Billionaire Roger Penske, one of few Detroit auto men whose name is still golden, has a tentative deal to buy General Motors’ Saturn brand late this summer or in early fall. The price was not disclosed by Penske or GM, which announced the deal last week in Detroit.
If or when the deal concludes, it is to include the nameplate and all 350 Saturn dealerships, saving the jobs of more than 13,000 Saturn employees. Although Penske, 72, reportedly plans to confine the business to auto dealing, not auto making, he said he’s in discussions with foreign carmakers to produce Saturns. If there are enough sales, he said, he expects the cars to be made in the U.S.
“I would expect that the model that we’re putting together, the distribution model, will be profitable day one,” Penske told The Associated Press. “We’ll have less costs. We’ll not be in the manufacturing side.”
Roger Penske
In the meantime, Penske told The Detroit Free Press, “We will have a supply of vehicles for at least two years with existing brands.”
He added that he’d like Tom LaSorda, the retired Chrysler president who advised him on the Saturn purchase, to be part of the company.
Once sealed, the sale will reprieve GM’s most idiosyncratic product, one that set it apart – at least by reputation – from others offered by all of the once-fabled and now failing Big Three: It placed customer service and satisfaction above all else and held it out front in publicity campaigns as “A Different Kind of Car Company.”
Penske, best known publicly as an auto racing titan, is better known in business circles as a resurrectionist and repairman of foundering motor concerns, including United Auto Group – now, as Penske Automotive Group, the No. 2 dealer chain in the country – Detroit Diesel Corp., and Hertz Truck Leasing.
He has also lent his name, time, talents, and money to the renovation of downtown Detroit and its recreationally underutilized riverfront. Outside the region, the best known of these efforts was bringing Super Bowl XL to Detroit in 2006.
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1 Comments
#1. dave 06.09.2009
Mr. Penske has a good reputation as a solid business person and I wish him well.
At the same time, the Saturn deal does nothing for the US Taxpayer who remains saddled with the legacy manufacturing costs at GM, Chrysler and soon Ford. The British nationalized their failing auto companies in 1975 and then had to support them with taxpayer money for decades until they finally collapsed or were bought out. I have no appetite for that.
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