Pontiac ended in 2010. Saturn the same year. Saab collapsed in 2011, Suzuki left the US car market in 2012, Scion was folded back into Toyota in 2016. Their cars are still here.
| Brand | Listings | Average price | Average age |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isuzu | 870 | $23,741 | 13.5 yrs |
| Pontiac | 670 | $6,525 | 20.4 yrs |
| Saturn | 381 | $4,777 | 19.4 yrs |
| Suzuki | 205 | $5,472 | 20.7 yrs |
| Saab | 181 | $4,330 | 22.2 yrs |
| Scion | 119 | $6,540 | 15.4 yrs |
The cheapest badges on the market
Saab at $4,330. Saturn at $4,777. Suzuki at $5,472. These are the bottom of the priced market, and the discount is partly deserved and partly not.
Deserved, because they're two decades old. Not deserved, because a Saturn and the Chevrolet it shares a platform with wear the same mechanical parts, and only one of them carries a dead-brand discount.
Isuzu is the outlier at $23,741 and 13.5 years — those are commercial trucks, not passenger cars, and the commercial market prices working vehicles on what they can still earn rather than on brand sentiment.
Parts are mostly a non-issue
The instinctive worry is spares. In practice it depends entirely on what the car was underneath.
Pontiac, Saturn and Scion are fine. All three were badges on other companies' platforms. A Pontiac G6 shares its mechanicals with a Chevrolet Malibu, a Scion is a Toyota, and GM and Toyota parts networks are the largest in the country. Brand-specific trim can be awkward; nothing mechanical is.
Saab is genuinely difficult. The company is gone, later models used bespoke engineering, and specialist knowledge has thinned out. Repairs cost more and take longer.
Suzuki still exists. It stopped selling cars in the US but never stopped making motorcycles, and it still builds cars for other markets. Parts channels exist, they're just not local.
The part that actually matters
Between them, these brands carry over 1,300 open recall campaigns in our data — Suzuki 502, Pontiac 440, Isuzu 397, Saturn 192, Saab 177.
Recall repairs remain free forever regardless of the brand's status. GM still fixes Pontiacs and Saturns through Chevrolet dealers; Toyota still handles Scion campaigns. What's gone is the notification.
The manufacturer that would normally send you a letter no longer exists as a marketing entity, and these cars are on their fourth or fifth owner after two decades. Nobody is chasing anyone. The work sits there, funded and unclaimed.
That's the case for spending thirty seconds on a VIN check before buying one — it pulls the open campaigns for that specific vehicle regardless of whether the badge still exists. Pontiac alone carries 24,474 owner complaints across 28 models, so there's plenty of history to read. We covered how unclaimed recall work accumulates in the free fix most owners never claim, and what happened to the models themselves in 597 discontinued models.
Frequently asked questions
Can you still get parts for a Pontiac or Saturn?
Yes, for anything mechanical. Both were badges on GM platforms, so a Pontiac G6 shares components with a Chevrolet Malibu. Brand-specific trim can be harder to source, but the running gear is standard GM. Saab is the genuinely difficult one.
Are recalls still honoured on discontinued brands?
Yes, and they remain free. GM handles Pontiac and Saturn campaigns through Chevrolet dealers and Toyota handles Scion. What disappeared is the notification — nobody is writing to owners of a twenty-year-old car from a brand that no longer advertises.
Are discontinued-brand cars cheap for a reason?
Partly. They average 19–22 years old, which explains most of it. But a Saturn and its Chevrolet platform-mate share the same mechanicals, and only one of them carries a dead-brand discount — which can make them good value if you check the individual car.
Why is Isuzu more expensive than the other dead brands?
At $23,741 and 13.5 years old, Isuzu listings are commercial trucks rather than passenger cars. The commercial market prices working vehicles on what they can still earn, not on brand sentiment.
Denis Kataev is a serial solopreneur and the founder of ForCar. With 15+ years in software engineering and 10 years in SEO, he builds data-driven products end to end — backed by a sharp eye for design. At ForCar he mines proprietary vehicle datasets, turning raw numbers into buying advice you can actually trust.
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