{"id":191898,"date":"2009-06-08T23:08:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-09T04:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/08\/auto-industry-update\/"},"modified":"2009-06-08T23:08:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-09T04:08:00","slug":"auto-industry-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/08\/auto-industry-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Auto Industry Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GM has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/31058967\">arranged a sale of Hummer to a Chinese firm<\/a>, and sold the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/31131864\/\">Saturn brand to the Penske auto dealer group<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This actually bodes well for Saturn, because former race car driver Roger Penske is a real car guy.<\/p>\n<p>He doesn&#8217;t get the manufacturing facilities or design capabilities, though GM will keep 3 models rolling out for the next 2 years, so he will probably go with foreign manufacturers to supply the dealership network, most likely Renault.<\/p>\n<p>If he brings in some of the high MPG diesels, he will have a real winner.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with Saturn is that GM left the brand stagnant for nearly a decade.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to dumping a number of brands, GM is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/businessNews\/idUSTRE5573WX20090608?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=businessNews\">shutting down medium duty truck production<\/a>, so it&#8217;s completely getting out of the business of making commercial trucks that are the basis for things like dump trucks and cement mixers.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/8090438.stm\">the Supreme Court placed a stay on Chrysler&#8217;s sale to Fiat<\/a>, pending resolution of disputes with bond holder\/vulture speculators.<\/p>\n<p>Fiat has said that this won&#8217;t queer the deal&#8230;..Yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GM has arranged a sale of Hummer to a Chinese firm, and sold the Saturn brand to the Penske auto dealer group. This actually bodes well for Saturn, because former race car driver Roger Penske is a real car guy. He doesn&#8217;t get the manufacturing facilities or design capabilities, though GM will keep 3 models &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auto-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}