There is something about those buzzy, plastic, oil burning, Saturn S-Series. They are terrible. But, I find them amazing in just as many ways as I find them awful.
GM, you were on the right track with Saturn. You built an honest competitor to the Japanese imports. Observing the 1992 SL2 once in my proprietorship I could see where the designers and engineer’s ideas on how to beat Honda and Toyota were approved for production. A lot of the S-Series makes sense. The curved front and rear glass all but eliminates blind spots, the turn signals and wiper controls are surprisingly ergonomic. The space frame design and lost foam casting process for the engine block made the handling and fuel economy extremely competitive. The plastic body panels hold up extremely well so even a crusher bound S-Series can look presentable. Try finding a 200,000 mile Civic as dent and rust free as an equal mileage S-Series, I bet it would be quite a challenge.
I find the miles these S-Series can accumulate to be astounding. When I look at the mileage of crusher bound vehicles, besides Cold War era European vehicles and most body on frame domestics, I encounter the most jaw dropping odometer numbers in these blown out S-Series.
I was having a conversation with one of my good friends concerning the S-Series the other day. He told me “It’s like they built it to succeed in the used market, not the new market…” which I think sums up the S-Series quite well. He then went on to describe his most memorable moment in an S-Series. A time when he was a passenger in the back of his friend’s SL1 whom mistakenly identified an unmarked roundabout and proceeded to go the wrong way into oncoming traffic. He swerved to avoid an oncoming car thus jetting the SL1 into a curb. This obliterated the entire front end, rendering the car completely totaled. Then the airbags went off.
Unfortunately for Saturn, this new kid on the block was given a cold shoulder by the older and more influential brands of GM. When I take notice of the following S-Series model years, I find it painfully clear where a lot of those ‘Yes’ decisions and ideas of improvement from the early days turned into countless replies from the high-ups of: “No, I think it’s just fine.”
I once purchased a 1992 Saturn SL2 in response to acquiring a new job and the desire to find a car more substantial than my base model 92’ Tercel I was driving at the time. I purchased it from a fellow on craigslist for $1150. When I was initially looking over the car for consideration I noticed the faded Texas inspection stickers on the windshield. Also, the lack of rust on any of the suspension components led me to believe this car moved to the Midwest not too long ago. With 190,000 miles on the odometer I was very surprised of the SL2s excellent condition. The interior was immaculate; no stains on any of the carpets, even all of the plastic interior bits still had that fresh dull look before years of wear gives everything plastic the hand touches a shiny smooth surface. Almost as if the original owner wore cotton gloves every time he drove this SL2.
The charm of this well thought out vehicle soon buzzed and rattled its way into a complete annoyance. I found interstate driving to be a punishment due to the short ratio five speed, horrid engine vibrations (even with new mounts) and compact size. The SL2 was nice around town and for small trips but I never felt comfortable driving it. I found it fatiguing. Road trips, an endearing pastime of mine, were out of the question. I then understood how a bird feels with its wings clipped.
Perfect the first words my brother said when he saw my SL2 were “This is the exact type of car I’ve been looking for.” My brother, battle weary from seven years of 3rd generation F-body ownership, was trying to simplify his transportation. He wanted something he didn’t have to constantly worry about. He was to the point where any car that wasn’t going to snap its transmission linkage in rural Indiana during the middle of winter or stall out and have to get towed from the Indianapolis International Airport arrival zone, or stall out once again in the middle of rural Indiana during a crucial college booze run would be a suitable replacement for his current ride.
I owned the SL2 for just a few months before I sold it to my brother. I didn’t sink much money into it so I agreed to sell it to him for the price I bought it for. This purchase made the acquisition of a 1991 Volvo 740 possible. A vehicle I am thoroughly enjoying to drive.
I find myself conflicted on what opinion I should carry of the Saturn S-Series. On one side I think about all of the faults of that car. I think about when I commuted in that SL2 and how terrible mornings were. To wake up to the infinite interior vibrations during my drive to work was dreadful. I never want to experience a commute to work with sub-zero temperatures in an S-Series ever again. Along these lines of thoughts I think the S-Series is junk and should be forgotten forever.
On the other hand, I think of my brother. When he owned that Camaro he was tense, you could see it in his attitude and voice. He owned a 1992 Z28 25th Anniversary Edition, a beautiful vehicle he was very proud of. But to have pride in a sports car, as any car enthusiast can describe, can weary the soul. Concerns of scratches, dents, idiotic drivers and all other forms of wear and tear are equal to and sometimes greater than the joy received from actually driving the car.
This may sound strange, maybe it is an observation only a brother can notice about his brother, but I have noticed a change in my older sibling. In the past, traffic jams and clueless drivers enraged him. Every time it snowed, he cursed. His temper was always short. But when he purchased that SL2 from me and after a couple months of driving it, no longer did I hear of complaints of terrible travels. Less and less now do I hear about some idiotic driver who got in his way or cut him off. He approaches strangers with a smile and less a frown these days.
