GM's Saturn brand may sell Mahindra cars here

[California]

Mahindra's stock jumped yesterday while the whole market worldwide fell 4%. I went looking for a cause - and found one.

This Reuters Business article says GM may put their Saturn logo on various imported small cars to sell them in the US, including cars made by Mahindra in India.

I'm not optimistic for GM, or its Saturn brand, but I guess this could work out to be a way to market the world's small cars in the US.

if they do this, GM wouldn't have to spend any development money on new models.

And as I've noted before, I think Mahindra stock is a sleeper. The analysts must think so too, it's in Reuters' 'Buy' column. Mahindra stock P/E is 18 vs 12 for the rest of its market segment, so there seems to be anticipation that they will do ok in coming years.

 

[Doc]

Sounds like a win win situation all the way around.

 

[PBinWA]

Interesting. I wonder if they really want to just sell Saturn to Mahindra?

 

[California]

Mahindra might want to take over the Saturn dealer network if GM is liquidated by the government. But I suspect Saturn includes too much dead wood, unproductive dealers with old attitudes, to be very attractive to them. Another Indian auto company (Tata?) bought Jaguar from Ford and the US Jaguar dealers had a hard time accepting it.

I think it's in that news article, that GM tried to sell Hummer to Mahindra and to everyone else. No one wanted it. And Mahindra recently turned down buying Volvo when it was offered to them from Ford.

Mahindra is in it for the long run. They have been a top Indian company for at least 75 years, maybe far longer. Any move Mahindra makes today considers long term strategy. They have already outlasted GM's rise and decline, and probably hope to equal Toyota some day.

I keep saying I will invest in Mahindra stock at some point but I haven't yet. Their Ag base in India (market leader) gives them stability through good times and bad. The also have other major divisions that are profitable such as information technology.

 

[Erik]

sounds like GM is trying to do a repeat of their Geo division with Saturn.

 

[GreenWannabe]

Mahindra is in it for the long run. They have been a top Indian company for at least 75 years, maybe far longer. Any move Mahindra makes today considers long term strategy. They have already outlasted GM's rise and decline, and probably hope to equal Toyota some day.

I think this statement alludes to a major part of the problem in our boom/bust economy. Wall Street demands results this quarter, and deemphasizes future results. Thus any publicly traded company is hard pressed to come up with strategic solutions, because all their effort must be put into keeping a boom going one quarter at a time.

That's my opinion, rant over.

Fred