GM Leaves Bankruptcy: Where Do the Brands Stand?

In the tumult of GM’s lightning-quick journey through bankruptcy, you may have lost track of what will happen to all the individual brands. Therefore, here’s a quick and handy guide to where each brand currently stands as the new taxpayer-owned GM emerges from Chapter 11.

Saturn: Purchased by the Penske Automotive Group, which owns NASCAR and IndyCar racing teams, as well as the U.S. distribution arm of the Smart car brand. Saturn’s five models will become the property of Penske but will still be built by GM on a contract basis. According to reports, GM will continue production of the three best-selling Saturn models for the next two years: the Aura, Vue and Outlook. It will discontinue the Sky and Astra. By 2011, GM will stop producing Saturn vehicles, and Penske will have to find a new manufacturer — possibly Renault Samsung Motors of Korea, according to Automotive News.

Saab: Swedish supercar maker Koenigsegg led a consortium to purchase the ailing brand from GM. The deal is contingent on $600 million of financing from the European Investment Bank to be guaranteed by Sweden. The deal is supposed to close sometime in the third quarter of this year, but analysts have questioned whether Saab is big enough to survive regardless. It sold only 93,000 cars last year and has been unprofitable for a long time.

Through Ian's Lens: 2009 Cadillac CTS-V

I stumbled across a great quote from @TheRealAutoBlog on Twitter the other day that summed up the performance driving experience that is the 2009 Cadillac CTS-V: “It should come with a trunk full of bail money.” Outside that commentary, because I'm not a car reviewer by trade, I’ll just let the car speak for itself.

Aesthetically, the CTS-V is the pinnacle sedan design in GM’s lineup. I have been in love with the radical direction that Cadillac has taken in the past 10 years. After all its design accomplishments and failures, the interior and exterior of this car are nearly flawless. Featuring hard lines from front to back, mixed with premium materials and one mean-looking face, the CTS-V connects with both luxury and performance audiences.

My favorite exterior aspect of this car is the headlight casings and the framing they create for the front of the car. Whether you see a CTS-V in the middle of the night or the middle of the day, these distinct angled lights and casings give off a unique impression. On the inside, Cadillac’s disappearing touch navigation screen is above and beyond anything else on the market and just one minor detail in what I would argue is the best dashboard I’ve seen.

The design of this car raises the bar for the Cadillac brand. Let's hope that when the new GM has risen from its own ashes we'll see more cars that meet the design standard set by the CTS-V.  

Let me know what you think in the comments section below. As always, feel free to use the full-screen mode on the photo browser.

Will Cadillac Dealers Bear the Brunt of Closures?

Though Cadillac will survive GM’s restructuring as one of its core brands, its dealership network may be drastically reduced, according to GM sales head Mark LaNeve. When compared with competitors like Mercedes-Benz and Lexus, Cadillac appears to have an unsustainable number of dealers.

With 1,422 dealers nationwide, Cadillac has more than six times as many dealers as Lexus and four times as many as Mercedes. In 2008, the average Cadillac dealer did one-sixth the business of the average Mercedes dealer and one-tenth of the average Lexus dealer.

One of GM’s goals in restructuring will be to bring the number of Cadillac dealerships more in line with those of its competition. This likely means hundreds of closures when their franchise agreements are up Oct. 31, 2010, with most of these closures coming in metropolitan areas where the dealers are already stepping on each other’s toes.

Under Fire: GM Targeting Metropolitan Cadillac Dealers for Closure (Automotive News via Autoblog)

Will Consumers Miss the Old GM? Not Likely

There’s been a lot of talk about “good GM” and “bad GM” and what the closure of Pontiac and sale of Saturn, Saab and Hummer will mean to the new company. We thought we’d recap the impact GM’s restructuring will have on car shoppers.

General Motors remains the largest producer and seller of cars and trucks in the United States, already selling 777,785 vehicles this year, through May.

Nearly one of every five cars purchased in the U.S. comes from GM through the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Saab, Saturn, Hummer and Pontiac brands.

Pontiac will be shut down completely by the end of 2010, with Saab, Saturn and Hummer expected to be sold off.

Those four brands combined have 18 nameplates on sale. Together, those models comprised 2.4% of the new-car market in April. That’s a drop of about 1% from the same time last year (3.6%).

GM Extends Incentives Through Wednesday

As GM winds its way through bankruptcy court, current incentives that were set to expire yesterday have been extended through Wednesday. The company announced late Monday that the court has authorized GM to maintain incentive plans while in the bankruptcy process, which could last up to three months.

