The late Bob Holbert, one of the country's first Porsche dealers and stand-out drivers of the rear-engine, air-cooled exotics, leads Roger Penske at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterery, CA during a sports car race in 1966
Roger Penske is making a bid for Saturn.
The 72-year old Penske, the highly successful head of Bloomfield Hills, MI, Penske Automotive Group, which operates more than 300 franchises in the United States and internationally, selling 40 different brands, told the Paul Smith Show on WJR radio in Detroit on Tuesday morning that he's not interested in manufacturing Saturns, but in distributing them between the factories and their dealers.
General Motors' once highly-touted and progressive Saturn division is on the auction block, along with Hummer, Saab and Pontiac, the GM nameplates most-recently slated for death. A group of Saturn dealers have shown interest in buying the manufacturing end of the business from GM.
The Captain in full regalia and in full command at last month's Long Beach Grand Prix IndyCar race (www.SteveParker.com photo)
With his vast experience at every level of the auto industry, why would Penske shy away from actually making cars, which many would consider the ultimate involvement in the business, but show interest in being the middle-man between a factory and its dealers?
Because in doing so (and possibly in financing cars and trucks for dealers, too) he can make billions - in relatively "easy money" -- without the huge financial overhead and exposure of manufacturing.
Penske owns all the trucks and logistic operations and expertise he would need to be a major car distributor in the US or anywhere else; shutting-down that kind of operation in the face of an economic downturn is a lot cheaper, safer and easier than closing factories and laying-off tens of thousands of workers when car sales go south.
Also, in the eyes of the public, Penske's name would lend instant credibility and trust to any newly-revamped Saturn.
A forelorn engineer nonetheless beams at his baby, a 2010 Saturn VUE Green Line Plug-In Hybrid; Saturn sells over 25% of the GM hybrids in this country and the division's loss was initially thought to be a blow to some future pollution, mpg and safety standards, but GM said this week that they will try to make or buy the former Saturn-made gas/electric hybrids and sell them at other GM division showrooms
Usually the car-makers control the distribution of their cars and trucks to their dealers, but there have been several independent distributorships operating between some import car-makers and their US dealers, left over from the days when the imports couldn't afford every step of making the cars, shipping them to the US and then getting them to dealerships.
Some of these distributors, including JM Moran, also known as Southeast Toyota Distributorships, still get the cars from the plants, the ports and the parking lots to the dealers and make billions in doing so.
For instance, Moran recently signed a new 25-year contract with the Jacksonville (FL) Port Authority. The agreement extends the 33-year relationship between Southeast Toyota Distributors and Jaxport, and ensures the vehicle processing facility's presence at the port through 2027.
In 1970, Frederick Weisman, a Russian Jewish immigrant who became head of Norton Simon's Hunt Foods, formed Mid-Atlantic Toyota Distributors. He sold the firm to Toyota in 1990, reaping a huge fortune. Along with his wife Marcia, the couple accumulated one of the world's best private collections of modern art.
Penske's DHL factory-supported Porsches shown here winning the 2008 12 Hours of Sebring
Incidentally, Marcia was Norton Simon's daughter - Weisman wisely married the boss's kid.
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