{"id":78215,"date":"2009-12-12T14:02:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-12T19:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/12\/12\/retiring-saturn-chief-to-take-over-smartusa-sales-and-marketing\/"},"modified":"2009-12-12T14:02:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-12T19:02:00","slug":"retiring-saturn-chief-lajdziak-to-take-over-smart-usa-sales-and-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/78215","title":{"rendered":"Retiring Saturn chief Lajdziak to take over Smart USA sales and marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Filed under: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/hirings-firings\/\" rel=\"tag\">Hirings\/Firings\/Layoffs<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/hatchbacks\/\" rel=\"tag\">Hatchback<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/smart\/\" rel=\"tag\">Smart<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/make\/saturn\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"0\" height=\"282\" width=\"250\" vspace=\"4\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2009\/12\/la2008saturnvue02.jpg\" class=\"right border\" alt=\"\" \/>Saturn<\/a> general manager Jill <span class=\"an_mainphotocaption\">Lajdziak spent several months this summer and fall working closely with Roger Penske and his staff, trying to iron out the details of the brand&#8217;s proposed purchase from General Motors. As we all know, that agreement fell apart when Renault&#8217;s board of directors vetoed a deal to supply cars to a Penske-owned Saturn. When GM decided to shutter Saturn, <\/span><span class=\"an_mainphotocaption\">Lajdziak promptly announced that she would retire from General Motors at the end of this month. <\/p>\n<p>Apparently, in spite of the Saturn deal&#8217;s collapse, Penske was impressed by <\/span><span class=\"an_mainphotocaption\">Lajdziak and has now hired her to take over sales and marketing at another of his enterprises, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/make\/smart\/\">Smart USA<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><\/span><span class=\"an_mainphotocaption\">Lajdziak will become VP of Smart USA on January 1, and <\/span>will have quite a challenge in front of her. Smart sales have gone into free fall of late. For the year, sales are down 38 percent, and in recent months, they&#8217;ve dipped as much as 70 percent. It seems that everyone who wanted one of the tiny two-seaters has now bought one.<\/p>\n<p>[Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autonews.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20091208\/OEM02\/912089993\">Automotive News<\/a> &#8211; Sub. Req.]<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/12\/12\/retiring-saturn-chief-to-take-over-smartusa-sales-and-marketing\/\">Retiring Saturn chief Lajdziak to take over Smart USA sales and marketing<\/a> originally appeared on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\">Autoblog<\/a> on Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:02:00 EST.  Please see our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weblogsinc.com\/feed-terms\/\">terms for use of feeds<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h6 style=\"clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;\"><\/h6>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/12\/12\/retiring-saturn-chief-to-take-over-smartusa-sales-and-marketing\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent link to this entry\">Permalink<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/forward\/19276273\/\" title=\"Send this entry to a friend via email\">Email this<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/12\/12\/retiring-saturn-chief-to-take-over-smartusa-sales-and-marketing\/#comments\" title=\"View reader comments on this entry\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Filed under: Hirings\/Firings\/Layoffs, Hatchback, Smart Saturn general manager Jill Lajdziak spent several months this summer and fall working closely with Roger Penske and his staff, trying to iron out the details of the brand&#8217;s proposed purchase from General Motors. As we all know, that agreement fell apart when Renault&#8217;s board of directors vetoed a deal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}