Roger Penske is getting Saturn. Distribution for the brand name with 350 dealerships and the current designs. He plans to build Saturns overseas.
However, critically, the Saturn production facility at Spring Hill, Tennessee, was designed for a JIT multi-production operation. Logistic support and the assembly lines were aimed to do a number of specialty low-volume cars.
GM stopped doing Saturns at spring Hill in 2007. UPDATE: News out this morning is that the clean diesel engines out of Opel WILL NOT be coming to America. GM is selling Opel to Canada's Magna -- including a prohibition on any Opel cars coming to the U.S. Killing off Penske/Saturn ???
Penske Auto is not getting the factory -- just the network, the brand name, and a few new car designs -- BUT NOT THE OPEL DESIGNS.
For a country that needs to see affordable New Age electric and super-hybrid automobiles, it is not difficult to construct a better industrial plan.
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Roger Penske is rolling dice that he can get Saturns built overseas, plus using the dealerships to move product from other manufacturers.
The first part of this plan looks doable. Korea, particularly, has excess capacity and compatibility with the tool set-ups. China is moving fast as they can.
Getting product from China is a decent bet.
UPDATE::: Impact of the Magna in Canada deal is unclear. GM looks to be selling the Saturn label to Penske and selling the cars to Magna. Neither buyer gets to build and sell the cars in America.
But these is not the only options. Spring Hill looks to be near death inside GM. And a new plant couldn't be done much better to optimize cost structures for conversions to commercial production for such as the Tesla and other New Age electric and super-hybrid cars.
There's nothing wrong with building Saturns at Spring Hill. Same for the EVs and SHs.
What doesn't make sense, overall, is trying to build 50 completely different EV and SH cars on 50 different assembly lines. Spring Hill has enormous resources for supporting as many as 100 different models at a time -- even doing builds for as many as 10 models on the assembly line in the same day.
Back 1985-1990-1995 GM was considering licensed production for foreign designs -- the like of Italian sports cars. Spring Hill was built to do it.
The worst of today's EV and SH commercialization in terms of dumb engineering is using 50 or 100 different ground-up platforms. At most you'd need a half-dozen platforms -- wheel-base frames and typical accessory packages -- to support 50 or 100 or even 1,000 different models.
Standardize the platforms. Turn the design teams loose on power plant tweaking and such as aerodynamics and pretty sheet metal.
Japan did well from 1946 till today by coordinating industrial planning. The U.S. needs to learn this lesson, if we are going to succeed with the EV and SH problems.
We're a long way from when my Dad did machinist work for Barney Oldfield and his racing cars. That was a long time ago. A garage could make a new design and have it grow -- similar to Apple Computer. But those days are gone.
America needs a full-scale EV and SH production facility that is optimized for custom work.
Sure, the Penske dealerships do top-end foreign cars. But the 350 Saturn dealers are middle- and low-end oriented. Successful designs could pick up the Saturn brand name as they settle in for permanent production.
Tesla S hits it big as an EV, there's a way to do support. A SoCal teen genius builds a bananas-and-cream-cheese SH DeLorean, there's a way to make a proof-of-concept 10,000-unit run on a standard platform.
Cost control is the big point for getting financing for new EV and SH concepts.
Saturn + Spring Hill + the Saturn dealership chain + standard platforms =EQ= all you need for a solid business plan + likely standards for what makes sense for a sane EV or SH commercial automobile.
The cars can get built in China. They'll be novelties... barely supported. And the jobs stay over there. And it won't really work.
Build them at Spring Hill... you got a project that works and cuts costs by as much as one-half.
A lot worse has happened to America, than competent industrial process design. Wasting that Spring Hill plant -- a no-brain, no-gut, no-glory, no-profit GM decision -- can still be turned around. Use it exactly for what it was designed 1985-1990-1995.
Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. is buying Hummer. That's China. Want a Chinese Hummer ??? Wanna see all the new EV and SH cars getting their first big runs coming out of China ?