Official: General Motors will shut down Saturn after Penske withdraws from its purchase

The American automotive group has announced today a sad piece of news that the dealership group led by Roger Penske, Penske Automotive Group had already announced. The company that for a few months seemed set to become the new owner of Saturn has abandoned its acquisition because it has not been able to find a manufacturer that would supply it with new products following its definitive separation from General Motors.

Therefore, over the coming months the group will be closing the 350 sales outlets of the Saturn network in America, although the plants located in Fairfax (Kansas), Lansing (Michigan) and Ramos (Mexico), where its models were built, will be used to produce other products for other General Motors brands, as a spokesperson for the group told CNN, so its employees will keep their jobs.

General Motors’ statement adds that until the brand is finally dismantled, Saturn will continue to sell and service its vehicles to customers as normal. Once Saturn has disappeared, its models will be serviced at dealerships of other brands in the group. Finally, it states that it will work together with Saturn employees so that the process affects customers as little as possible, and thanks them for all the effort they made to revive the brand.

Saturn was born in 1985 as a General Motors project to create a brand of low-cost products that could compete with the Japanese brands that were dominating the market. It began selling its models in 1990 under the slogan “a new kind of car company” and in its early days it enjoyed relative success with the S Series. However, there came a point where continued poor results led GM to decide not to include it among the brands on which it would focus as part of its restructuring plan, and it tried to find a new owner. Given the failure of these intentions, its fate will be to join Oldsmobile and Pontiac in GM’s “afterlife”.

Source | General Motors