Video: Interview with Bob Lutz

...Can be successful, if managed right.

Sadly, when you have a Saab 9-3, which is a Vectra in drag, and a Cadillac BLS which is a 9-3 in drag, things get messy.

In purely economic terms, this parts and platform sharing makes perfect sense. But when you get down to the customers and loyal owners of these brands, you start to realise that a Saab fan does not want his car to be a Subaru with a new nose.

This product sharing effectively dilutes any heritage and history a brand has, making years of expertise effectively useless when you cannot trace a model back to its predecessor, because some other brand has stuck its foot in along the way.