(first posted 9/21/2011) My wife often warns me that I come across as a GM basher. According to her, I bust out the whoopin’ stick far more than the General deserves. And on one level, she’s right. The corporation that gave us self starters (1918), Hydramatic (1939) and modern, small block V-8’s (1955) deserves better than a public flogging for its less than successful endeavors. So todays tale is a one of a hopeful time when The General did well by doing good.
In November 1983 GM announced an entirely new division to market the small car that would re kindle the hope that the parent itself could be saved. It was a time when all of the planets aligned for seller and buyers alike. It would (in theory) spark a GM renaissance, a magical moment when everything was possible.
That division was Saturn and in its day, offered hope that GM could be great again. The product was right – in the beginning. The company ethos was honest and the approach to building a class competitive small car was right for the times. But the ultimate failure of Saturn was proof that GM will never be the GM of our youth again.
The demise of Saturn represented the final battle that GM had waged with itself during the preceding quarter century. And when the last Saturn Aura was sold in 2010, a page of history turned. We’ll not see its like again. But for today, let’s go back to the beginning, when Saturn was much like a corporate Camelot – full of promise and a sign of better times to come.
One of the myths of the Saturn story that has persisted is that the new division was GM chairman Roger Smith’s personal vision. This is simply not borne out by the facts. While its true that Smith greenlit the project and ran interference when corporate politics began heating up, Saturn was really a collective response from within GM’s engineering and design labs to the threat posed by Japanese carmakers in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
The embryonic stage of what would become Saturn took shape in June, 1982 when GM VP’s Alex Mair and Robert Eaton laid down the principles of what would become the car that bore the name that we recognize today. “Saturn” was to be the project’s internal code name within GM. Only later was it decided that the name would be the official name for “a different kind of car company – a different kind of car”.
The concept of the Saturn would solve several existential problems within GM. One, if successful, the new car would finally make the General a player in the small car field with an entry that would be the equal to any that were on offer from Japan. After the Corvair/ Vega / X-Car debacles that had unfolded over the previous two decades, it was debated whether GM could ever make money on small cars again. The GM “price ladder’ had no first rung worthy of purchase.
To be sure, the first step to recovery is to admit the problem. And GM, by 1982, was ready to check into auto rehab for its small car program. As we have seen, it was about this time that GM struck out in another direction with the CorNova joint venture with Toyota. That in itself was a “moment of clarity” when it became obvious that the company was finally serious about building a “no excuses” small car that buyers would be proud to own and love to drive.
The Saturn project would be a home grown, clean sheet effort in the image of nothing that had gone before. To give praise where it is due, GM realized that it would have to build not just a car, but a new company from the ground up. Even the people that built and nourished the political rivalries at GM realized that assigning another small car to an existing division would result in a compromised product that would have no character, no unique selling proposition. In essence, what emerged as Saturn was to be a change in the entire ownership experience, something that could not be done through existing sales channels.
Early on, it was decided that even though structured as a separate company, Saturn would work through the United Auto Workers union. This meant that the UAW would have a seat at the table in just about every major decision that related to the project. The cooperation between the company and its workers was viewed warily on both sides, with each suspicious of the other’s true motives. But when the “Group of 99” was set up to steer the project (in 1984), there were UAW locals represented in every facet of the cars development.
Line workers and shop foremen participated in the development of engines, bodies and other functional components. Their input was used to tell engineers and management what could be done and what shouldn’t be done. For the first time, “management by memo” was verboten at GM.
The next big issue was just where Saturns would be built. The GM view was that the atmosphere in Detroit was too toxic, too hidebound for either side to claim a new way of doing business with one another. A new company would need a new, modern factory and GM set out to find a place that was close, but not too close to the industry’s hub. The search played itself out in a very public way and politicians that saw electoral hay to be made with bringing an automaker to their locale duly made the trek to the fourteenth floor of GM HQ to pitch their states. Incentives were dangled, promises made. Longstanding favors were called in to secure the great pay and benefits of building cars.
Finally, on July 30, 1985, the news stunned the world that Saturns would be built in the rolling hill country of Spring Hill, Tennessee, southeast of Nashville. I grew up just a couple of ridge lines and hollows away from Spring Hill and remember to this day the excitement and pride that I personally felt when the news broke. Lots of Tennesseans can still tell you where they were or what they were doing when they heard the news. Construction on the plant began in May of 1986.
Later that year, the company logo was unveiled.
By this time, GM knew the who, where, and how. But what? The car itself would be the tough part. The targets that the new company would have to catch were leaping ahead in quality, reliability – and owner loyalty. To catch the Japanese, a good car just wouldn’t do. The company had to make buying, owning and driving the product a transformative experience, or it would have just another “me too” product. The General had run out of room for error. By the spring of 1988, (after mock ups and clay models had been massaged) the first hand built SC and SL pre-production prototypes were completed.
By the fall of 1989, GM’s “space program” was just about ready for launch. CEO Roger Smith was flickering on and off the tube touting the new division at every company event and press gathering. Smith was racing the clock: he was scheduled for the “gold watch” dinner that had sent so many other GM executives packing on July 31,1990. He achieved his personal goal to drive the first car off the line with almost 23 hours to spare. (This is probably another source of the myth that Smith was the “father” of the Saturn.)
In the grand event, the car was dynamite. The SL-1 and SC-1 debuted to accolades that a small car from America hadn’t seen in years (if ever). Buyers lined up and signed up for waiting lists to own one. Saturns were even exported (to Taiwan) by the late summer of 1992. The car was a smash. And GM finally, at long last, walked the walk on quality. When a batch of early Saturns turned up with the wrong antifreeze in May of 1991, (supplied by Texaco), the company replaced the cars. You read that right. GM replaced the entire cars instead of just their radiators, (or instead of doing nothing at all, as in the really bad old days,) It turned out to be the best investment GM ever made.
Out in the showrooms, what buyers saw was, for all the build up, a fairly conventional sedan and coupe that didn’t break any new ground in the styling department. The look was in the mainstream and as befitted the “space” connotation, the body was a space frame-like arrangement, with thermo formed plastic providing the skin.
The engine owed nothing to any other GM product, with a 1.9 L aluminum four that made good use of the power band while returning upper 30’s mileage on 87 regular. It wasn’t as refined and smooth as the class leader Honda Civic’s. The engine technology made use of the “lost foam” casting process that saved money which helped meet the cars price target. Saturn had gotten it right. Sales went in a straight line upwards during the first heady years after launch, and the car won numerous (well deserved) awards.
By 1994, Saturn was gearing up to build and sell 200,000 cars. That summer, the company staged an event that was to become a phenomenon and garner no small amount of (free) publicity. The Saturn Homecoming event in Spring Hill attracted over 40,000 owners, former owners and wanna be owners from all over the world for three days in June of 1994. It was akin to a family-friendly Woodstock on Wheels. The world’s largest car company had found a way to connect with customers that didn’t involve 30 second ads on TV or self serving press releases. Saturn (the car) and Saturn (the company) had seemingly done the impossible for GM.
But the parabola of ascent for Saturn had reached its zenith. While not evident at the time, the company’s ride forthwith would be all downhill. When owners packed their cars for the pilgrimage to Spring Hill that year, they couldn’t know it, but the marque that had earned their trust would expire sadly just 16 years later. Sadly, Saturn would become another victim of GM’s endless war with itself.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1993 Saturn SL – GM’s Deadly Sin #4 – The Eulogy
Saturn, a different kind of cult.
Uranus jokes sure to follow.
Saturns remain very popular in Las Vegas; it’s not hard to find first-generation S series models still on the road–many of them rather well-kept. Of course, having owned three of the plastic devils (including my current 2007 ION 2.4 sedan), I loved each of my Saturns and they performed very well with few problems. I could have driven a Civic or Corolla, but Saturn called out to me–a bit quirky and not always the most-loved kid on the block. Still, it gets the job done with a dash of flair (I LIKE the center-mounted instrument pod). Hard to argue with that.
I live my Saturn. I have had many memberable times it. I wish more people would appreciate the alegants of the car.
