One Problem With Writing Your Own Epitaph …

(BTW, I’m going to try to get back to discussing car news, trends, and interesting tidbits on a more regular basis. Bear with me!)

The New York Times has an interesting article up right now about Saturn’s new ad campaign. Here’s the two line summary:

1. The ads’ main message is that Saturn is still around and not dead yet.
2. The other message is that Saturn is about to die.

When the reporter notes that the campaign is “risky,” I personally think that’s the understatement of the century. Let me get this straight – the company is doing so badly that they specifically need to risk alerting potential customers that they will DIE in 2012, just to let them know that they STILL EXIST?

Two other notable factoids from the article. First of all, less than 50% of surveyed potential customers even realize that Saturn is a GM brand. (Psst … hey Saturn, you should keep it that way!!!) Secondly, the spokespersons in the ad are … wait for it … auto dealers!!! The most trusted folks on the face of the earth, right after those Nigerian princes who seem to have a lot of trouble transferring their enormous treasure out of the country without your help, are going to explain why you should remember that they are still around.

You know what, GM? You should just offload all of the tooling for Saturn cars to some Chinese company and recoup your costs …wait, what? There is no tooling, because all of Saturn’s cars are simply rebadged vehicles from other GM brands? So you’re saying that Saturn is just a nameplate, with no tangible assets other than a bunch of angry dealer franchises and a severely eroded customer base?

Sheesh. I’m going to cut off the bitterness tap before I make someone cry.