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I am not so sure. I don't think Pontiac had to go (their crappy late models had to go but not the brand). Hummer could have easily stayed and transformed itself. Hummer was strictly sacrificial lamb for the greens. Not sure about Saturn. Never thought they were any special. Ok, what's left? Oh, Oldsmobile. Well, that got canned before the bail out.
GM was smart enough to figure out that the Jersey Shore demographic for selling Hummers was over saturated and the housing market imploding made people think twice about buying an ugly **** ball.
I think one of the big problems GM has is offering way too many versions of the same vehicle.
That was kind of GM's business model (without Saturn) for decades. Chevy was entry level, Olds a bit more, Buick when you were comfortable, Cadillac when you'd really made it. Pontiac was for when your testosterone level started to drop.
Trucks were for farmers and blue collar trade guys. And duck hunters.
IMO, Pontiac is the only one that could have possibly survived if GM hadn't given in to dealer pressure for more volume, churning out rebadged crap like the G5 and G3. The G6 should have been better than it was. Dodge is rebranding itself to be what GM should have made Pontiac; more niche, uniquely American, and performance-oriented.
As much as I loved Olds, 30 years of misguided marketing and a stodgy name killed the brand off. It's sad, because Oldsmobile was producing some of GM' s best designs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Too little, too late.
Saturn's whole purpose was to be a more friendly, no hassle dealer experience for younger or import car buyers. Why did they need to create a whole new brand to do that? This whole debacle resulted in Saturn consistently losing money throughout its lifetime. GM should have been applying this template to Chevrolet all along. It would have been money better spent to build a relationship with these customers through Chevrolet so they would eventually step up to GM's more premium brands.
Hummer never made sense to me. A Hummer-like vehicle could and should have been badged as GMC.
Hummer....meh. The only thing I see people do with those is put big ugly rims on them and all sorts of gawd awful chrome.
Saturn, I'm not sure.
Oldsmobile could have stayed, but they needed a new/refreshed image.
Yea, those darn Hummers never leave the mall....
But having off-roaded Jeeps and Hummer H3s in Moab UT, I can say that my H3 was able to go on all trails that my Rubicon could and finish the trail.
But with GM going BK, and the fact that thanks to the new media Hummer became synonymous with bad fuel mileage, it was destined for the brand to die. Funny thing is, my Hummer got better miles (by about 2 mpg highway) than my Jeep Rubicon.
I had no real love for Pontiac. 95% of stuff they made from 1990-End was crap. I don't know why people paid money to get such garbage interiors.
Hummer I would have liked to see stick around. The H1 and H2 were solid trucks. The H3 sucked with it's crappy little 5-Cyl engine.
Saturn started off well, but ended as a rebadge dumping bin.
At the time, I would have been fine with Buick being axed, but the stuff they are putting out now like the Enclave is decent.
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