I live in Las Vegas, and about the only place I see Saturns is the Pic-A-Part, where there are gobs of them. I must live in the wrong part of town.
I remember very well the buzz about Saturn. One of our neighbors across the strreet who worked for GM transferred his family down to Spring Hill to work for Saturn. A gal at work bought one and became fully enamored by the car and the buying experience, so much so that she soon left the company and went to work selling Saturns at one of the few dealerships in the St. Louis area.
I went to a Saturn dealer one evening to check them out. One car on display was a cut-out to show the internal components, especially the doors, highlighting the plastics used and how they were constructed. What did I check out first? …You guessed it – the rear window regulators to see how far the back windows rolled down and why they didn’t go down all the way and if they could be modified to do so! I did the same thing with my 1984 E-Class and 1990 Acclaim!
The general assembly appeared to be all right, but certainly no better than the Chrysler products I was driving at the time. I was nervous about the durability of not only the plastic used, but the car in general. Something about the Saturns turned me off, but can no longer remember specifically what it was – perhaps my general dislike of GM in that era, but I was a big fan of Chrysler and Lee Iacocca at the time. Those cars we owned din’t disappoint, either, but were no match for a B body GM or full-size Ford, but we drove what we could afford at the time!
I wish I had more to say about Saturn, as it was an interesting experiment, and with recent outstanding products, should have done better.
They almost became reconstituted Nissans built by Samsung Motors in Korea (which isn’t a bad thing in itself really, but far removed from the original concept).
Roger Penske was behind the deal but it was nixed by Carlos Ghosen, who didn’t want Nissan to compete against it’s own designs in the NA market.
It was the eleventh hour blow that ended them. Reportedly, they had the balloons and everythin ready to go for the celebration.
The official word from Nissan is that Penske backed out.
We bought a Saturn SC1 in 1997, actually bought it sight unseen for my wife. I was in the Air Force, and the nearest Saturn dealer was in Mobile, AL, about 90 mins drive from us. We drove out there to car shop, and ended up at Saturn. Wow, what a different buying experience, nowadays its pretty common to find no-haggle and no pressure car dealers, but back then it was a huge deal. Anyway, we looked at the sedan and the outgoing coupe, but the guy showed us the brocures for the “new” SC (which was really nothing more than a re-body, but it looked a lot cooler than the first-gen SC). But he didnt have any, and wasnt getting any in stock for another week or so. We were trying to decide between the SL or the new SC. He said, no problem, when I get one, I will bring them both out to your house and let you compare them, if you dont like either one, no problem. A week later he shows up with our new SC1 and the SL we originally went to look at. My (now ex) wife loved the coupe, white with a tan interior, so she picked that one.
We ended up leasing it for like $175 a month or some crazy low payment, signed the papers right there at our kitchen table. We never had one thing go wrong with that car, never did anything to it besides oil changes. We put a set of 17″ rims on it a week or so after we got it, which dramatically improved the looks and feel. She drove it until the lease was up, the turned it in and got an Accord Coupe. We were splitting up right at the same time, she kept the Saturn and I encouraged her to buy it out, but going through a divorce, sometimes you need a change.
I’ve owned a ’92 Sl1 (my first new car) a ’98 SL2, an ’07 Ion 2.4, and now an ’07 Vue AWD (with the Honda 3.5 v6).
They have all been relatively trouble-free and I’ve enjoyed them all. The ’92 broke a rocker arm one time (must have been defective) but other than normal wear and tear, they were all quite reliable.
The 92 was good for 260k kms, and the 98 did 240k kms. They both had lots of life left in them but I had to trade them in. I traded in the Ion last year with 140k on it. The Vue is still a baby at 115k kms and the warranty just ran out. No issues to report, though.
I love the plastic panels. I was sideswiped in my SL1 once by an F-150. There was a bit of a scrape on the passenger door, but other than that, no damage. The passenger mirror even bent forward and snapped back into place on its own.
Even here in salt-happy eastern Canada, there are still 1st gen cars on the road. They tend to rust underneath, but the bodies look as good as the day they were new.
I don’t really know how the word “smooth” can be used to describe the motor of a Saturn. If you are comparing it to a Ford tractor or an Iron Duke, I suppose it is “smooth” but compared to a Corolla or Civic it is a different set of adjectives.
The first generation Saturns had many, many problems, from engine failures to electrical gremlins and high oil consumption. The fit and finish of the first cars was not that bad and the interiors not bad at all but the cars were never cheap. They listed for more that a Corolla and Civic. It was their marketing that sold the cars, mostly to people who (at the time) would not or had not driven an “import.”
The real problem was the cars were so noisy, rough and generally not terribly reliable that few buyers bought a second one. The second generation cars, in typical GM fashion, were cheaped out like crazy. My mom had a 1997 SC1 and it was an awful car. Cheap materials, horrible plastics, bad seating position and a rough, noisy engine. Right after the warranty was up, it started to break. It was mom’s last car before she passed on. My sister, against my best advice, bought a 2002 SL1 and it was the epitome of crappy and cheap. The thing self-destructed into a worthless pile of goo at 125,000 km and would have cost more than it was worth to fix. She now drives a Honda Fit.
The Saturn thing was soooo GM: mediocre product (at best) advertised up the ying-yang with a healthy dose of flag-waving (patriotism being the last resort for a scoundrel) and then degrade the product in order to make more money off of the repeat sales. They were just such bad cars, the SL/SC, horrible, on the floor, driving position, low-grade materials, noisy, bad ride handling and reliability.
The end of Saturn couldn’t have come soon enough.
Funny. You are the ONLY person out of 20 years of talking to Saturn owners that feels that way.
Saturn engines were called all sorts of things that weren’t synonyms for smooth when they were new. They were downright coarse compared to the Japanese competition. I’ve also known plenty of extremely unhappy early Saturn customers, including one who sold the car at a loss and kept the car the Saturn was supposed to replace.
Saturn was a pretty silly exercise in the end. GM spent about 3 times what could have possibly been defended developing the SL and SC. The result was a less refined, less water tight, approximately assembled alternative to Corollas and Civics that would be considerably upgraded and out of reach of Saturn long before the development costs could be recovered. That led to 2nd generation Saturns that were mere reskins and completely obsolete relative to the cars Saturn was supposed to compete with. The lesson was that GM wasn’t as good at making cars as the competition. Even without a business model, GM couldn’t harness all their resources to build a Corolla.
GM’s Prizm (and ’85-’88 Nova) was basically a Corolla, built on the same line as the Corolla in Fremont.
Okay let me rephrase that.
“Saturn products are the pinnacle of automotive engineering of our era. Their advanced design and class leading features have made them, and their parent company, General Motors, the success stories that drive the Mighty Ship of State to ever new heights. We can all rest comfortably that Saturn will, until well after the demise all those reading this, continue to produce superlative products for all consumers.”
I’m planning to rush out to my Saturn dealer to buy one right now.
Sarcasm aside, the only people I have ever encountered that thought the S series cars were good and had never driven a really good small car like a Civic, Corolla or Jetta. There is absolutely no comparison between a Civic of the era and a Saturn and I have driven both. The lowly Escort was in fact a much better product, as was the Mazda 323.
Really, I should love Saturn cars because I made loads of money fixing them in our Firestone shop and loathe Civics which only got brakes and oil changes.
Jetta a “good” car? As a dissatisfied previous owner of a MKIII VR6 I’d beg to differ. I’d happily take a Saturn S series over a concurrent comparably equipped Jetta.
Nice to drive, yes. Reliability? Nightmare.Didn’t want to be accused of being too pro-Japanese car.
You just insulted all Ford tractors. Saturns weren’t even THAT smooth.
You took the words right out of my keyboard. 🙂
I remember going to check out the new Saturns back when they came out. They offered two 4 cyl engines back then and were very proud of them both. The salespeople were wonderful, and the whole dealership experience made me really really want to love the car, but — those gawd-awful rough, noisy, tractor engines. I just couldn’t see myself living with 1960s Renault* NVH levels (without the comfy seats!) in a brand-new car. I finally ended up buying a lightly-used Rabbit L, which for its day was impressively refined and handled really well. 0 to 60 took way longer than I’d have liked, but once up to speed it was a blast to drive.
