In an effort to save its dwindling cash, General Motors has said that it is accelerating its plan to close or sell off Saturn by the end of this year. In doing so, the automaker, which has heavily promoted its relatively wide range of hybrid offerings, will lose about 25 percent of its eco-friendly new car sales.
Since its inception, Saturn has helped GM come closer to federal fuel economy requirements because it does not offer large, gas-guzzling engines or full-size SUVs or pickups.
Last year, Saturn was second to Chevrolet in hybrid sales within the GM portfolio. The brand sold 5,838 Aura and Vue Hybrids and, with an all-new two-mode Vue Hybrid scheduled for 2010, the automaker’s hybrid sales would surely have grown next year had GM not announced it was pulling the plug.
GM announced yesterday that 2009 will be the last model year for Saturn, unless an outside party buys the brand and restarts production rather quickly.
The Detroit automaker’s hybrid portfolio gets quite a bit smaller for 2010, when it will only offer one hybrid sedan, the so-called mild hybrid Malibu, two full-size pickups and three full-size SUVs.
Though little emanating from GM’s downtown Detroit headquarters is official at the moment, we’re inclined to believe that GM will transfer some of the Saturn hybrid technology, especially that on the essentially stillborn two-mode Vue, to its surviving “core” product lines, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC.
“Any of the four core brands could get our technology,” GM North American sales chief Mark LaNeve told Automotive News. “There’s not a hybrid in Saturn that is exclusive to Saturn. Nothing changes there, unless someone who buys Saturn says we want us to continue building hybrids for this brand and we agree to do it.”
GM’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, won’t take a big hit, according to analysts, since the automaker is also killing off its Hummer and Pontiac brands. With the exception of a handful of mpg-oriented Pontiacs, neither brand offered much to help GM’s CAFE standards.
The automaker hopes that its current mpg-leaders, including the 33 mpg highway Chevrolet Malibu and 37 mpg highway Chevrolet Cobalt, will continue to lure buyers until it can start building volume variations on the upcoming plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt.
