Big discounts on remaining Pontiacs and Saturns, but you have to find one first

Plymouth Rock in a Saturn Astra: Plymouth, Saturn and this chicken are all gone

The Wall Street Journal ran an article today about General Motor's generous cash allowances to Pontiac and Saturn dealers to help in cleaning out remaining inventory.

View some of my favorite Pontiac and Saturn models in this linked slideshow.

Naturally, visions of tremendous discounts off highly desirable models danced in buyers's heads on boards like Slickdeals.  However, if you think the world is going to hand you a fully loaded  Astra for $13,000, you had better realign your sense of reality:  Most of the highly desirable models are already gone.

I ran Pontiac's inventory checker to see what was left here in the San Francisco Bay Area, here is what I found:

One 2009 G6 GT Convertible
Three 2009 G5 Coupes

That's right folks, no G8 sedans, Solstice coupes or Vibes are left in the immediate area.  That is not to say that a dealer could not locate one for you, there are more Pontiacs available if you look further beyond your zip code, but obviously there is less incentive to offer a cut throat price on a vehicle a dealer has to get from somewhere else.

At the beginning of December, there were only 14,500 Pontiacs and Saturns left system wide.  Spread out over the United States, that yields a pretty slim selection for buyers to pick from.  For California buyers looking to perhaps score an extra good deal from a hard hit dealer in another state, factor in that all cars with less than 7,500 miles need to meet California emissions standards, so make absolutely sure that the emissions sticker states that it meets California standards.

All of this is not to say that an enterprising buyer cannot score one heck of a deal, but keep in mind that most of the low hanging fruit has been picked.

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