*not a slam, I love the Renault R-10. 🙂
Never owned a Saturn, but two friends owned them. One a first gen coupe and the other an LS200. Both cars went to very high mileages. The LS went to just shy of 400k. Maybe they weren’t refined as Toyota, but I think they were very long lived cars.
We had a ’95 SL2 5 speed, bought at around 100k miles and engine finally expired at 267k miles (timing chain). Never really had major problems, starter, clutch cylinder assembly, shifter cable, motor mount, alternator, waterpump, power steering pump seal and CTS switch were all that needed replacement besides brakes, tires and battery. Did burn a lot of oil, though. It’s 8.5 0-60 was decent for the times, rode and handled fine.
I remember first hearing about Saturn in the news on TV. I think they already had their logo, so it must’ve been 1986, so I was 10 or 11 years old. I was excited because this was basically the first new American car company founded in my lifetime, although I thought there had to be more to the story. I looked at the fine print of Saturn ads in magazines, and I’m sure there was no mention about GM anywhere. In those pre-internet days, it took a long time for me to discover that Saturn was really a new GM division. They were very secretive about it.
I test drove two Saturns – a 1995 S-Series sedan and a 2004 Ion. The 1995 model wasn’t too bad, but I have to agree with Canucklehead – the engine was not nearly as smooth as the one in my 1993 Civic EX.
The Ion was simply awful. I test drove a 2004 Ford Focus ZTW wagon and a 2004 Civic EX sedan the same day. It was no contest. The Ion had no redeeming features, while the Civic had the best drivetrain and the Focus had the best combination of ride and handling.
Saturn’s no-haggle philosophy at the dealer level was innovative, but it was swamped by the internet. Sites such as Edmunds.co. allowed buyers to easily compare prices and get a good handle on what to ask for a trade-in and how much of a discount they should demand. By the early 21st century, the no-haggle philosophy simply wasn’t a big deal anymore.
Unfortunately, Saturn was ultimately emblematic of two big problems with GM – namely, the belief that throwing lots of money at a problem is a surefire way to correct it, and that PR razzle-dazzle can mask a product’s deficiencies. Ford’s entry in this class during these years was the much-less-ballyhooed Escort. In the end, the Escort was just as successful (except in PR value, which ultimately proved to be fleeting for GM) and cost a whole lot less money to engineer and market.
Based on return on investment, the Escort blew Saturn out of the water. There just weren’t fawning stories in the media about Escorts. Ultimately, however, profits are what keep automobile companies in business, not warm-and-fuzzy stories in the media.
I got an Ion as a rental a few years ago. I did not like the center-mounted gauge cluster, especially at night. I discovered that I subconsciously use the light from the gauges in my peripheral vision to remind me that the headlights are on. Since I never saw the light at the bottom of my vision, every few minutes I would panic that I hadn’t turned on the headlights. I’m sure it just takes some getting used to, but thankfully I wasn’t going to be driving the car long enough to get used to it.
Had the Ion actually been sold in RHD countries, the center-mounted cluster would be somewhat understandable as a cost-saving design decision. Since it wasn’t, it was just a bad gimmick IMO.
I assume that Ion was a badge-engineered Cavalier or something with a corporate engine, not one of the Saturn-specific engines. It sounded rough and loud, like a VW diesel. I would have been OK with that, had it actually been a 4-cyl. diesel, but it wasn’t.
Fawning stories are made in expensive suites, with plenty of free booze and steaks. GM has always been famous for wining and dining the car shills, oops, “journalists,” while Toyota has been infamous for putting them in the Motel 6.
My wife and I had a ’95 SL1, as did my brother; we had the car for 11 years and 111,000 mostly trouble-free miles, after which I sold it to my brother as a parts car for his car–he wound up keeping ours for another 2-3 years and selling his. It was a great entry-level, grad-school car. Would I have one now? Probably not. Was it a good car for us at the time? Sure. I think we dodged a bullet getting the SOHC version, as the DOHC engine seemed to burn oil prodigiously and eat timing chains.
Saturn put Spring Hill on the map (I also grew up within shouting distance of Saturn, in Nashville), although urban sprawl from Nashville has meant that GM’s pullout of Saturn and idling of the plant (apparently to reopen again) has not hurt the town as much as you might think.
I would add a third big problem to the two mentioned above–GM’s lack of attention span. Saturn was about halfway into its first generation when the signs of neglect started to show in the planning for the second generation, which could have been marketed as an Oldsmobile without anyone being any the wiser.
Folding Saturn into Olds would have probably been a good idea. Make them Olds-Saturn dealers and keep the Saturn branding. Some of the Olds models the Aurora in particular looked a lot like an overgrown early Saturn. Eliminating the extra overhead of the stand alone dealer network would have freed up some cash to put into the product.
I wondered from the begining why these cars weren’t just Oldsmobiles. Didn’t anyone @ GM see that they looked exactly like 3/4 scale W body cutlasses?
Even back then I thought that was the problem. They felt like 3/4 size cars inside. My 1988 Horizon was more grown up inside. They were very low, and the seats were small. The first Focus figured out that a car that size needed to be taller to have enough room.
With the innovative (and expensive to build) construction you would have thought that some original thinking might have gone into design, but no. Just shrink a Cutlass.
I remember a review that said usually there is a ride/handling trade off but Saturn managed to combine poor handling with poor ride quality. And of course a rough engine. Another review said no car company had gotten so far with a just a flower and a smile.
What of course the article doesn’t include since it’s just the early years is that GM seemed to lose interest. The second generation was a rebodied first. The Ion was roomier but cheap inside and with stupid center instruments. Then they just forgot the whole plastic concept and randomly imported or built Opels without much thought. Buick has done rather better with that idea.
The midsized Aura, built on the Opel/Malibu platform, was actually a better looking Malibu, close to Audi level looks. Too late though as everyone knew they were going down. Once Saturn folded I thought Auras might be cheap but dammit I guess there weren’t that many and others also saw the appeal, and that you could get service and parts at any GM dealer. One parks near me and it still looks good.
GM should have pulled the plug on Saturn long before they did. It was pretty much a failed experiment from the get go.
The fact that they built the company and plant from scratch meant that by the time they made it to market the vehicles they had used as benchmarks to meet had moved on and the Saturns were past their “best by” date the second they started rolling off the line. Because it was an entirely new vehicle the cost of development meant that there wasn’t the money to make updates and try to catch up to the market.
On the one hand knowing what GM was at the time I can see the logic in the completely new company and car. On the other hand knowing that in many respects GM was still at the top of their game and built world class products in demand by other mfgs it was stupid to make the Saturn part unique just to be unique. Starters, alternators, AC compressors, and power steering pumps just to name a few of the pieces that could have used basic GM designs and saved a lot of development and tooling costs.
The big mistake came when they listened to the dealers who wanted a product that people could grow into. The proliferation of models brought back the badge engineering and it didn’t help Saturn’s overall volume. They did end up selling a few families up the chain but in the process neglected their entry model to the point that it no longer served to introduce new customers into the system.
Very good points made, Scoutdude. I’ll explore those in depth with my follow up piece about the end of days for Saturn. Sometime soon.
>>The big mistake came when they listened to the dealers who wanted a product that people could grow into. The proliferation of models brought back the badge engineering and it didn’t help Saturn’s overall volume. They did end up selling a few families up the chain but in the process neglected their entry model to the point that it no longer served to introduce new customers into the system.<<
This is exactly what happened with us–we did look at the L-series wagon (an Opel, of course), but by that point, what had seemed pleasant about the Saturn experience when we were in grad school was now yawn-inducing, and we wound up going not with a Saturn or another GM car at all, but with a Subaru, which I still have. I wouldn't rule out another GM car (my wife likes the CTS), but Saturn wound up being a dead end for us (and many others, I'm sure) as far as developing ties to GM.
