GM sells Saturn to Penske Automotive

I think the interesting thing about this transaction is it turns the whole structure of the automotive market upside down. Now I am a fan of change and personally I am pretty excited to see how this all falls out.

Consider that for a 100 years the car manufacturers have had most of the power in the automotive world. The auto market was very top down driven. The OEM (original equipment manufacturer) decided what was made, within a range what it sold for, for the most part how it was marketed. The one piece of control the local dealership had was access to the ultimate customer and the final price.

Now we are looking to have a dealership (granted a very large dealership group) own a manufacturer. All that power relationship just got turned on it's head. I think the biggest thing that may come out of this is the one thing the OEM's could never have...Selling cars on the internet. Because dealer's controlled access to the ultimate customer the manufacturers have never been able to sell cars direct off the internet. Saturn was always envisioned to be a "better way to buy a car", now it really may be. Penske has 156 dealer locations in the US and 148 outside the US. I bet there is one near you. If you are an existing Saturn Dealer that has not already been canned by GM and you are NOT part of Penske, sell your dealership to them right now for whatever you can get.

If you are thinking about buying a new car, it just may be that you can order it online sometime soon. I can just see Amazon recommending a Sky to go with the Lynrd Skynrd CD you just bought. I wonder if they will take PayPal?