Over the past few months, GM has gone back and forth with its plans for Saturn. With no unique vehicles or manufacturing plants, the only thing really for sale is the Saturn name and dealer network. GM really only has a reputation for sale, and one that has been sullied in recent years by GM’s favorite move, badge engineering (Kind of like the Street Fighter player who just does endless Hadokens. Sure, it might work when times are good and your opponent is button mashing, but it’s no fun and when times get a little bit tougher, and the shallowness of the strategy is revealed). So Saturn seemed like a hard sell, and if it got too difficult, it was likely that GM would just close Saturn down, like Pontiac.
GM announced today that the Saturn sale will go forward to the “next step.” Exactly what that next step is hasn’t been defined, but GM hopes the sale will be secured by the end of the year. One of the proposals for Saturn’s future, from a leading bidder, is a mega-store where all makes and models will be sold alongside one another. A spokesman for the bidder likened the strategy to Best Buy‘s. That sounds boring to me. Hopefully Saturn’s new owners will do something interesting with the company, like building a zombie apocalypse survival vehicle.
Picture via gamespot.com.