Of course, if you really want an L-Series wagon, you can probably find a fire-sale Saab, but that's another (and sadder) story.
What seems to escape most people about the ‘creation’ of Saturn is the abrupt cancellation of Pontiac Fiero, GM’s first plastic clad ‘space-frame’ vehicle. I always found it a bit odd that Fiero was canceled just after the engineers ‘corrected’ its suspension woes… then used the same manufacturing technique for its new Saturn division! I’ve always suspected that GM ‘cut costs’ by moving the Fiero’s assembly line machinery to Spring Hill… Sad I really liked Fiero…
Please dont mention the Vue, Ion, or L series here. This article is about the SL/SC/SW’s, the only real and true Saturns. Easy way to tell apart: Tailpipe exits on RH side of S-series, LH on others.
It always tickles me that the SLs were thought of as “small” in the US when they’re longer and wider than GM Europe’s contemporary “large family” offering (the Opel Vectra A / Vauxhall Cavalier Mk III). I think that ever since the size gap between the US and the rest of the world has been narrowing, with “small” getting bigger here as it gets smaller there. As it was GM applied the Saturn marketing/customer experience model to selling Daewoos in Europe… which (much like Saturn) worked well initially, and ran out of steam when investment in new products faltered.
I wonder if the Saturn story might have ended differently had the international playing field levelled out sooner? Perhaps a globally marketable “different kind of [small] car” could have gained momentum faster (and sold more) giving GM the confidence it clearly lacked: to invest in genuinely “different” second generation Saturns? (rather than the rebodied Opel Astras the marque wound up with…)
I’ve also never understood why the EV-1 project wasn’t bundled under the Saturn umbrella… Of course GM lost their nerve there too so it wouldn’t have helped, but in styling, manufacture and ethos the EV-1 seemed like a natural fit for Saturn, and a genuinely forward thinking product (however flawed) could conceivably added to the “different-ness” halo.
EV-1s were in fact marketed through Saturn dealers in California (and the one or two other places they were available at all). Lease-only, hence the infamous mass destruction.
A friend had one of the early station wagons, a beautiful car in maroon – same color as the sedan shown above – with tan leather seats. He had to replace the entire charging system and battery at about 30k miles. I don’t know if he kept it or what happened to it after that.
Never sold over here though Ive seen one someone must have privately imported it and was being sold online $1 reserve.
I normally comment on things here that are remnants of long ago memory. Not so with the Saturn. Very recent and a terrible mix of good and bad.
We purchased a 97 sl. Extremely good car. As for engine smoothness I guess I didn’t really care. Seemed better than the old pieces of trash I drove as a bachelor. What did matter though was about 180k of very troublefree use. An alternator, a battery, and an AC compressor stick in my mind. Service was great. Cavernous back end with fold down seats. Just everything we wanted. Liked it so well that when my beater had a stroke, we bought a 2000 model. The service that they bragged about was real. A family type atmosphere.
Well I saw a 2002 vue on the road and liked it a lot. Unfortunately my wife fell in love with it and had to have it. Sold the 97 to a daughter who wrecked it shortly afterward. Did I mention the safety record of Saturn. More than one daughter wrecked a saturn and we still have the same number of daughters.
Changes meant I needed a truck so I got one and we got rid of the second sl and bought a 2002 vue with the 4 cyl and the stick. Great car. Until it broke.
$800 to change a slave cylinder for the clutch. (about $60 in my Nissan truck), needed a new transmission and several computers. The old deal about not buying the first year of a new car is correct. Turns out it wasn’t a real Saturn anymore. Certainly not built in Tn. I had bought an opel. Tickled pink with it’s performance when it was running.
Now I don’t know why some people like some cars better than others. The accord I once had was smoother than the Saturn when the accord was running. The Saturn sl just ran, gave good economy, and almost never broke. Scratch it in the parking lot. Probably not. I don’t know much about the L series but they had the same reputation. My wife had to have a 2007 vue when we finally had to buy another new car. It had a Honda engine and transmission so we bought it. We got rid of it finally because we felt we had stretched our good luck as far as it would go. Granddaughter bought a typical pos ion/opel/saturn and I had enough. Generational sins?
Saturn made an excellent car. By 2008 (I think), the plastic was gone and their reputation should have been. It would have been an excellent time to roll it into another brand since buying a Saturn wasn’t getting a Saturn anymore.
I have driven Nissans for even longer than I did Saturns. With the SL I always had a grin when I was driving it. Lost that driving vues but I have it back with this little Nissan Cube.
We all have different needs in a car. However, I expect I would still have the 2000 SL if my needs hadn’t suddenly included tools and a truck
Wow – that picture of the Saturns at the Delco Electronics plant in Kokomo, IN certainly brings back memories. I was a college co-op student at Delco from 1984 to 1986. I believe that picture is at the intersection of E Lincoln Road and US 31 looking to the northeast, and the R&D building Plant 10 is in the background. There was a huge spherical water tank with a giant “D-E” on it that is gone now as well (and the Chrysler plant across the highway had their own, similar water tank, also taken town).
Unfortunately, the Delco Electronics sign is gone now, as are most of the jobs from that one-square-mile location that also had manufacturing Plants 6-7-8-9 and Fab 3, the IC Chip manufacturing plant (how many of you knew that GM made their own IC chips?) which is still in operation. The “new” company is General Motors Components Holdings or GMCH, that owns what is left of Delco Electronics/Delphi. I think there are less than 2000 employees left in Kokomo, when there used to be close to 20K back in the 1980s. Sad.
I knew several people that owned Saturns and they all had good service from them. Some timing chain issues, and excessive oil consumption was a problem too.
Thank you very much for sharing your memories with us !
The “Iron Triangle” (Muncie, Anderson, Kokomo) is not even a shadow of what it used to be. All victims of the demise of GM.
My co-worker has an SL2, he gave me a ride to work once and the seat foam has totally collapsed, it’s got bucket seats, literally like sitting in a bucket which is not a good thing.
That’s exactly the same thing that happened to my father’s 1981 Impala. Same old GM, in that respect anyway. I told him to go to the wreckers and yank some seats out of a Honda.
These didnt arrive down under another bullet dodged
The way to look at the best Saturn vehicles (the original ones) is in relation to the best of the domestic’s subcompacts today, i.e., the Cruze and Focus. When the Saturn SC and SL were objectively reviewed with their peers, while they were the best of the domestic competition, they still trailed Honda and Toyota. Even though there were many happy original Saturn owners, it still seemed that with all that effort and money expended, the cars were still second best.
But, today, GM and Ford (finally) have subcompacts that can go toe-to-toe with the best from Toyota and Honda (and sales are reflecting that), and they didn’t have to build brand-new factories, or come up with completely new marketing strategies, to do it.
The only caveat is if there was any residual effect of the Saturn experiment in the development of the Cruze and/or Focus. If so, well, maybe the Saturn wasn’t a wasted effort, after all.
Exactly. All they had to do was tap into their international operations to get products designed for buyers who did not want three ton barges. They could have done this years ago but for reasons not understandable by mere mortals, they didn’t. Probably it had a lot to do with people like Bob Lutz who had never driven a Honda.
Actually, it was the manifest failure of Saturn and GM’s subsequent bankruptcy that gave is products like the Cruze.
A small caveat about the Cruze: the cars are still too new to pronounce their greatness. GM has pronounced the greatness of their latest “import fighter” a few too many times.
“A small caveat about the Cruze: the cars are still too new to pronounce their greatness. GM has pronounced the greatness of their latest “import fighter” a few too many times.”
Truer words were never written. Spot on.
I wouldn’t say that the Saturn SC and SL were better than a contemporary Escort. Several friends and relatives had those Escorts, and they were durable cars…their main disadvantage was that they weren’t as refined as the Japanese competition. But they certainly weren’t inferior to Saturns in refinement or durability.
Ford used a Mazda platform for the 1990s Escorts. I’ve read that this was one way the company could justify the cost of a completely new Escort, as it just broke even on the first one.