We expect new incentives to be released Thursday. If GM's bankruptcy-level incentives follow Chrysler's, we won’t see any major increases in the cash-back amounts offered on new models. In Chrysler's case, many models’ cash-back offers were reduced once the manufacturer went under bankruptcy protection. However, that didn’t stop dealers slated to go out of business from adding their own discounts.

Chevy is offering 0% financing for 72 months on many models to qualified buyers. On the cash-back side, there's $2,500 off the 2009 Chevy Malibu, Chevy Cobalt and Chevy HHR in most regions. If you’re a current GM owner, there are also loyalty offers of up to $1,000 on top of the standard cash-back deals in some regions.

Check GM's consumer sites for Chevy, Buick, Cadillac, Pontiac and GMC to see detailed offers, or check Cars.com's incentives page for more details. 

2010 Cadillac SRX Priced at $34,155

Cadillac’s newest midsize luxury crossover, the 2010 SRX, will be priced at $34,155 when it goes on sale later this summer.That figure includes destination charges which Cadillac has not broken down for us. All other prices mentioned in this post do not include destination charges.

At that price, the SRX is a near price leader for the segment, besting the outgoing 2009 SRX by the princely sum of $6,305.

Compared to its German rivals — the Audi Q5 and BMW X3 — the 2010 SRX costs $3,000-$5,000 less, though its rivals come standard with all-wheel drive. The Cadillac does not.

The Lexus RX — the perennial frontrunner in this segment — comes in at nearly $2,645 more, even though its price was lowered when it was redesigned for the 2010 model year.

Though the new SRX is smaller than the outgoing model, it’s still larger than its competitors. Even so, its interior dimensions are just average for the midsize SUV class.

Cadillac Named Top Brand in National Survey

Cadillac ranked as the brand with the highest customer satisfaction among new-car owners in the 13th annual Vehicle Satisfaction Awards from consulting firm AutoPacific. This is Cadillac’s second straight year winning the top honor.

AutoPacific says it looks at 48 categories to “objectively measure” ownership experience (“ownership experience” seems like a highly subjective thing, but we’ll let that slide). Its survey included more than 25,000 owners or lessees of new, 2009 vehicles. The firm does not disclose which automakers it has as clients.

Cadillac, which has been rated in at least the top five overall brands in all 13 of the firm’s surveys, also won the Luxury Sport Utility segment, with the Cadillac Escalade. The Lexus LS won the award for highest satisfaction overall for a vehicle, while Hyundai took the Rising Star Honors for its 11-position jump in customer satisfaction.

Brands with multiple winners include Toyota with six, Ford with four, Hyundai with three, and Chrysler and GM with two each.

Cadillac Top Brand in Customer Satisfaction (The Detroit Bureau)

Recall Alert: 27,188 GM Vehicles

GM has issued a recall for 27,188 vehicles from the 2009 model year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Affected models include the Cadillac Escalade, Escalade ESV and Escalade EXT; the Chevrolet Avalanche, Colorado, Suburban and Tahoe; and the GMC Canyon, Yukon and Yukon XL.

The recall is due to a problem in the fuel system control module, which has a vulcanizing seal that may separate, allowing water to seep into the module. The water could cause a short circuit, possibly making the engine hard to start or causing it to not start at all or stall while driving.

Dealers will install a new fuel system module for free. Owners may contact Cadillac at 866-982-2339, Chevrolet at 800-630-2438 and GMC at 866-996-9463, or NHTSA’s hotline at 888-327-4236.

GM Kills High-Performance Trims for 2010

Throughout the day, we’ve been seeing reports surface online of GM killing high-performance trim levels of a few models across its brands. We contacted the company and can now confirm that a number of these stories are indeed true.

The least surprising cancellation is the Pontiac G6 GXP, which will not see a 2010 model year. It sported a slightly more powerful V-6 engine than the G6 GT and a six-speed automatic.

GM Assurance Plan Covering Equity, 9 Months of Payments

Earlier this morning Ford announced its new assurance program covering up to 12 months of payments if a new-car buyer loses his source of income. Minutes ago, GM announced a similar plan. It covers up to nine months of payments of $500 a month, and it will cover any negative equity in your vehicle if you trade it in on a new GM. The program starts Wednesday and runs through April 30.

What does that last part mean? As far as we can decipher from GM’s brief press release, if you buy a new GM car today and after 24 months of ownership you trade it in for a new GM car, GM will pay the difference if you owe more than the car is worth. There is no mention of a cap on this amount, and we will update this post as soon as we learn of one.

This equity protection requires any owner to have paid off half of the term no matter the length. So if you have a six-year deal you must pay through 36 months before trading the new car in to qualify.

GM is launching a website for the program at gmconfidence.com, but the site is not yet live.