Saturn Approached Mahindra to Sell their Pickup - 3/16/09

Global Vehicles USA Inc. was approached by a senior official at General Motors to look at the possibility of selling the Indian manufactured Mahindra in Saturn’s 403 dealerships.  Global Vehicles holds the right to distribute Mahindra’s line of diesel powered pickup trucks and SUVs in the U.S.  The offer was not taken with enthusiasm, but the possibility remains that the line of Mahindra trucks could be sold in Saturn dealerships.  Instead of handing total rights to Saturn to sell the Mahindra line, Global Vehicles has contacted around 40 Saturn dealerships about changing their dealership over to Mahindra.  This may be very attractive to Saturn dealerships since GM has announced that it would stop shipping Saturn products after 2011. 

John Preze, CEO of Global Vehicles says that 327 dealerships have already signed up to distribute the Mahindra line of trucks in the U.S.  Global Vehicles will start shipping the Mahindra pickup truck later this year making way for the Indian automaker’s line of SUVs. 

In a Beyond Fossil Fuel article written in April of 2008, Mahindra was looking at offering the first diesel electric hybrid version of their SUV the Scorpio.  This would be a low price diesel electric which would draw the attention of the bio-diesel community.  With homebrew biodiesel only costing 71 cents a gallon, this could be a match made in heaven.   

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