The first-generation North American Focus shared a great deal with the European version when it debuted. They diverged for a few years when the second-generation European model debuted, but, for the United States and Canada, Ford chose to rework the existing Focus and sell it until the present model debuted.
Ford was using platforms and even cars developed by its partners (Mazda) or European operations for its small-car offerings in this country before the current Focus and Fiesta debuted.
Growing up in the shadow of Lordstown, you develop a different way of seeing the automotive landscape. By 1983, the Shenango and Mahoning Valleys had seen the collapse of the steel and the basic metals industry. We were fortunate to have GM Lordstown and the associated companies. I worked for a Tier 1 supplier at that time, an aluminum smelter and manufacturer, GM was a big part of our sales on the industrial side.
Then just as now, we worried about the loss of jobs and wealth from the Valley (we refer to both valleys as one), when word came that GM was starting something called the Saturn project. As time went on, more information was made known about it, and that GM was planning to build a dedicated small car factory somewhere here in the US. With recent job and population losses due to the collapse of basic metals, local leaders were keenly interested in how to attract these jobs. They set up letter writing campaigns, and other kinds of things to get GM’s attention and possibly land the new plant here.
The Valley had it all, close access to suppliers, excellent north-central location on Interstate 80, and already had a GM plant within spitting distance and a workforce familiar with how the big boys got things done. IIRC, at first GM was coy about their plans to locate the plant, but as time went on, GM started playing what I called the tax abatement lottery: Which city/county/state will give us the best deal for our new plant. We had no idea that this would become the template for later invasions of our soil by foreign operations. At the time, it instilled a great deal of anger on my part against GM; I thought it crass and cynical to play one rust belt community against another for the dubious chance that one of us would get the plant.
Remember, this was taking place in 1983-1984, shortly after Honda had set up operations in Marysville and we thought it logical that a new plant would be located somewhere up here. But as a friend of mine noted back then, all of us unemployed Yankees were leaving for the South, why wouldn’t GM?
I remember when we heard that the location was Spring Hill, Tennessee, we were feeling pretty duped and used. All of the dog and pony shows, the video appeals, the glad handing the GM execs and they put the plant somewhere else. They knew all along where it was going to go, why did they screw with all of these people and let this go on? It was then I started my own personal boycott of all things GM.
It’s tough to do when you live where I lived. I grew up in a Ford family, but I loved Camaros, and GTOs and GSs, etc… I’d had a 442 and a Trans Am by this time, and I was very accustomed to the peformance envelopes of these cars, and the status they afforded me.
Fast forward to 1991. I’m now living in Georgia, part of the Yankee diaspora in exile looking for a better life in the sun. I go to a Pace Warehouse, and sitting in the entrance is a new Saturn SL. I knew about them and had seen pictures of them, but it’s always different when you see them in person. I was underwhelmed. It looked like a bad copy of a generic Japanese car. I remember thinking to myself, how is this thing going to fare?
Fast forward to 1995. My brother in law has a brand new Saturn SL. He is in love with it, and tries to get me to fall in love with it. Not my cup of meat, thanks just the same. About that time, he gets into a small accident with the car, and ends up getting an uplevel Chevy Cavalier as a rental. He let me drive the Cavy around and I got to really appreciate the car. I had not paid much attention to the new one, as I thought it was a re-hash of the same one they’d been building since 1982. I was wrong. There were some very thoughtful features in the car, and best of all, it was cheaper than the Saturn. My brother in law had been a Chevy guy before the Saturn – he should take a look at this thing…
Fast forward to 2008. We’d moved back North to Western Michigan about 10 years earlier, to be closer to family. I long ago gave up on my personal GM boycott, as my Fords turned to crap and I wasn’t too sure about the new entity, Daimler Chrysler. I’d had enough of the Japanese brands when I was selling them.
We’re still GM Supplier family, and I got great lease deals and discounts on GM cars. I see that Saturn will start using Opel bodies and Opel inspired features on their new cars. Great. Can I get the GM discount on Saturns? No? OK. Sign me up for another Pontiac…
So here we are in 2011, Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Saturn have bit the dust. The marketing scheme that was Saturn has dried up and blown away, and even though they put out some acceptable product, did nothing for the image of the corporation. The money that was wasted on creating a ‘different’ company could have been spent improving the existing small cars. Adopting the no hassle negotiating tactics would have been revolutionary for Chevy, say. Oldsmobile had been the ‘technology’ arm of the corporation for quite some time, there was no reason to repurpose this fledgling (and failing) ‘different’ company to usurp Oldsmobile’s position in the ladder. If they had wanted to really re-introduce Opel to the US in a meaningful way, why not just keep them as Opels?
It’s painful to think about the events of the last several years, but the company has been right-sized and they appear to be doing well. My friends and relatives at Lordstown and the old Delphi plants nearby are still working and keeping the Valley going. When I was home this past weekend, I saw many new Cruzes driving around, which I take as a good sign for the future.
Sorry for the length of this post.
Why sorry? That is a great post, geozinger. Thank you for sharing it with us!
Outstanding post, my friend – post of the week!
After reading, I imagined what could have been done to the Cavalier (Cockroach of the Road©) if GM had given it the resources it deserved!
For all the craziness GM (and the others) has done, I think they still make the best domestic cars overall in recent years. I drove Chryslers through the 80’s & 90’s and they served us well, because the GM cars I could afford really were junk (IMHO) and I couldn’t afford the Malibus/Celebritys/Impalas of the time.
I’ll probably replace my Impala with another GM product when the time comes, especially if I can get a supplier discount ofr better!
©geozinger
Thanks for the compliments guys. I fired that off last evening after a couple of beers with dinner. I get wordy when I do that. But it was a lot of ground to cover. I wasn’t sure how it was going to be received, as I’d just written a companion article to the original post…
Good post, and not too long given the topic.
About the siting of the plant–having grown up in Tennessee, I remember the drama about GM’s consideration of Middle Tennessee as a site for Saturn. Nissan had opened its plant in Smyrna a few years earlier (I think it’s the largest single auto manufacturing facility in North America under one roof now, though I’d have to verify that), and state officials were trying to play up Nissan’s success as an example of how friendly Tennessee could be for manufacturing. (Low taxes and weak unions factored into this, although Saturn was a UAW facility.) Lamar Alexander was in his second term as governor, and probably saw getting a second large auto plant as a selling point for a Presidential run, in which he’d paint himself as a pragmatic young pro-business Republican. Of course, he bombed out in the primaries twice, and his Presidential ambitions died before Saturn did (he’s in the Senate now).
I agree about the rebadging of Opels–I wonder if it might not have been better to build the S-Series cars in Spring Hill and market them as Opels alongside the Vectras that became the L-Series, instead of creating Saturn in the first place? At least Opel had a history in the US.
Yeah, great comment. I wish CC had a star or upvote or something function.
A few thoughts:
The front of that slightly generic mock-up smacks of Achieva.
My parents tried out a used ’93 Saturn back when we still had our Z-24. My mom somehow locked herself in the back seat and couldn’t make the windows roll down. We never even left the parking lot with it.
In hindsight, GM should have made the Saturn the replacement for the Cutlass Calais rather than the Underachieva and brought over the Holden VR Statesman as the Regency or something. (Sorry, I still can’t get over that GM made small, medium and large of the same exterior design :-p)
My parents bought me a ’92 SL2 in ’98 as a HS graduation presents of sorts. It was loaded to the gills for a Saturn; leather seats, factory CD player (in ’92!), power moon roof, alloy wheels, spoiler. The only option it didn’t have was an automatic transmission, which I didn’t want anyway. The engine was a bit rough, as was the ride, but I loved driving it. The day I picked it up from the dealer they had it in the showroom with a big red bow and balloons on it. They took a Polaroid of me standing next to it, I wish I still had it. I went straight to work from the dealership, and the check engine light came on before I even got there. I can’t remember what the light was for now, but within a year it needed a clutch and new struts, to the tune of $1500. My dad asked me if I had the money, which I didn’t, so he sold it at a loss and gave me his old Camry.
