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I think that Roger may be ahead of the curve here. I've mentioned earlier that in the future I expect car companies to develop along what is known in the semiconductor industry as "fabless" or "fab-lite" model. Basically two levels of the automobile industry will develop:
1) The car companies themselves (such as Saturn in this case) which will design, develop and market cars.
2) Assembly foundries which will do contract manufacturing.
This sort of model will allow the consolidate the capital intensive manufacturing process to drive maximum utilization of the huge capital investments required. This will do a number of good things for each party.
For the "Foundry" companies: They will be able to diversify their customer base so that their volumes will not go up and down with the success of any one company. They will compete on the basis of assembly technology, quality and cost. The capital investments required for new assembly technologies will be able to be sold out to multiple car companies, thus reducing the payback time. Some companies may even introduce new components of their own. So a new V8 engine may show up in the products of multiple car companies.
For the "Auto" companies: They will be able to trim down their staffs and reduce their break-even point. They will no longer be distracted by the assembly technologies, but will focus on time-to-market and maximizing the value of their product for the customer. They will also be able to source the latest assembly technologies for their products from multiple foundry vendors.
The result will actually be a wider variety of cars for consumers to chose from, at lower prices.
I don't expect that Roger will keep Saturn tied to it's GM roots for long. Rather I bet you that he will shop for capacity at all of the existing factories. Expect Aston Martin, Lotus, Jaguar and the other "specialty brands" to follow suit. Companies like TVR will most likely also make a resurgence of sorts.
Personally, Saturn is the only GM product that my wife and I ever considered buying (back when they were Opel based). It was pretty much a toss-up between the Saturn and the Ford Contour. My wife picked the Contour (it was to be her primary car) because the performance was peppier then the Saturn. But it was close and both cars were were nice.
As far as I know, Saturn still has a very good reputation, especially among non-GM customers. I thought it was silly for GM to sell of Saturn and keep Buick. What's the difference between a Chevy and a Buick??? But then from GM's perspective it's most likely better to sell the brand while it's still worth something. Heavens knows that GM has not done a good job managing the value of that brand.
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I was thinking the same thing. Penske may just be the smartest guy in the room here. Make Saturn a design/marketing/sales operation and contract out the manufacturing.
With the tremendous excess manufacturing capacity out there, why maintain a factory and put up with the headaches of unions, legacy costs, etc?
The question is will the unions and their allies in the US Government let him get away with it?