Friday, June 05, 2009

Penske Looking to Snap Up Saturn

This seems like a fairly interesting idea depending on how the Saturn brand is run.

Roger Penske is inventing a new business model on the ruins of General Motors Corp. The auto racing magnate and mega dealership owner is snapping up Saturn and opening his expanded sales network to foreign automakers looking to sell cars to Americans.

If Saturn returns to its roots as the no negotiation car company that is customer-centric then I think they may live for years to come. They have the opportunity to perhaps make Saturn into the Apple of car makers since they had quite a big following in the 80s-90s.

I would just worry about Penske absorbing the manufacturing plants that make Saturn. After all Penske is mostly an auto retailer and not a car builder so hopefully they come over from GM fairly whole. Also I wonder if Penske will be able to outsource the new car designs profitably or not. Maybe some of that racing heritage will come in handy to give some of the new Saturns some cool-power.

This should be good for the companies stock (PAG) depending on what choices they make going forward. It certainly did pop the stock 5.8% after hours. It will certainly be interesting to see how well the Hummer and Saturn are doing in a few years out from under their dinosaur former owners.

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