Saturn Cars Selling at Deep Discounts as GM Discontinues Brand
Saturn cars on sale
People shopping around for cars and auto loans should take notice: You might have an opportunity to get a brand new Saturn car for a used-car price. The same thing goes for Pontiacs.
General Motors is discontinuing both brands, so Pontiac and Saturn cars are basically going into fire sale mode now. I am still trying to understand exactly how this sale works, so perhaps someone out there who is more business savvy could leave a comment to fill in the missing information.
Incentives plus price slashing
First of all, GM says it will pay dealers “$ 7,000 for every new Saturn or Pontiac on their lot that is moved to rental-vehicle or service-vehicle fleets operated by the dealers,” says the Wall Street Journal. Essentially GM is paying dealers to take ownership of these cars. So that’s weird and backward. Right?
Then, dealers must label these cars as “used” because technically the dealers are the first owner, not the customer. Obviously, most of them won’t be used, and they’ll have either zero or test drive mileage on the odometer.
A little help?
What’s missing here? This strategy really makes no sense to me. Why doesn’t GM simply give a bonus for Pontiacs or Saturns sold? Why not just slash prices instead of going through the process of justifying and slapping a “used” label on there?
I’m still waiting for this to click. The brands have gotten the big ugly axe, so obviously there isn’t much, if any, value left in either Saturn or Pontiac brands. I don’t know what to say. Let me know what you think.
The bottom line
Anyway, regardless of exactly what GM and its dealers are doing and why they are doing it, you could be able to buy Pontiac and Saturn cars for super cheap, so if you’re thinking about getting a new car sometime soon, you might want to set your plan in motion sooner rather than later.