You can almost see a change in the way he laughs and what he laughs at. I hear less of his critical and snide remarks about the fallacies of humanity. More often we now share chuckles about the mysteries of everyday life. He is a friendlier guy now.
There really is something about those Saturn S-Series.
Related: 1992 Saturn CC: GM’s Deadly Sin #4
That’s a good point your friend made about these almost being made for the used car market. Those plastic body panels do certainly make them hold up well, at least cosmetically. It also makes them cheap to repair in the event of a collision.
My personal experience with the S-Series is limited to riding in several 2nd and 3rd generation sedans and coupes. Nothing really special. Certainly not the most comfortable compacts to ride in, but definitely not the worst (which IMO is the Ford Escort).
You also make a good point about driving a beater. When I bought a Datsun to keep me on the road alongside my precious, but disappointing Fiat, the difference in my state of mind while driving was very noticeable.
i think saturn really demonstrates why the japanese got ahead in the car market. saturn was a good concept. of course, the early models had a lot of flaws. have you ever looked at japanese cars of the first or second generation? early toyotas, hondas were deeply flawed. the difference is the japanese stuck to their knitting. after years of not so great small cars, they introduced the toyota corolla and the honda civic. same with the koreans. do you remember how bad the first hyundais to arrive in america? now look at them. saturn did a very credible job with a number of fresh ideas for a new car company. if gm had stuck to it, they would have had a winner. but they turned saturn into a badge engineered version of opel and killed the brand. so sad…
I owned a 91 coupe for three years and a 96 SL2 for 12 years, until the head gasket failed. I was very happy with the commuter service these cars provided, despite their obvious flaws. They never left me stranded, never burned oil, and did not nickel and dime me to death. I agree that GM destroyed the brand with mediocre product that never improved while Toyota, Honda and others made huge strides in the same time. But for driving grins, neither Saturn could even come close to my 85 Prelude. One thing I don’t miss, staring at a Suburban/Tahoe coming at me while hunkered down in those low Saturn seats!
I sold these cars for 11 years in Ottawa, Canada and when we first received the Ion as the replacement for the S-series, I knew right then that Saturn was doomed. The S had a few faults (oil consumption, SOHC head gaskets, engine cradle rust and a few other quibbles) but by and large they were good little cars that would take a beating and keep on going…My ex-wife is STILL driving her 2002 SC2 with almost 300000 km’s on it. She loves how it still looks sporty and has been dead-nuts reliable over the years. My nephew just moved to BC from Ontario, which is several days drive, and took the ’94 SC1 that I sold him all the way out there without a hiccup on the trip…They were good cars…for their time…
“My ex-wife is STILL driving her 2002 SC2 with almost 300000 km’s on it.”
I’m glad to hear that – my daughter has a 2002 SC2 with ~128000 km’s on it now, and I’m hoping it can last her until she’s out of school. If the mileage achieved by your ex is anything to go by, I have every reason to believe it will.
It’s not a bad first car for a teenage girl. It looks sporty, yet is great on gas and has been reliable in the year or so we’ve owned it. Her Saturn has a 5MT so she knows how to drive a manual now, which seems to be a lost art these days.
The plastic body has panel gaps you can see from outer space, and when these cars were new I remember thinking this made them look cheap – but 11 years on the SC2 still looks new – no rust or dents, and the paint is still shiny.
Interesting description about the car you owned: Horrible on the highway, too short gearing, noisy, buzzing, etc.
Sounds exactly like my first generation Scion xB. Excellent around town car, fatiguing and less than pleasant on the long haul.
Of course, the difference is that, given its strengths and inherent love, nobody (except me, I think) complains about the lousy highway behavior of the xB. But complaints about the Saturn for the same reason are legion. I wonder why the one is so easly forgiven, and the other has every fault held against it? Forever.
Nobody except you? I’ve been complaining about the same thing with my xB. It’s just not road-tripper.
But let’s keep in mind that the xB is essentially a micro-van, with a 1.5 L engine. So low gearing was essential. And FWIW, the engine really isn’t buzzy at speed, considering it’s turning 4000 rpm at 80. The Saturn engine had bad vibes all the time.
The xB’s ride was tuned for sportiness, which makes it harsh. And the lack of sound deadening in such a big square box accentuates the noise.
The point I’m getting at is that the xB is a specialty vehicle, with certain limitations. It wasn’t designed to compete against the Corolla or Civic as the company’s best shot at that segment of the market. That does make a substantial difference.
Is it wrong to assume the XB is one of those foreign vehicles that is not well adapted to this country’s rough roads, 100s of miles between cities, extreme weather, great elevation changes, and lackadaisical approach to vehicle maintenance?
Yes it would be. The xB is nothing but a Yaris with a bit longer wheelbase, a different body, a different final drive ratio, and a suspension tuned for sportiness (like a MINI). In terms of the conditions you listed, it’s a utterly bulletproof, reliable and economical like a Yaris (zero repairs in ten years except for one warranty issue). Its suspension tuning is great on windy roads, very sporty, but that makes it a bit stiff.