Ironically, he decided to give GM’s other short-lived small car failure a try, and bought a used ’96 Geo Prizm (he was and is still very GM loyal, but even he would admit it was really a Toyota). After driving it for a few years, he gave it to my sister. She still has it, the rust is getting to it but it’s still mechanically sound, I do most of the repairs and maintenance for her.
Never owned one. The Saturn hoopla happened during my down-and-out days…twelve years I couldn’t afford anything but garbage.
But I had toxic memories of GM delivered via a Chevette I had to struggle to afford, and which engine didn’t outlast the three-year payment book.
I did and even now do have co-workers who drove/drive old Saturns…they’re cheap to buy and usable work cars; but I never heard anything approaching praise for them. Once long ago, I asked one guy about his – commenting about how on paper, it looked like GM had it right. He looked at me funny and started reeling off a long list of systems that had failed…
In the end, I’m not surprised at how it all ended…how Saturn’s leash got tightened up to where it was brought inside the GM funny-farm; and once there, with all appeal stripped out, with rebadged Opels and Chevys…how it failed. It was the right approach, in the beginning; but even such a radical approach couldn’t keep GM from being GM.
In the end, it couldn’t help but fail. Company politics is a strong force in a large, entrenched bureaucracy like GM; and too many powerful players were threatened by a company which challenged established values.
Values such as planned obsolescence, mediocrity and minimalist engineering. Values which brought out such triumphs as the Turbo-Hydramatic 200 – field tested by customers at their own expense.
Yes, GM had its glory years. But the bad habits became entrenched and smothered and stifled the better ideas and practices. The death of Saturn, as a concept and as a goal, is one more proof of that.
Bang on, Sir!
seemed to me that the whole premise of the company was to build a car for people who were scared of car salesman. they always emphasized their excellent relationship with customers in their advertising. they barely mentioned the cars. not very compelling…
i did admire the plastic body panel idea and the wrap around rear window. i know that panel gaps were an issue with the plastic. maybe if they had been more stubborn, they would have figured it out in time. i think one of the most compelling reasons to buy a corvette vs. the competition is they don’t rust. somebody should do that right in a moderately priced family car.
The front of that prototype looks like a Corsica with an S-15 front cap grafted on.
I had always assumed that part of the rationale for splitting Saturn out as a separate division, rather than rolling it into Chevy or Olds, was in hopes of snaring buyers who wouldn’t consider anything from one of the existing domestic brands. I don’t know how much that was part of the official agenda — that isn’t the sort of problem that’s easy to officially acknowledge — but that was how I perceived it when the Saturn was first introduced.
One minor correction: Cadillac introduced the self-starter in late 1911 for its 1912 models, not in 1918. Henry and Wilfred Leland considered it a safety issue; the elder Leland was reportedly horrified by stories of people being injured or killed by crank handle kickback.
While a wonderful dream and opportunity to start fresh and new, ultimately Saturn failed because of mediocre product and inside-GM backstabbing. There is no comparison between a 1990 SL and a Civic. And the Civic was cheaper.
A friend bought an SC, and loved the experience. She even did the Homecoming, which truly was a magical time for the owners and their unique club. GM played that one brilliantly.
Unfortunately, Saturn was starved for product, and when they finally built a bigger one, it was a trouble-prone Opel. Then quizzical Ion. And the Relay.
Finally the Vue made some sense and sales; the Aura was surprisingly a good looking, competent sedan (at least comparable to the original Fusion), and I thought with the Outlook, Astra and Sky, Saturn was FINALLY hitting its stride as a more modern Oldsmobile, appealing to middle class families looking for a touch of euro styling and driving finesse.
It was not to be.
Geozinger, great story!
My wife and I have a 96 SL2 and I don’t care what anyone says about them, it’s the best car we’ve ever owned. You just can’t kill them little buggers. It has the DHOC 1.9 liter with around 102,000 miles and what I call a bulletproof 4 speed auto. We put a Reese hitch on it in 06 and we tow a 1750lb pop-up camper with it (yes I also installed an electric brake controller). The only time it argues with us is going up steep hills but the little beast makes it. I bet if you try towing that same camper with a same year Corolla it would rip the a** out from under it or blow the engine. I’ve owned 2 Toyota’s and they both made my 82 Chevette seem like a Benz. The only small car I ever owned that came close to what it can do was an 86 Plymouth Turismo with the 2.2 H.O. and 3 speed auto. I think GM made a big mistake by killing Saturn through corporate games.
A few notes: Vue was built in Spring Hill, was not Opel derived. ion was not a rebadged Cavalier but built on the brand new Delta platform which spawned the Cobalt.
Dave M: “quizzical ION”: perfect description. I have an 05.
My older brother had a 95 SL1 and I went out and found my own after a short visit. They couldn’t kill their SL1 and my bro and family are serial car killers. The 95 I got is in the hands of my little brother now and still running fine @ 158,000 miles.
Said S Series experiences brought me to the 05 ION which has also been essentially reliable and weird. Engine and trans [GM hydra, not the POS vTi,…] are a great combination and will run for many years to come. The body will still look great even more years from the day it rolled off the forecourt of Saturn north hills. It will still be strange, polarizing and emblematic of GM’s self destructive tendencies.
The 95 I bought had 116000 miles on it and was ten years old, still tight, still viable as a daily driver and continues to be.
That said: what a bloody waste of resources, energy, talent and treasure.
Even with oldtimersdisease I think I remember that the SL was built at spring hill and vue is opel derived. I think the SL was a great car. The vue was an opel and I do not care to relive that experience.
The car was sold in Japan too!
Sold in Japan! Watch out Bryce: coming your way…..
Yeah since the first comment Ive seen several including one with three different coloured panels repaired on the cheap after a crash so there are plenty here.
The VUE was designed by Saturn.Built in Spring Hill. The Theta platform was subsequently used on the Equinox, Torrent and Antara. The 2nd Generation VUE was a re-branded Opel Antara and built in Mexico
I had, have, two. A SC1 and a SW2 both 2000. Both getting close
to 300,000 miles Tough little work horses, around 40 mpg on the highway.
Cheap parts and easy to work on.
Another entry in the Peoples Car that the snobs hate.
Same people that hate Suzuki Swifts and Samurais.
Now, building “good small cars” doesn’t matter all that much, since entry level buyer’s now want cheapest CUV. And the current Civic is nearly a mid size car, far from the “small” 1980 version.
I remember having a healthy dose of cynicism towards Saturn when GM announced the car line and as history has proven my cynicism was well placed.
Flashback to May 1993. I was curious about Saturn. Test drove and was interested. A week later Mazda was having a promotion on Protege sedans. Free a/c or auto. Test drove a Protege DX. The car was a completely different than the Saturn. Lighter, quicker, much better handling. Quieter. Had that car for 16 years and 210,000 miles. Died by rust in the rear strut towers.
Just a few thoughts:
Looking at the timeline for the Saturn division, from green light to putting the 1st cars in the showroom…at least to me seems quite long. For example, if pre-production prototypes were assembled in “spring 1988” why did it take until late summer 1990 for cars to roll off the production line?
EVERY time GM launched a totally new small car in the previous 25-35 years, it would come roaring out of the starting blocks, but run out of energy way before it got near the finish line. YET, somehow they thought this time would be different….isn’t that close to the definition of insanity?
By spending a bundle on developing the original SL and SC, (it seems?) GM was short of funds for (necessary) updates and future new generations or models.
As others here have said, the 1st generation cars looked a bit too much like a small Oldsmobiles, I don’t think it would have done much good/saved anyone involved any money, but maybe they should have been “folded into” Oldsmobile dealerships.
I had a 1991 SC2. It was a great car. Occasionally the battery would die an untimely death because of the engine compartment heat. But compared to the POS 1988 Chevy Beretta GT it replaced, a dead battery was q minor trouble, indeed.
Bought the SC2 for $13,500 new. Traded it on a 1996 Honda Accord for $13,500 trade in credit. So not a bad ownership experience.
I only got the Accord because I wanted something larger. The Accord was also a great, but souless, car. It was also not without it’s problems.
