It was 1985 and Detroit was full of optimism, breathless with anticipation.

General Motors, at the time the world’s biggest carmaker, was going to create a whole new kind of car company, one that stressed customer service, one that focused on building the kind of cars that the Japanese were beginning to sell with such success. “A different kind of car company,” GM marketers called it. There was optimism, there were leaks to the newspapers about just where this new company, Saturn, would make its home.

There was hope that home would be Detroit, and there was disappointment when the headline appeared on the front page of the Detroit Free Press, above the smiling face of a Tennessean. GM was building its new company in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Detroit had lost again.

And today, Detroit loses one more time. The deal for Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based Penske Automotive to buy Saturn from the new GM—the chastened, smaller, just-out-of-bankruptcy GM—has fallen through. And Saturn, that brand that started with all those hopes in 1985, will close, GM announced today.

Penske couldn’t come up with a manufacturer to continue building the Saturn-branded vehicles after GM stopped building the cars. GM had agreed to keep the cars coming until 2011, after which Penske had hoped to attract another manufacturer.

If anybody could pull off such a plan, it was thought, Roger Penske, the former racecar driver at the helm of Penske Automotive could do it. As the New York Times reported September 19, he was the guy who turned around truck leasing for Hertz, revived General Motors' diesel operations, gave life to Daimler’s micro-car franchise, and built one of the nation’s leading networks of auto dealerships.

Surely he could end the cloud of uncertainty that had hung over Saturn dealerships and loyal Saturn customers as GM announced it would be one of the brands on the chopping block as America’s largest carmaker retrenched. That, at least, was the hope in June. GM then said the deal would preserve 13,000 Saturn jobs and the company’s dealerships, nearly all of which had been built to sell only Saturn vehicles.

Penske had hoped to close the deal on Saturn as early as this week.

But, this time, Penske couldn’t work the magic.

“Penske Automotive Group negotiated the terms and conditions of an agreement with another manufacturer, however, that agreement was rejected by that manufacturer’s board of directors,” Penske stated in a release Wednesday. “Without that agreement, the company has determined that the risks and uncertainties related to the availability of future products prohibit the company from moving forward with this transaction.”

GM CEO Fritz Henderson announced that meant the end of the road for Saturn.

“Today’s disappointing news comes at a time when we’d hoped for a successful launch of the Saturn brand into a new chapter,” Henderson said in a statement. “We will be working closely with our dealers to ensure Saturn customers are cared for as we transition them to other GM dealers in the months ahead. I’d also like to thank every GM employee and Saturn retailer who worked so hard to try to make this new beginning happen for Saturn.”

Saturn is one of four brands the new GM is shedding or has shed as it went through bankruptcy and emerged a shadow of that company that launched Saturn back in 1985.

The company is shutting down Pontiac, with its tradition of muscle cars, by the end of the year. It recently sold Saab to Swedish sports-car manufacturer Koenigsegg Group AB. Hummer, the builder of road behemoths that symbolized American excess in the 1990s, is being sold to obscure Chinese construction-equipment manufacturer Sichuan Tengzhong Industrial Machinery for $100 million, assuming the Chinese government approves the deal. And GM is on track to sell its German Opel division to a coalition led by Canadian parts manufacturer Magna, with reports that the papers on that deal could be signed next week.

That leaves the once-proud automaker with four brands, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC. And no grand plans to launch any new car companies like it did in 1985 anytime soon.

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Kent Bernhard Jr. is News Editor of Portfolio.com