When Roger Penske takes over the Saturn brand, there will be one less moon orbiting the ringed, gas giant.
On June 5, the Penske Automotive Group arrived at a tentative deal with General Motors to buy its Saturn brand. Penske would own all 350 Saturn dealerships, and continue to sell the existing Saturn product line. GM will continue to build Saturn cars for Penske under a contract deal, but Penske is in talks with other global manufacturers to build Saturn cars. The biggest Saturn sellers such as the Vue, Aura, and Outlook will continue on, but the one hot rodders are most interested in, the Sky and turbocharged and intercooled Sky Redline, will be discontinued when GM’s Wilmington, Delaware plant is closed in July. The Saturn Sky is built off of GM’s Kappa platform, which also underpins the Pontiac Solstice and Solstice GXP. With Pontiac down for the count, and the Saturn Sky counting for such a small number of vehicles, the fuel-efficient pair of hot rods will ride off into the sunset without fanfare.