Ahhh ok. The 05-11 Yaris does a decent job of dealing with the rough roads that exist in Central New York. Some family friends often drive their Yaris dozens of miles a week over rough dirt roads both seasonal and non-seasonal and they said it was not shaking them up too much. Others have reported similar result and the Yaris’s ability to softroad. Honda Fits on the otherhand seem prone to losing their bumper covers on the same roads, shaking up their passengers, and someone actually abandoned their Fit for a few days until the road dried out enough.
Perhaps this isn’t fair, but…look at a Saturn. Then look at a VW Golf. Inside and out. Forget about their mechanicals
The VW has class. It has a fine edge about it, some subtlety, some integration of its lines and pieces. It’s sophisticated.
The Saturn looks homemade, disjointed, goofy, dumpy, and, in a word, crude. And inside? I’ve said enough, so I’ll spare you.
Some Saturns may have been more reliable than some Golfs. I’ll give you that.
But why did it have to look so cobbled? GM once produced some beautiful cars. Those days are long gone.
I have a 99 SW-1 and some time before that model year the engine mounts were redesigned and more counterweights were added to the crankshaft and the vibration is much reduced. Making for a much more plesant road trip ride. I have 266,000 on this one and have owned it for 12 years. I let me down one time when the alxe shaft snapped about 60 miles from home. There is a rubber damper ring on that shaft which caused the shaft to rust and break . It uses about a quart of oil in 1500 miles. I pull a small boat on a trailer with it on short fishing trips, at the most around 100 miles from home. I had to replace the muffler and exhaust pipe the first time in February for inspedtion. And the cat a few years ago when the honeycomb fell apart inside of the original.
Very nice discussion of what made Saturn Saturn, both good and bad. Your thoughts about a car being built for the used car market are interesting. I have long thought that more cars should be built for the used market – better used cars are priced higher, and higher used car prices mean less depreciation (and higher residuals) for the guy who buys or leases new. However, it would cost makers some time and money to get there, costs which most companies (with their focus on the next quarterly results) have been unwilling to incur.
From the beginning, it seemed to me like Saturn started out as the last old-style GM Division. A car line with its own unique engines, bodies, engineering and assembly plants had ceased to exist withing GM pretty much after the early 1970s. In my mind, it was what made Saturn uniquely popular with a desirable demographic while most of GM’s other small-car efforts were not as successful (other than as cheap CAFE credits).
I had a 92 SL1, bought from a friend who was a Saturn employee. It replaced an 87 Dodge Omni.It seemed so much more refined than the Omni and I did not think it was to bad on the highway, though the acceleration was better in the Omni. It had the 5 speed which delivered 35 with my foot in it and 40 plus MPG if I kept it below 65 MPH on the highway. It was a little tight for my long 36″ inseem legs but tolerable. The redesign in 96 was to small though.My leg would rub on the radio pod. I kept it until I got my 96 Impala SS, was tired of no power for passing on the 2 lane roads of Alabama and Mississippi. The Saturn only problem in the 60000 miles I had it was a power window regulator. My Sister got a 97 SC2 from the same friend and she loved it. The motor finally gave up at 200000 + miles which she replaced for her sons first car. The transmission gave up on it about 9 months ago and I believe he is now parting it out on ebay. Interior and paint still looks good on it though. I feel like Saturn had it right with the intial models but each redisgn it lost a little bit of its luster until it became a rebadged something else.
Had 2 SL1’s, both 97’s. The first one was actually tight and rattle free, the second one was the typical buzz box.
The SL1 was geared alot nicer for highway driving than the SL2’s. I used to pull down 40mpg in them easily.
Surprisingly durable little beasts. My second one is still going with 200K miles on it (sold it to a friend and it is his only car). Can’t say that I miss them, but I wouldn’t hesitate to buy another one if finances and circumstance dictated cheap, reliable and (now more than ever) slightly unique transportation.
I am a veteran of a 96SL and a 2KSL. Base model all the way with crank up windows and 40+mpg on trips. I guess you gotta see where you have been to appreciate where you are. In the 60s and 70s I drove some real junk. With the Saturns my butt hurt on long trips and that is the worst thing about either car. One ignition lock and two cooling fans, and one AC compressor so, overall in over 300kmiles neither really good or bad.
Excellent service from Saturn. Then I bought a 2002 vue and the fecal blizzard started. When Saturn became Opel West they lost me. I tried to buy another GM when I bought an Olds Bravada and found that the Opel/Saturn was probably not the worst GM could do.
I really knew years ago that the Japanese were the long distance dependability with economy champs. Now a Nissan and Toyota in the driveway. I don’t know what GM could do to bring me back. My son is driving a Traverse and seems to like it. Who knows? I suppose they will survive so long as we keep producing newbies willing to give them a try.
