they continue to source major components from GM? Although Penske apparently is a components supplier, they’re not a major components supplier, and too much vertical integration is a known liability. They’d have to employ a certain number of the original product engineers, the plant personnel, pay the overhead, and so on, just like GM did, and then purchase the major components from GM. I’m not saying it couldn’t work; I’m just trying to express more verbosely what crazyjoe meant.
Balthisar nailed it. If GM can’t sell the cars profitably, how is Penske going to buy the stuff from GM (who has no incentive to take a loss on it, since they no longer own it) or their suppliers (same problem), and sell it at a profit?
Sorry for the confusing pronouns.
Anyhow, the only other example I can think of is the VW Routan, a rebadged Chrysler Town and Country with a VW interior. People will apparently pay more for it because of the VW badge. How many people are going to pay more for a Saturn Aura because it switched companies?
Most suppliers provide parts for many manufacturers. They are not connected to GM . They would buy their parts from Delco, Visteon or some other supplier at whatever deal they could work out.
If you think that deal would be any better than the deal GM is getting, I think you need to think again.
And where would they assemble these parts? On the same GM line that assembles them now, with the same UAW contracts?
You’re not thinking this through.
Whoever buys the brand, they will contract out the manufacturing. Whether it’s GM or another manufacturer doesn’t really matter. I personally feel that GM will be contracted in the short term (2010 model year), but after that the new owner will have something else lined up. There are several car companies that want to bring their cars to the US market that want to use the existing Saturn stores as distribution centers. The infrastructure is already in place to do that and all that is needed is a re-badge of their cars.
But they don’t and won’t supply the same part to different customers, barring what we call common stock parts, such as tires, spark plugs, and other such things. Everything else is designed by the OEM and the designs are property of the OEM, and in many cases, the supplier tooling is property of the OEM. Of course contingent on the purchase of Saturn, Penske could require a permanent no-cost license to all of those designs, but then they still have the issue of paying the same price as GM does for the parts. Another option is to design their own parts, which means designing their own vehicle, which is vastly more expensive than you can comprehend.
Here’s a potential scenario, though. GM becomes a contract builder. Remember, they want a profit on each vehicle. As long as they’re not supporting marketing and rebates, they don’t have this official overhead. They can sell vehicles to the new Saturn for even less than the original invoice, and still make a profit. However this beholds Saturn to GM with no means of increasing efficiency or quality, and way way to integrate a product design team with the manufacturing team for future product.
Not so- the Routan is completely reskinned, apart from the side doors, and uses some VW suspension components (and different spring rates). Only the switchgear, gauges, engines and chassis are shared.
GM has no problems selling cars profitably but it being drawn under by it’s benefits legacy.
Penske could theoretically start from scratch with Saturn if it comes out of bankruptcy court.
I’m going to follow up on this with my own Saturn dealership story. I’ll keep it brief. Middle of last year after I took my car in to a dealer for servicing, I was treated VERY shoddily. I sent a complaint letter to their service department manager and a copy to Saturn corporate. Corporate responded with an apology letter, but I had absolutely ZERO response from the dealership.
That complete lack of response left me so thoroughly disgusted that when the car developed a major laundry list of servicing needs late last year, I decided to replace it with another brand entirely. I am now happily driving a Honda.
This.
If GM couldn’t sell Saturns profitably then this entire thread and Penske’s proposal would be moot. No one has ever said that those cars aren’t profitable. The reason Saturn is considered an asset that GM can sell and use to generate capital is because it’s one of their better marquees. Penske wants it because the cars are good and the brand has a lot of positive traction.
The only way the GM can sell the brand for any semblance of a profit to Penske or anyone else is if they offer assurances that the existing product lineup can be produced and sold at similar costs as they are currently. What plan they create to allow this is unclear, but the implication that GM can’t build cars profitably is silly. If Saturn is sold the new buyer will require some access to the parts and factories they need or else the deal will be valueless.
How GM and Penske work this out will be very educational.
If Penski doesn’t have to pay the retirement benefits legacy then they are already ahead.
Only the Captain knows whether he considers racing a business or a hobby. I wasn’t thinking of it as a business; I was just trying to relate the characteristics of what I think of as his hobby, which I’ve watched for 30-plus years, to his businesses, of which I know relatively little, except that they all seem to be successful. But I’m also clear that he’s not inclined to lose any money on his hobby, so the question is a fair one.
Wow. That’s completely the opposite of what I’ve had to deal with. I will admit I had some issues with the Service Manager of the dealer I used to go to. Every time I got a survey, I filled it out and mentioned what a jerk the guy was and what he did each time to piss me off.
I forget how long it took, but it wasn’t too long, I got a phone call from the Corporate Offices asking me about the situation. I filled them in and they dealt with the guy. From that point on, he was the nicest person to me. I still can’t stand him, but I know he got in trouble because of me.
The service guys were thrilled that they did something about him. They couldn’t stand him either.
When I was first shopping for my car, I went to a different dealer closer to where I lived. The salesman tried a high pressure technique and patronized me because I am female and he thought I knew nothing about cars. That really ticked me off. I had filled out a form about that and they contacted me about that then, as well.
Now, this was back in the early 90’s when I first shopped for and bought my car, but I had hoped they hadn’t changed.
By the way, I filled up my car this weekend and I got 41 miles to the gallon! Man, I LOVE my Saturn!!! 
This is great news, and I hope it happens. I had a '92 SL which gave its life to save that of my wife. I replaced it with a '98, which has 135K miles and is just got 30 mpg over a mountain.
Things had gone down hill a bit in '97 (though it might have been the dealer) but the cars got really boring. It will be nice if the Saturn Way came back. I wasn’t planning on buying another one, but I could easily be convinced to change my mind.