I remembered when the Saturns first came out. A few initial impressions:
Walked into the dealership and the “sales consultant” (Saturn didn’t like them to be called “salesman”) was polite and courteous and unobtrusive as I walked around the car examining it. Also seemed more upfront and straightforward than other dealer salesman. Looked at a brochure and noticed the emphasis on Saturn “family experience” rather than the car detail specs. Gave me the impression that a Saturn buying and owning a Saturn was akin to being a “feel-good-warm-touchy-fuzzy” experience not unlike being part of a hippy cult feeling. I also had red flags warnings as my gut feeling is that anything “feel-good-warm-touchy” is aimed at distracting from an other mediocre product.
The car itself was not offensive nor did it impress me as refined as the Hondas, Nissan and Toyotas. But it seemed like a basic, if not mediocre transportation to get you to your destination and back. And that’s what I look for in a car: Does it get me to the destination reliably and without drama? Is it economically to own? Is it a quality product? The plastic body panel on space frame that promised dent resistant and easily replacement seemed like a good concept. The engine sounded and felt rougher than the Japanese engines, but the “consultant” explained the engine had a timing CHAIN rather than the belt; Timing chain didn’t need to be replaced.
Routine maintenance costs seemed reasonable. Even replacement parts and labor costs seemed okay. The dealership service was promised to be a more pleasant experience compared to conventional dealers.
The last third thing that stood out was the non-negotiable price. Saturns weren’t discounted. I don’t like buying high dollar items at full price, but the sales consultant said the Saturn price was competitive with the Japanese cars by the time you got through haggling. Maybe so, but the way I saw it was the similar Japanese cars offered a more refined car at the same price as a Saturn. Then the consultant offered to throw in a couple of “freebees”, like a Saturn coffee mug to make me “feel good”.
I walked away not really impressed with the product or taken in by the “touchy-feely-warm-fuzzy experience.”
Shame Saturn didn’t remain “true to original self”. I think the brand could have eventually been marketed exclusively as the green hybrid / pure EV division for GM.
This was posted six years ago, it’s like a Classic Curbside Classic. Where the heck did all that time go? And what was the first ever CC post on it’s own website?
The first was the Welcome page. Then the ’59 Cadillac CC that I just updated and re-ran last month: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1959-cadillac-coupe-deville/
Interesting reading. I remember the hooha in Car and Driver as GM drip-fed information to the media. From what I remember reading about it, it turned out to be just another small(ish) car but with a different dealer philosophy (needed!) and a different form of body construction.
I’m trying to get a handle on the timing here – was Saturn supposed to show what GM had learnt from the NUMMI experiment? Or were the two programs running concurrently? And if the latter – why?
NUMI cars (Corolla based Nova/Prizm) were produced in Fremont California from 1985 to 2002, the same production line Corollas were produced on. Today, Teslas are built here.
I just never really understood the whole point of Saturn. “A different kind of car, a different kind of car company” – wait, what????
GM was already building small cars, the J-body, why not just spend more time and effort on making them the absolutely best small cars they could possibly be, and scrap this whole Saturn boondoggle? And when the Saturn cars did finally come out, they were just so mediocre in so many ways, clearly not a great leap forward by any stretch of the imagination. Absolutely astounded that Roger Smith thought this was the way forward. Idiot!
I owned ’91 Saturn and an ’88 Corsica about 2011-12. Both cars bought used, both for around $800.00, both 4 doors, both over 100,000 miles on them, both not wrecked, rusted or any obvious sign of abuse or neglect and were purchased in good running condition. I thought the Saturn was a better car than the Corsica although repair parts costs(starter) for the Saturn were higher and more difficult(equals more time which means more labor costs) than for the Corsica. I did like the damage resistant plastic body panels on the Saturn and the fact the car felt more substantial and not as cheap as the Corsica. These are only my personal experiences and observations which may or may not be those experienced by others. Both were base 4 cyl engines with automatic transmissions and both returned about the same gas mileage. Of the two, the Saturn is the one I would ever consider buying again.
In ’93 I was replacing my ’83 Accord Hatchback. My father worked for GM so I always looked to see if I could use the family discount. I also had the GM CARD and had quite a few points I could use to buy a GM car. I really wanted a wagon and looked long and hard at the Saturn wagon. If I recall correctly, the price was firm and I couldn’t use any kind of GM family discount. Plus, airbags were just appearing and I thought they were a good idea, especially in a small car. Saturn had those automatic shoulder belts and I couldn’t get past them. I looked at Honda and they had just come out with the Civic with the EXO option – which included a passenger side airbag. I also looked at the Accord wagon, but it was beyond my budget. So comparing the Saturn with auto belts and no discount to the Civic (way better looking), I got the Civic and never seriously looked at Saturn again.
As an aside, Roger Smith was Treasurer of GM in the late 60’s early 70’s. 767 Fifth Avenue was the GM building in Manhattan and their financial headquarters. It’s where the Apple store (Crystal cube) is. My father was a financial analyst (he was an EXCEL spreadsheet prior to PC’s) for MIC (Motors Insurance Corporation) which reported up through GMAC and then to GM Treasury. My father’s least favorite part of the job was when Roger gave presentations. Dad operated the kodak slide carousel and he was always nervous that something would screw up and get Roger angry. The worst was the time a slide appeared upside down.
It’s funny how manual (spreadsheets and slide shows) were prior to PC’s. I also remember playing with mechanical adding machines they had at the office (that was more 60’s and in the Garden City office). Now you can do in minutes what used to take days and a team of people to do. He retired before PC’s. His team had an accountant and two “girls” (probably woman in their 40’s) who created the manual spreadsheets. I’m sure by the 80’s (after he retired), Visicalc or it’s equivalent replaced their group with 1 person and a PC.
In 1993 I was shopping for a replacement for my 1977 VW Rabbit. I wanted small wagon with a manual shift. Saturn had such car, so it made my short list. The dealer experience was pleasant enough, although the nearest dealer was in Wilmington, DE, 45 minutes from my home just outside Philadelphia. The low seating position made it feel like driving a go-cart. No airbag was available and the seatbelts were cumbersome. The engine was course. The security cover for the cargo area was a clumsy joke. Honda, Toyota, and Subaru all offered a more substantial vehicle with more refined details, smoother engines and transmissions and the features I required. I bought a Corolla wagon for less than the Saturn cost. I’m still driving that Corolla with 150k miles. I can’t imagine that I’d still be driving the Saturn.
Kind of ironic that the Prizm (Corolla) was available in the same time period but had nowhere near the same sales volume. It was a better car. What if the Prizm was named Saturn instead from the start. Think of all the money GM would have saved. Probably not all that many people realized the Prizm was basically a Corolla when visiting the Chevy dealership.
GM could have had stand alone Saturn dealerships and no price haggle, warm and fuzzy marketing, etc. without the expense of a new plant (unless needed for sales volume) and car design, and had a better product to boot. Would the general public really realized or cared about the cars origins, as long as GM still poured out the marketing hype?
“GM replaced the entire cars instead of just their radiators, (or instead of doing nothing at all, as in the really bad old days,)”
They are still putting in the wrong antifreeze, the bad old days never went away and GM doesn’t care to this day! GM still owes me a car and I would only accept the cash value not a replacement made by them.
That first edition coupe is a nice looking car.
The four doors are too generic.
I have my Saturn for 7 years and I still love my car. She still looks and feels great. She was perfectly made by experts. The goal was to make cars that would be an everyday and reliable car for the working people.