We had a ’95 SL2 for 17 years and 200,000 miles. Never left us stranded, didn’t nickel and dime us to death, and still ran like a top when we sold it (though it did burn oil like nobody’s business). The wrap-around glass gave it excellent visibility in all directions, unlike today’s bunker-style car designs. More important, it handled well and was fun to drive, and had character, flaws and all. And flaws it did have, even apart from the oil consumption. Gas mileage was unimpressive given its size, the whole thing buzzed and vibrated most disturbingly at high speeds, rear seating seems to have been an afterthought, and it was practically impossible to keep stable on the road with even a small amount of snow.
The Camry that replaced it is superior in all ways and it’s so bland, boring and appliance-y it makes me wish we had the Saturn back. Flaws, character and driving dynamics make for a much more interesting drive than antiseptic ultra-competency.
I cross-shopped the SL in 1995, ultimately coming home with a Grand Am since I could use the rebate from my GM card on the Pontiac but not the Saturn. Looking back, I think I should’ve stuck to the Saturn. The 1995 Cavalier bought by some relatives at that time had it’s share of major powertrain repairs with less than 100K miles. The Grand Am had the worst collection of interior components (if you can politely call them that) I’ve ever seen, to say nothing of the water pump repairs. There has to be a good reason you still see Saturns running around here (CA) in numbers far, far, beyond J and N body GM cars.
The Saturns I sampled drove nice and seemed well built. I have to admit I would be mighty disappointed if I had one and had another head gasket fail. Has GM learned how to design durable intake manifold/head gaskets? Anyway, I admire that these SLs – even the early ones – have some legs.
I agree. I had a ’96 SL2 sedan I got from the original owner with 79,784 miles in ’03. Just got rid of it last December with 290+k on the clock. Not perfect by any means but damn reliable. Repairs outside of normal PM? Exactly ONE starter motor, and ONE water pump. BTW, always ran Mobile 1 synthetic oil, no burning issues at all in winter, when ambient temps rose above about 80ishF, would use 3/4 to a Quart every 2K or so. Not bad at all.
I actually would like to see a Saturn go through a crusher since all those plastic panels behave differently than metal.
One annoying thing about early Saturns is their electrical issues that would leave the taillights not working which is annoying if you are following one. Sometimes the reverse lights come on instead of the brake lights and other annoying combinations or no lights at all.
I think emissions testing as well as age did a number of these in since pre-Ion Saturns do not seem to be that common anywhere. I have seen a few right hand drive Saturn’s for rural delivery service unless I am getting vehicles mixed up.
These cars basically succeeded at what they were meant to do when they were introduced. Remember that Hondas, especially then but even now, weren’t exactly known for being pleasant at higher speeds on the freeway. Short gearing made sense when speed limits were still all 55 or 65 mph. Things started changing on that front, when the national speed limit was repealed and enforcement on the freeways was dialed back.
GM’s mistake was in not keeping up with Honda and Toyota on update cycles, and not putting more effort into refinement. A 91 Corolla or Civic was kind of a buzzy thing, but by the late 90s, they’d improved considerably in that regard, while the Saturns had not.
Ideally, there should also have been a mid size Saturn much earlier, based on a stretched and widened SL, not on a crapbox Opel as eventually happened.
Really, for GM to pull this off, they would have had to divert resources elsewhere. I love Oldsmobile as much as the next guy, but the brand should have been shuttered as soon as Saturn took off. They ended up trying to sell to the same demographic by the late 90s, and GM could have afforded to do it right if they’d focused on one brand. Oldsmobile was going nowhere, Saturn had momentum, it’s a no-brainer in hindsight but even at the time I remember reading that there were intense debates about exactly this.
A good critique of the Saturn. My beef with them was that they were average cars that sold better than they deserved to.
Chalk it up to the power of marketing. The new brand name carried no baggage, there was plenty of advertising budget and the media coverage was phenomenal. The no haggle pricing worked great when the cars were hot.
The product itself has aged well. The styling is super fresh compared to all of those generic looking sedans with the almond headlamps, like what came later with the Geos. Great point about it seeming Saturns were designed to be good used cars.
As new cars the worst aspects were the engine noise and hard plastics inside. Those same hard plastic have probably aged quite well.
“It’s like they built it to succeed in the used market, not the new market…”
That’s pretty much true of every GM car built from like 1982 to 2008.
The problem with Saturn, and I’ve said this here before, was that it was a very GM way of trying to solve a problem, Hey! Lets created ANOTHER division! No, even better, a whole new car company! Really? When you already had 6 divisions that were starting to get blurry, what you need is a 7th?
GM would have been better served spending the BILLION(probably less) plus it spent in Saturn developing a kick ass J-car replacement, which was already 9 years old when the first Saturn was “birthed” in Spring Hill in 1990. Think about, in spite of all the Hal & Riney feel good advertisements, Homecomings and what not, Saturn, even when it was selling really well in it’s peak 1991-1996 years, never outsold the tired old J-body Cavalier.
