Quote:
Originally Posted by zete
Pontiacs will be rebadged Holdens, which means Holden has an avenue in North America for their cars. Saturn are rebadged Opels, again, Opel gets an avenue in North America. Buick ends up being a total niche luxury player, focusing on comfort and unpretentious luxury and the Chinese market while Cadillac can go after everyone globally along with Chevrolet.
Killing Pontiac will hurt Holden. Killing Saturn hurts Opel. Killing Buick hurts Buick. And Buick is massive in China.
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Pontiac/Holden is 1 low-volume car, maybe 2 at most. Which could also easily be sold at Chevrolet. Poor rationale for a brand.
It also hasn't been shown that Americans will buy the same Buicks as China. Quite possibly this strategy will price Buick out of its traditional market.
Saturn = Opel is the only one that makes some sense as a VW-ish brand. But GM-Europe should be responsible for management to prevent unneeded badgejobbers like the Outlook appearing. Oh, VW-North America isn't profitable either.
BGP seems to me that it's ripe for a shut down. Its the marketing overhead for 3 brands even though they barely have the sales volume of one brand (about 1/2 of Chevrolet's sales in total). The three brands have almost zero synergies with each other (unlike Mercury/Lincoln or Scion/Toyota). It looks like a bunch of random cars thrown together on a lot, because that's what it is.
Niche is good, niche is important. But Buick/Pontiac/Saturn are historical volume brands, all with tons of baggage, and there's some serious problems with repositioning them as niche. It might be much cheaper to launch a new brand (eg Hummer) rather than repositioning the old ones.