Randomly Noted

Today comes news Swedish super-car maker Koenigsegg is walking away from its deal to buy Saab from General Motors. A few weeks ago, American super-entrepreneur Roger Penske said his partner, Renault, was pulling the plug on an agreement to buy GM’s Saturn. What’s next? I have a suggestion: GM should walk away from Buick. For many, many years GM maintained too many brands; it neglected the gems it had (such as Saturn, whose cachet it squandered); and it still has too many. A wise GM board would focus on two signature, global brands: Chevrolet and Cadillac. It would kill off Buick, except in China, where the marque doesn’t have the musty image it carries in America. It would fold GMC into Chevrolet as in “Chevy GMC” as a sub-brand. And that would be that – freeing the ex-bankruptcy auto maker to focus on building world-class cars while rebuilding its balance sheet. (To give GM some credit, it has killed off Oldsmobile and Pontiac in recent years and is selling Hummer; that’s still not enough.) As for Saab, a once-desirable European brand GM managed to bungle, WSJ colleague John Stoll reports GM is inclined to let it die. I do wonder about the Chinese firm that was going to partner with Koenigsegg: Might Beijing Automotive Industry Holdings attempt to buy Saab – the name and/or its assets – on its own?