We agree again, 100%! The actual Saturn car may have had some redeeming qualities, but the decision making around it was a colossal blunder, one of GM’s biggest Deadly Sins. Untold billions down the toilet…..
I really was interested in Saturn from the get go, I remember the announcement in 1982, the little glimpses here and there of this all world beating new “mystery car”, I remember Roger Smith on Donahue talking about Saturn, the hour long documentary that aired about Saturn in 1990, I got caught up in the hype, I wanted Saturn to succeed, but after standing back and looking at the whole thing several years after it launched, I had to ask. Why did it even come about?
“IF” Saturn had to exist, they should have gone with the plan that combined Saturn with Oldsmobile, I think that potentially could have been the only way that it “might” have worked.
The big problem was that Saturn was a 1992 solution to a 1982 problem.
GM had defined the import competitors as a “small car” issue, and the Saturn was a very reasonable competitor to the Corolla.
However in all those years it took them to launch Saturn, Toyota had decided to eat GM’s lunch. They launched a luxury brand which was kicking Cadillac in the teeth, and the 1992 Camry murdered GM’s profitable dominance in the midsize market.
GM spent the rest of the 1990s stumbling around and trying to figure out what to do. The best they could come up with was the 97 Malibu and killing Oldsmobile.
I wonder if the real problem with the “Saturn Project” wasn’t that it was too big, but that it wasn’t big enough. GM really needed a “GM Project” to reinvent the company.
Part of what Saturn was about was the marketing scheme. Saturn dealerships were not typical GM dealerships. There was some attempt at other GM makes (I know Buick did) at selling a market version of one model. Generally the markup was less, so the dealers were limited on how much wheeling and dealing they could do.
The Saturn itself never impressed me as being a better vehicle than other GM small cars.
GM started life as a holding company when Durant was unable to get Olds (REO) to form some combination company. So Durant formed GM and started buying up companies left and right until the Bankers could get rid of him. They consolidated GM into 4 makes, until Durant came back, bringing Chevy. They were able to rid themselves of Durant again, but GM continued with 5 or 6(GMC) divisions.
The idea behind having some divisions was to have a low priced end, a mid priced and then luxury divisions. However, looking at Classic Car Database, I fail to see much difference between the divisions. Chevy seems to be a low priced car and Cadillac was the high priced car. But Olds, Oakland and Buick seem to cover the same price range. Buick in particular seems to have models price near the top end of Chevy, with the top end near, but below Cadillac. Olds and Oakland generally fall in between the low end of Buick and the top end. When Pontiac replaced Oakland, it seems to fall into a price range that starts in the upper end of Chevy and stops in the middle of both Buick and Olds.
By the mid sixties what GM needed was a line of nice small cars, a mid sized car line, a full sized and then Cadillac. Getting there almost certainly requires a bankruptcy.
But what is forgotten in the haze of GM killing off Saturn as unprofitable in order to stave off bankruptcy is that Saturn was actually quite profitable for the ten years or so. During the time they only sold variations of the S0 Series, Saturn made a profit. It was after they killed off the S-Series and brought in the L-Series with its crap unreliable V6 and ill fitting body panels that Saturn went south.
Had they revised the S Series for a 3rd gen and also introduced the Vue and the Aura instead of ever coming out with the L Series then Saturn may have lived on.
As for creating a new division, it was a very good idea. GM was trying to woo car buyers away from other auto makers, there were a lot of(and still alot) of car buyers that would never ever buy something from GM existing car lines, even if they were stellar products. Perhaps these folks got gouged by a dealer on some work that should have been under warranty or perhaps they had a past GM vehicle that was such a big POS that it spent most of its time being fixed? These people jumped on the imports and never looked back.
Saturn was created to address this, it was a new company that had new visions and a new logo(It was hard to find GM’s mark of excellence logo on these cars as it was only limited to hard to see places) This company was starting fresh and would not have the stigma of the rest of the GM divisions and poised to capture sales from the imports.
As for the J-body cars such as the Sunbird and Cavalier, no matter how much money they dumped into those turds, the cars would still only appeal to those folks that were looking to simply get out of waiting for a bus line because that is what they could afford. Nobody that was driving a Corolla or Civic would dump those cars for a J car.
The Saturn division was created to steal sales from Asian car companies.
The Cavalier was there to appeal to those in a lower income bracket that could not afford much else new.
The Saturns and Cavalies were basically the same price. I have a 1992 price guide published by Edmunds. I did own an 83 Skyhawk, the Buick version of the Cavalier. I did not find it either good or bad. I have not owned a Saturn, but in the same price range as the Cavalier, it was probably similar in quality.
One exceedingly serious misconception that many people have is that GM somehow should have retained the 40 to 50 % market share that it once had. Once the imports got a foothold, which the 1973 Oil Embargo gave them, GM market share could only go down. GM might have kept market share if they could build better than average cars for below average prices. However, this is not possible.