Hi everyone. And to the author, this was a very interesting read! I was actually there for all of this: I was one of the people that helped birth Saturn. I wrote the brand book that outlined the name and what it should stand for, how that should (and should not) be marketed. Saturn was to be the anti-Christ to everything that was GM at the time… a tricky proposition. I was one of the lead people and worked for Landor, the firm that was hired to do a name and logo. We did a lot more. Through extensive research we came up with (and championed) the no hassle car buying, the look and feel of the company, and even a few of the introductory ads. The dealership arrangement was a really tough sell, as you might imagine. Very expensive to pull off, but absolutely critical to the launch and success of the brand. As for Roger smith being the father of this? Total BS. Bill Hoglund (sp?) had been the chief architect of the Fiero which had broken a few boundaries at GM (mid-engine, plaster body parts, etc) and he — not Roger Smith — was at the helm when they hired us in about 1983. I am 100% certain that Smith was quite resistant to this, and was the reluctant groomsman, if that. There were about four people in the marketing department at rhe Saturn ‘skunkworks.’ Mostly it was engineering guys. Most people at GM absolutely hated the fact that Saturn even existed. It was a constant reminder that ‘everything you’ve done is wrong,’ when it came to smaller cars. Roger Smith kicked Hoglund out about mid-way through our involvement with it. And I had the pleasurer of convincing Smith that the GM name had to be arms length at least, and invisible wherever possible. I’m in the process of writing a book (title TBD) and that will add more into it. The book’s about that, and a few other things I was involved with for other companies. Reply with any Qs.
Hi Rod, Thanks for your comment; always nice to hear from the folks on the inside.
This was a fairly positive post here about Saturn. My own take is a bit less so:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1992-saturn-sl-gms-deadly-sin-4-the-eulogy/
According to Hogland’s bio, he worked as group executive in charge of GM’s central office operating staffs group in 1984. In February 1985, he was named president of GM’s new Saturn Corp. subsidiary after the death of 54-year-old Joseph Sanchez, who had died in January, only two weeks after being named president of the new company.
A year later (1986), Hoglund was named group executive in charge of the Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac Group. So it seems Hoglund was only at Saturn for about a year, and was not exactly it’s “father”.
You might also like this one (or not):
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1984-pontiac-fiero-gms-deadly-sin-19-give-us-five-years-to-get-it-almost-right-and-then-well-kill-it/
A mate of mine restored the only 1913 Cadillac 7 seat tourer to land in NZ new it was a four banger with electric start, GM also pioneered syncromesh before automatics, tetraethyl lead was Dupont during their ownership of GM so Saturn pales in the face of some of their ideas except maybe leaded petrol.
Yes, Cadillac debuted the self-starter in 1912, not 1918 as stated in the post. Synchromesh was in 1928 or so.
My sister bought a base ’93 Saturn sedan. The roof wasn’t plastic, and falling pecans dimpled it like bad acne scars. She didn’t change the oil and seized her first engine, but she kept it going until just before Covid. Like the Corvair and Vega and every other GMNA small sedan I can think of, it needed to be taller for better space efficiency, but lower had to win if wider & longer couldn’t.
I can’t help but to wonder if GM could have spent the money it torched launching Saturn on building a small Chevrolet or Oldsmobile that was actually world class. They had many of the basic component sets available to them from Opel. All they would have needed was a willingness to spend a few years developing a refined four-cylinder engine and to work with their suppliers to find a balance between price and quality.
In hindsight, they could have sold a million compact sedans at a loss in order to build a quality reputation for their entry level products, and it would have wound up doing more for GM than Saturn could have under any realistic scenario at a lower cost. Instead, they had the laughable narrative about how they made a few million on Saturn a few years after they took a one-time write-down of billions. Spend dollars to make pennies!
Your wondering along that line brings to mind the abstract of a 1983 SAE paper I have from time to time considered buying (I’m curious, but not $35 worth of curious). It’s Camira-General Motors J-Car in Australia, and the abstract reads:
The General Motors J-Car is currently marketed in many countries throughout the world. Although basically a common design each version is tailored to meet the needs of its particular market. GM Holden’s J-car, the Camira, was fully developed in Australia to meet local market requirements, and the result is a uniquely engineered and very refined vehicle which meets the engineering objectives and market requirements of GM Holden’s and Australia.
In my mind, “very refined” and “GM J-car” fit together about as well as…um…any two or more adjacent parts in every GM J-car I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. I’m curious if it was true, or if GM were using an imaginative definition of “very refined”.
[update, a few minutes later] Oh, dear. Looks like it was the latter; GM were having another of their selfgratulatory hallucinations. Wikipedia, FWIW, says:
the 1.6-litre Family II (16LF) engine, marketed as Camtech, was regarded as underpowered by much of the motoring media (…) Early models of the Camira suffered from a litany of quality control problems, which included smoking engines, insufficient drainage holes in the doors, poor paint quality and lack of adequate fan cooling, resulting in overheating in JB Camiras fitted with air conditioning.
Used Car Safety Ratings, published in 2008 by the Monash University Accident Research Centre, found that 1982–1989 Holden Camiras provide a “significantly worse than average” level of safety in the event of an accident.
There’s also a long, ugly list of common problems with them.
So…yeah, guess I don’t need to buy that paper.
I’ve some experience with a 1984 Opel Ascona 1.6S in Germany. Aesthetically, it was far more to my taste in interior finishes and exterior trim than any Detroit GM cars. Because it lacked bumpers, side impact protection, and emissions controls, it performed better than any early US J-car. I think it even ran on high octane leaded fuel, which allowed a high compression ratio and the improvements in power and economy that accompany one. Would the US car have handled better without 5-mph impact bumpers? Undoubtedly. Would it have been faster with 15% less mass and an engine tuned for power instead of clean air? Yes.
The Opel Ascona and Vauxhall Cavalier were well received and popular cars in their day, but they’re remembered about as fondly by their owners as Chevy Cavaliers, Pontiac J2000s, etc… are by their owners here. Chances are that making an Ascona pass NHTSA and EPA regulations would have resulted in a slightly more austere J2000 rather than a bargain BMW 320i.
Seems to me the only real solution for GM’s woes would have been to undergo the brand rationalization they only finally completed by killing off Pontiac and Oldsmobile (and Saturn). The thing that killed GM was the constant infighting amongst the various organizations, especially on the marketing side – which of course took away their ability to focus on product, and created disasters in Engineering as the latter responded to whatever shifting winds were wafting down from the 14th floor.
The main problem was that “Sloan’s ladder” didn’t make sense anymore, and the result was a complete lack of focus as well as frequent circular fire-drills.
Right now, it rather makes sense as Chevy for the everyman (and sports cars), Buick as the Acura to Chevy’s Honda, and Cadillac for high-end luxury/sports, with Chevy/GMC trucks depending on the dealership (in an ideal world they would merge those also and get rid of Chevy Trucks, but I cannot imagine that happening soon) – there shouldn’t be any particular infighting between Chevy and Buick, nor there should be between Buick and Cadillac, if Cadillac is positioned appropriately upmarket.
Saturn was one of GMs biggest blunders. Instead of using capital to update horrible archaic platforms (the J body and N body) they wasted billions on an entirely new car, car brand, and dealership network. The saturn CAR was a great car. It should have been the 91 Cavalier/Sunfire but no, Chevy and Pontiac instead had to sell J cars for ANOTHER 14 YEARS! An 05 cavalier was horribly dated compared to a 91 Saturn. So sad. The GM divisions were starved of desperately needed capital and the corporation was saddled with another division that needed capital for future product. This all came to ahead with GMs bankruptcy in 2009. Too many brands, not enough capital.
Still driving my 96 Saturn SL2 (bought it for $9300 in 1998) and she now has 225,000 reliable, efficient and CHEAP miles 😁. She shares the garage in Knoxville with a torch red 2000 C5 so I’m able to easily take her offline for any maintenance items. All parts are obtained at Pull-A-Part or bought new at RockAuto.com wicked cheap! The last thing I did was the brake master cylinder at 200,000 and that cost me 15 bucks. She needs CV axles so I will do those soon at a cost of $100 through Rock. The AC still blows cold and she gets 40mpg around town routinely (lots of coasting w/ a 5spd!!) so I guess I’ll keep driving her until the motor blows. Of course, that may take a while as there are many Saturns out there with 350-450,000 miles. At 225,000 my SL2 STILL RIPS so I know she’s got another 100,000 left in her! When I hit 300K I plan to apply for an “Antique Auto” tag and under TN law the car will be registered for life. Thanks GM for making a car that NEVER needs replacing. So much for “planned obsolescence”! 😂😂😂😂