Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramos
GM only needs 4 brands:
Chevy: Mainstream cars and trucks and iconic Vette
Buick: Middle of the road aimed at Baby boomers and export markets like China
Saturn: Rebadged Opel products aimed at younger audiance
Caddy: upstream luxury
Pontiac and GMC have no place and no reason to survive
Rebadge the G8 as the new Impalla and bye bye Pontiac
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I agree, except I think you can trim it down even further than that. GM only really needs two brands:
Chevy: regular cars and trucks
Caddy: luxury
They should sell off everything else and stop badge engineering the crap out of every platform they've developed. There's no need for Saturn, even for a "younger audience".
I think GM should follow the business model of the Japanese big three; Honda, Toyota, and Nissan all have two distinct brands - one for regular cars and one for luxury versions of the same platforms. Toyota does have Scion and that's aimed at a younger audience, but Scion has been bleeding sales at a crazy pace even before the economic meltdown (see
here - Scion sales have been down for sixteen straight months even as of last August).
GM should sell off or scrap all its other brands - Saturn, Buick, Pontiac, Hummer, Saab, Opel, and god knows whatever else they own. They should stop making GMC models of trucks and SUV's (what the hell is the difference between the Yukon/XL and the Tahoe/Suburban?).