Question for you folks that have/had Saturns: did they have problems with their automatic transmissions? I remember going to a Saturn dealership (early 2000s), and driving two used ones, and both seemed very “weird” shifting. I can’t hardly describe it, but something felt “wrong” with both cars. I passed on ’em, and am glad I did. Otherwise, thought they were a good-looking econobox.
TThe Saturn S had it’s own transmission completely different form others. I don’ty think it had planetery gear sets in it. It has two shafts just like a manual. By the way my SW-1 cruises at 2200 at 60. 3000 would get you about 90. I get 40+ MPG on the highway. 35 around town.
The SL automatics had a lot of problems, mostly related to the valve bodies. The 5 speed stick was the one to get. With 267k ours still had original clutch.
The auto trans on our SL2 was definitely a bit goofy. Every now and then under moderate acceleration it would downshift with huge clunk that would almost shake the car. And the torque converter went around 120k miles. But the fix was money well spent, as we got another 80k relatively trouble-free miles out of it before getting rid of it at 200k.
The big issue with both the manual and auto transmissions in the Saturn S-Series during their entire 2 generation run was that the differential pin was not welded in and had a habit of blowing out of the trans case resulting in trans replacement. it was very easy to blow them out if you spun your wheels(like in ice of taking off from a light)
Lucky the trans was small and easy to replace.
Followed the Saturn saga from afar, since it was first announced thirty two years ago. A few thoughts –
Saturn was probably the first car that was announced as a “bench marked ” car, that is GM had basically taken a bunch of metrics from its competitors like Civic, and used them as the engineering goal. All fine and good, but the benchmarked cars had started development four or five years earlier, and Saturn would not reach the customer for another few years on top of that.Cadillac did the same with the Allante, benchmarked against a M-B SL that was already at least ten years old.
When it was launched, the divisional system was already looking a bit shaky, wouldn’t it had made more sense to make it a Olds or Chevrolet exclusive, and use the money that went to setting up the new dealerships to fix problems in the existing chains?
Finally, now they are all old orphans, they seem to have drifted into the default GM condition- ” They run badly for longer than most others run at all”!
I paused when you said 32 years ago. Wow.
About the same length of time between the first Cadillac Coupe de Ville and first Cadillac Cimarron!
The new dealerships were probably the big new thing in how they were supposed to work. I think that a lot of what was expected for Saturn simply did not turn out. It took a lot longer to get them into production than one might have thought, and they were behind in design. The Saturn project did not seem to turn out, except for the dealerships. GM’s problems with old dealerships probably required bankruptcy to fix.
The Allante was designed as a roadster and to limit costs used the FWD Eldorado drivetrain. Sending it to Italy made it extremely expensive and probably less reliable. Mercedes did update their roadster and made it more of the sports car that it was back in the 50’s. Cadillac did seem to think it needed the Allante and then the XLR. Now it does not have anything like a sports car. It does have decent sports sedans.
Weren’t most new car programmes at GM delayed for a couple of years at this time due to financial issues? If they had reached the market on time, and properly done GM might have avoided a lot of problems later on.
I don’t really know. I think that what really happened after World War Two is that GM wandered off in the wrong direction. Of course Ford and Chrysler did too and I don’t know who was leading. By “wrong direction” I mean that when the big three finally decided that smaller cars were “in”, they had made their low priced cars “big”.
Saturn was GM management’s way of solving a problem, but exactly what problem is not clear to me. Were they trying out a new concept in marketing, hoping to change existing dealers for the older brands?
Benchmarking certainly wasn’t new at that point, although with a few notable exceptions (the Vega and the first-gen Camaro among them), GM had previously been accustomed to being the benchmark for others rather than the reverse. Once European and Japanese imports became significant players in the U.S. market, those cars became the targets.
It’s also worth noting — and I think a significant part of why the Saturn turned out the way it did — that GM had a very long history of setting specific target metrics for performance, fuel economy, and so forth and then designing cars around those metrics, creating products that performed well in certain specific ways, but had frustrating shortcomings in conditions that didn’t replicate the tests.
That was why GM clung to the two-speed torque converter automatics for such a long time. I think every time the engineers tested two- versus three-speed automatics for smaller engines, the two-speed performed better in the proving ground tests, which I assume included things like standing-start 0-50 mph acceleration, steady-state fuel economy and the like. The two-speed was less satisfactory in the real world because there were lots of situations where it created frustrating gaps in the gearing, but I don’t think that part was in the tests. The Vega and the first Saturns seem like an extension of the same philosophy: objectively pretty competitive in a lot of metrics, less satisfactory in other ways.
As for the dealerships … What GM was dealing with by the ’80s, which was reflected in the Geo project and in Saturn, was that they had burned a lot of their previous goodwill with U.S. buyers. There were and to some extent still are people (many of them Boomers or younger) who simply would not consider buying a GM car or perhaps an American-made car just as 20 years earlier there were people who would not consider an import. There were also buyers who might prefer American trucks or big cars, but who had recognized that U.S. automakers’ efforts in the smaller classes left a lot to be desired.
