Special Car, auto, cars, vehicles

Voinovich also has concerns Washington will continue to have problems understanding what Detroit has to offer. He asks whether members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) would consult auto industry experts and executive branch officials, "or do you feel that Congress is qualified to draw such conclusions?"

Buicks Will Get Opel Styling

Here's one revelation connected to GM's reorganization plan. In the January 2009 issue of Motor Trend magazine, we report that Saturn's connection with Opel styling is over. Following the current wave of Saturns, Opel styling will merge with Buick's.

Believe it or not, the reasons are obvious. First, GM wants to push Opel back upmarket. It once competed nearly at Audi's level of prestige. (Since then, Audi has moved upmarket, toward BMW and Mercedes, while Opel has gone common.) GM wants Chevrolet to have a bigger presence as an entry-level brand in the European market, competing directly with Ford. Evidence is the new Chevy Cruze compact, which is set to launch in Europe next April, about a year before its planned North American debut.

Buick, which was once a slight step below Cadillac in prestige, has countered Cadillac's edgy Art & Science styling with more rounded, voluptuous sheetmetal...like on the new Opel Insignia. In both styling and interior quality, the Insignia would have made a perfectly decent 2010 LaCrosse (or Invicta). And smaller Opels already are built as Buicks for the latter brand's biggest market, China.

Which connects with speculation in recent days that GM will finally rid itself of less-than-successful brands. Bloomberg has reported that GM may cut one or more, or even all, of Pontiac, Saturn, GMC, Saab and of course, Hummer. The New York Times reported Monday that one scenario has GM buying out its Saturn dealers, and combining the brand with its Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealerships. Saturn has the fewest dealers of GM's full-line brands, at 400, so that scenario makes some sense.

And it's easier for GM to close a brand in a consolidated dealership channel, an option it has as soon as all Pontiac, Buick and GMC dealers are one in the same.

While many Motor Trend readers may lament the end of the "excitement division," fact is, it's little more than "Chevrolet-plus," with a low-end joint venture Toyota and a top-range car sourced from Holden. It would be easy to get rid of Pontiac as well as GMC, and sell Saturns and Buicks in the same channel.

Saturn might even continue to have some overlap with lower-end Opel/Vauxhalls. The lineup would include a Chevy Cruze- (stretched Gamma platform) or Opel Astra-shared (Delta platform) compact, the Malibu-based midsize and a Sky replacement, perhaps based on GM's endangered Alpha small RWD platform. Buick would consist of an Insignia-based LaCrosse, the Enclave (which has proved the brand can be premium, again) and, I think, a large, low-volume slightly decontented Sigma-based RWD sedan with V-6 and diesel engines.

And What About Chrysler?

But I'm just dreaming. GM doesn't see much future in RWD cars, even if Chrysler does. Chrysler has announced that it can meet upcoming Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards with its 2011 Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger.

That's assuming that cash-poor Chrysler LLC survives the next few months. As a privately owned company, it has more issues than Ford Motor or GM in dealing with the government scrutiny that comes with a portion of the $25-billion loan guarantee/bailout. One insider warns me not to count the GM-Chrysler thing as done, yet, though I'm very dubious. If those other rumors are true, even GM knows now that it needs fewer, not more, divisions.