Analytical Wealth

Saturn’s latest ad campaigns proclaim the arrival of the “New Saturn”, proudly displaying their new roadsters, crossovers, and SUVs.

I watch the commercials and think to myself: “What was wrong with the old Saturn?” That quirky little company that people attended festivals for, the company that was successfully building a nice affinity group around its brand and is arguably the only instance of Detroit building a strong brand in the last 30 years or so? Doesn’t re-selling rebadged Chevy SUVs and Pontiac roadsters, not to mention the legion of ruined and then rebadged Opels run contrary to what established the Saturn brand in the first place?

The new commercials are (in my opinion) indicative of GM’s failed strategy to resell eight versions of the same car across their brand, not to mention their gradual destruction of the Saturn brand. GM has gone from successfully establishing an entirely new brand that was generating a following amongst car buyers, to sending it on a downward spiral by incorporating it into the rest of the GM branding morass. While there is nothing wrong with expanding the scope of a brand or changing with the times you have to realistic, there is a reason Toyota created Lexus to sell luxury cars.

People don’t think “SUVs and Sports Cars” when think of Saturn, and that’s okay as Saturn isn’t an independent car company its part of GM. Saturn doesn’t need to cater to every market nice as GM can do that with its other brands. Saturn’s business strategy should be to sell cars that are synergistic with its brand (a strategy GM’s other brands should emulate), instead of wasting GM’s engineering and marketing resources on rebadging cars from other divisions.

Finally if Saturn is going to continue its practice of importing Opels and then ruining…err customizing them to make them “Saturns”, they should just import the cars as is and stop toying with them. European car manufacturers (even the European divisions of Ford and GM) are already pretty good at making great compact cars, stop messing with something that already works. Car reviewers who have driven Opels in Europe more or less universally agree that Saturn should just import Opels as is, as opposed to mashing them up so they can be more “Saturn-like”, perhaps it’s time for GM to listen.