GM was trying to reach out to those buyers and recognized that in doing so, badging the Saturn as a Chevrolet or Oldsmobile or selling it through Chevrolet or Oldsmobile dealers was going to be a serious handicap. I think they were absolutely correct in that assessment. Whether setting up yet another brand and dealer network was the right answer is debatable, but GM by that point had a long history of claiming with each new small(er) car that this time they had gotten it just right and it set a new standard, etc., which was part of the reason why younger buyers shopping in those classes were becoming increasingly skeptical, if not outright cynical.
Chevrolet’s experience with their captive imports (Sprint/Spectrum) and the NUMMI-built Chevrolet Nova, and to some extent Buick’s previous experience with Opel, was another factor. Aside from buyer skepticism, dealers weren’t necessarily enthusiastic about the additional products, which imposed extra burdens in terms of service and training. So, you had cars with brands that customers weren’t predisposed to shop sold at dealers that weren’t always keen on selling them. That was reflected in total sales, which as far as I can tell were never all that spectacular and certainly less than GM hoped for Saturn. GM tried applying the Geo name to everything in hopes of overcoming the brand stigma issue, but Geos were still sold through specific Chevrolet dealerships, so I think it sort of compounded the issue rather than fixing it.
“Fixing” existing dealerships is a challenge in the U.S. because each dealer or dealer chain is an independent franchise governed by a complex series of state laws that can vary considerably from state to state. The manufacturer doesn’t own the dealers and attempting to get tough with them by demanding changes in their business practices is a good way to invite a whole raft of lawsuits the manufacturer is not necessarily going to win.
The irony is that the Saturn dealers were, initially at least, the most successful part of the whole project. People liked the atmosphere and, as long as the products were still reasonably competitive, the no-haggle approach; for a lot of people, that is a really off-putting aspect of buying a car, particularly for female buyers, who can look forward to being treated like shit more often than not. The no-haggle thing is a good example of why trying that at a Chevrolet or Oldsmobile dealer would have been a problem: No Chevy or Olds dealer was likely to give up the negotiation process across the board and imposing no-haggle policies on some products and not others is very awkward (not to mention providing additional reason for salesmen to steer buyers away from those products).
So, I completely understand why GM went the way they did with Saturn. Whether it was a cost-effective solution is another matter and as others have noted, it was badly hampered by the fact that having spent so much up front, GM was unwilling to invest more money on the same update cycle as the Saturn’s intended competitors.
Ate Up With Motor, that is an amazingly accurate, insightful and well-thought out account of General Motors and their Saturn experiment. Although I never worked in the auto industry, I lived through that time period and recall what was going on in the US auto industry. Seemed like once Honda and Toyota got good at making cars for the American market (that didn’t rust out quickly), they continued to improve and to keep improving. GM, Ford and Chrysler also came out with new and improved models which were supposed to be better than the cars they replaced, but the end product as purchased by the consumer could be anywhere from a pretty good car to a car that had to go back to the dealer time after time after time after time. The Lemon Law came about because after many, many trips to the dealer some cars could never be fixed as they should have been as a new car in order to give the new owner dependable and reliable transportation. We are all aware that some percentage of the car-buying public got burned one time too many and never have purchased an American brand vehicle since. The real root problem was the factories cranking out cars that were poorly assembled or shoddily made. Not to place all the blame on the assembly line workers, but we all heard the stories about cars assembled on Fridays or Mondays. Whoever was really to blame at the automakers plants demonstrated time and time again that they really didn’t care about giving the consumer a quality product. From all I’ve read, all they really cared about was producing a large volume of cars. Sometimes they were shipped out with known defects, and their attitude was that the dealer prep would catch any issues before the customer got the car. Not that everything they made was junk, but just that it was a crapshoot about what you ended up with if you purchased a new car.
Now, as far as GM, it’s really sad that things had gotten so far out of hand that they found it necessary to come out with a whole new car make, another division, in order to offer the American consumer a new car. Along with a new way of selling cars. As you pointed out, where GM failed is where the imports excelled, at making continued regular improvements. Seems like the so-called “bean counters” stifled Saturn’s long-term prospects for success. Had they matched the continuous improvements and refinements of Honda and Toyota, they might have actually had a chance. Somebody pretty high up at GM was in major denial that Honda and Toyota was offering consumers a better product, and was unwilling to learn from said competitors in order to beat them at their own game. It is really sad to see how much market share they have lost for the past 25-30 years. No matter whether it is a person or an organization, when you are unwilling to learn from your failures, there is an indication that something is really wrong.
So, I completely understand why GM went the way they did with Saturn.
I certainly don’t. The idea of creating a “new company” because the old one was rotten is rather absurd, never mind the economics. There’s no successful precedent, to my knowledge.
