Yup.... Stab it to death I hate it. I'd even be okay if it just got merged into Opel instead of this current money sucking marionette routine.
Saab may be useless in NA but their sales are strong in Europe and Russia in particular (an emerging market). Their R&D Dpt. is indispensable within General Motors as well. I surmise the reason that Saabs are still sold in NA is because it would be more costly to close and pay off their fairly independent dealer network (Unlike Canada where they A) Do reasonably well and B) are grouped with Saturn) than any money they would save in the short-to-midterm financial books.
Long Story Short, GM is a Bloated Fat Man in desperate need of liposuction. That Means we sell Hummer to some enterprising Indian company. It also means that redundancies need to be cracked down upon. It would be easier to get rid of GMC and Hummer than any others. There's lots of dealers in the US and even more in Canada with Pontiac as an Anchor chain. This is somewheres along the lines of how many Indie Olds dealers there were in the States in 1999 (It was C-O-C in Canada). Dealers in the USA might do okay if they had Saturn mixed with Buick but in Canada, where 1/2 of the dealers are BPG dealers, they would be DECIMATED. Put Buick with Saturn up here (Saturn sells worse up here) and give them that utterly pants-on-head retarded pricing policy and Buick's value goes away INSTANTLY.
And frankly, on Pontiac. Few Pontiacs have ever really appealed to me since the year 2000 (1996-1999 Bonne, Trans Sport and that's about it). I'd be sad to see the brand go, but I wouldn't feel even close to how I felt about Oldsmobile's demise. Olds had a glimmer of hope if Saturn was put down, Pontiac has withered on the vine. No new product in the pipeline. An EP-1 G6 that goes through 2013!!! Look, if all Pontiac is gonna get is cars like the Torrent, G5 and G3 may as well put it down.
Like I Said Before
1) Merge Saturn, Holden into Opel
2) Have some sort of combination of Chev-Buick-Caddy dealers or Chev-Opel and Buick-Cadillac separated. Maybe some Buick-Opel dealers and evaluate which paring seems to work best in different regions of the US in Canada
3) Sell Hummer, Recede Saab to Europe, Put Pontiac out of its Misery, GMC makes commercial trucks, Chevrolet makes consumer ones
4) Focus resources across these four divisions, develop globally applicable products.
5) For the love of god advertise
6) ???????
7) Profit
Alfred Sloan has been dead for quite some time, I don't like to see divisions go, but I love GM, AS A WHOLE. If we keep grasping at straws like gotta have performance, so Pontiac has to stay, GM WILL DIE. ALL OF IT. I'd rather amputate my foot than die of Gangrene, the same is true for General Motors. Pontiac's cheap thrills legacy can be easily personified by Chevrolet, the more refined performance models can be signified in an Alpha Buick and Sig-Zeta CTS. It's time to get serious.