Marketing Automotive

When GM was in the middle of its most important crisis in history, it decided to sell or discontinue some of its brands such as  Hummer, Pontiac, Saturn and Saab. But unlike the above brands disappeared, Saab is still alive and has set ambitious targets.

The 73-year old Saab was saved from GM’s chopping block by a Dutch carmaker with the help of the Swedish government.

At the time it was acquired, Saab cars weren’t being produced, advertising had been discontinued, and the brand was nearly forgotten by a car-buying public.

Now it’s turnaround time. The new Saab 9-5 Aero has just been launched and new models are planned for 2011 (a 9-4x crossover vehicle) and 2012 (the new 9-3).

Saab owner Victor Muller hopes to product 39,000 cars in 2010, up from 29,000 last year. He has set a target of 125,000 cars along with being profitable by 2012. It’s clearly a long and difficult road — but Muller thinks the 4.5 million former Saab owners represent a solid market. He plans to pitch them on “traditional Saab values: safety, environmental consciousness, and turbocharging.” Muller hopes that by building cars in Sweden again, Saab will recapture some of its cachet.

The future will tell if this bold gamble will succeed.

JD Power, the consultancy company (*), assessed the views of 11,678 people who had bought a new vehicle from 52 carmakers since February 2008. More specifically, it asked respondents to use a 1,000-point scale to rate their experience during and after the purchase process.

Chevrolet, which is run by Shanghai General Motors – a joint venture formed by GM and a local partner – claimed top spot in the rankings on 875 points. Guangqi Honda took second on 874 points, ahead of Dongfeng Honda in third on 871 points, indicating the overall strength of the Japanese firm. Roewe was the leading domestic marque on 869 points, and had climbed from sixteenth position in the same survey last year. Dongfeng Peugeot completed the top five and confirmed the dominance of foreign enterprises in China. All of these manufacturers generated improvements on each the metrics tracked by JD Power, which included the quality of the advice customers received and the facilities provided.

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