What GM needed to do was simple: put a little genuine effort into its smaller cars, make them truly competitive, and keep improving them diligently. It might have taken a few years, but the market would have responded. It certainly has now, right, in terms of their current small cars. They may not be setting the world on fire, but no one is laughing at the Cruze, Sonic or Spark.
Ford did it mostly right/ better then: they improved the gen1 Escort, and then made a substantial jump up with the gen2, which was well regarded and successful. And Chrysler was close with the Neon; if it had been a bit more robust, it could have been a serious contender. As it was, it sold well until Chrysler lost interest and didn’t really keep it competitive.
The point being that if Chevrolet had simply invested a fraction of the multi-billions pumped into Saturn, and built a decent, competitive small car, instead of keeping the Cavalier going for 20 years, it would have made the first right steps towards rebuilding trust and competitiveness.
I was convinced of Saturn’s failure at the time it came to market, despite the initial buzz and apparent success. I thought the car was not fully competitive, but most of all, I didn’t trust GM’s whole strategy and their long-term commitment to it; as was exactly the case in the end.
Overall, it cost GM some $10 billion; Saturn only barely eked out an tiny operating profit in a few quarters; never mind the upfront costs. It was classic Roger Smith-think, and I didn’t trust anything he thought, with rare exception.
If one’s products are not competitive, improve them with absolute commitment and diligence; don’t start a “new company”, an act which only underscores how sick the parent is. And who’s going to trust that for long.
One of the reasons Saturns sold well enough in the first few years is because gullible Americans bought into the hype and actually didn’t realize it was a GM product. But how long can one fool people with that? It’s like a shell game.
I think if GM had spent some of the money spent on Saturn making the second generation Cavalier and its siblings better cars they would have gotten closer to what the Saturn should have been, but wasn’t. I think the present quality is due in part to GM learning a lot from the large car stiff body platform first used on the Aurora and Riviera for the 95 model year. One thing that made GM’s small cars mediocre at best is that GM thought they needed to be cheap.
The first sentence in this story pretty much says it all. We had a 95 SL2 5 speed in the family for about 8 years and 157k miles. I was working the parts counter at a Nissan/Saturn dealership when a girl had me go out to identify a switch under the hood that she needed. She was going to trade it in but complained they would only give her $700. This was in 04, the car had about 110k miles on it. I offered $1000, she sold it to me. It needed a ps pump seal and a couple of o-rings for the AC. A tech at the dealerships fixed it for a few beers and lunch. It always used oil, the interior was somewhat cheap. But it only needed CTS switch, alternator, starter, waterpump, coils and valve cover gasket over the years. And of course, brakes, tires and battery. It was simple to work on and got great mileage. She got hit once on the driver side when another driver ran a stop sign, insurance gave her $1200 and let her keep the car. A mirror, door skins and 1/4 panel the correct color (plumb), and it was good to go. $100 at U-Pull. It finally got too smokey at 267k and she junked it. So she made $100 on it. It gave her decent service for very little money.
Hey, good article! I test-drove an S-Series Saturn once, and came away very unimpressed. I was the owner of a 1976 Vega at the time, with correspondingly low standards, but that Saturn just wasn’t enough of an improvement to be “payment worthy.” But as the author points out, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
I wonder if Toyota used Saturn’s launch as a model example of what not to do when they launched Scion.
With Scion they only dreampt up a name Toyota didnt build any cars just badges like Honda with Acura they are just rebadges of existing models no risk that way.
Not many Saturns in NZ Ive seen two in going order one black 4 door and one red 2 door however there must be more as the red one had green replacement panels on the front one guard and bonnet unusual looking cars but Ive no idea whether they are good or bad just different.
General Motors actually imported both the Chevrolet Cavalier and the Saturn S-Series to Japan in which Toyota rebadged the Chevrolet Cavalier as the Toyota Cavalier and left the Saturn sold through the Toyota Japanese Dealership Networks as a stand alone model with RHD of course. GM Imported these cars through Toyota as part of their reciprocal NUMMI agreements in which Toyota provided us with a rebadged Corolla called the Geo/Chevrolet Prizm and prior to that the Toyota Corolla based Nova. The working agreement between Toyota and GM ended in 2010 after the Pontiac name brand and its Matrix based Vibe were gone.
The only Saturn I’ve driven was an 00’s Ion sedan, and it was beyond dreadful in every way. I’m not suprised the brand was axed. Actually, humanity is probably better for it.
However, I do like these early SL2’s for some strange reason. Especially the rare station wagons. At one time I tried to find one, but to no avail. I also really like the Geo Storm wagons of that vintage.
This story made me realize that it’s been a while since I’ve seen a first-generation Saturn on the street…they all seem to have faded away. The second-gen cars are still everywhere, though a good percentage seem to be missing 2 or 3 hubcaps and trailing a cloud of blue smoke.
Nonetheless, they were very good at providing basic, high-mpg transportation at a reasonable cost, and if you accept the known flaws they can attain some pretty impressive odometer readings.
4th gen F-bodies have plastic fenders and doors