General Motors Corp.'s Buick, the 106-year-old luxury brand fighting dwindling U.S. sales, may add models as the automaker sheds Saturn and reviews the future of Pontiac, people familiar with the plans said.
The options include making a Buick version of Saturn's Vue sport-utility vehicle, said the people, who asked not to be identified because no decision has been reached. A Buick Regal designed by GM's Opel unit in Europe and now set for China also might be offered in the U.S., the people said.
"It's an opportunity for Buick, but it's very narrow,"Alan Baum, director of automotive forecasting for Planning Edge in Birmingham, Michigan, said in an interview. "The more brands you cut, the more market share you lose. GM is going to get smaller."
Buick would be a winner in GM's bid to cull its eight U.S. brands to help avoid bankruptcy. GM is unloading Hummer, Saab and Saturn, and studying whether to keep Pontiac and GMC, people familiar with the talks said this week.
Until deciding last year to abandon Saturn, GM had plans to develop more of the brand's models from Opel designs, as it did with Saturn's Astra and Vue. The people familiar with GM's plans said that without Saturn, more Opel engineering may be shared with Buick, which now has just three models in the U.S.
GM has declined to comment on specific changes to its brands. Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson is holding a briefing for reporters today on the Detroit-based automaker's restructuring.
Sharing Parts
Automakers try to assemble multiple models using the same underlying engineering designs, sometimes called architectures. While the bodies may look different, such models can share parts such as engines or axles, trimming costs.
GM has been designing all of its new models on shared, global architectures of varying sizes over the last several years to close a gap with Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., which are among the leaders in such engineering.
Buick's U.S. sales peaked in 1984 at 941,611, according to trade publication Automotive News. By 2008, that total had dwindled to 137,197 units, a 26 percent drop from a year earlier. The brand had about eight models earlier this decade.
One of the main reasons GM has pushed to keep Buick is its popularity in China, the people said. Sales surged almost tenfold from 2000 through last year to 280,255, consulting firm IHS Global Insight Inc. said.
Communist Favorite
Buyers there coveted Buicks because they were the cars in which Communist Party leaders were chauffeured. Buick sells nine models in the world's most-populous country, where dealerships include private clubs and other customer perks associated with higher-end luxury brands in the U.S.
"Buick has some nice products in China, and it doesn't have the baggage as an old-person's car that it has in the U.S.,"said Rebecca Lindland, an IHS analyst in Lexington, Massachusetts. "It's seen as an iconic American brand."
GM's brand shuffling, which envisions the survival of at least Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac, is part of talks with the Obama administration task force studying whether restructuring the largest U.S. automaker is possible outside bankruptcy, people familiar with the matter have said.
Besides Pontiac, GMC has been added to the discussions of brands that might be cut, people have said. No decisions have been made.
