We didn't deserve 90s Saturn

"2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered" (2fast2furiousfc3s) 04/21/2019 at 14:31 • Filed to: None

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Reliable, light, and i nnovative compact cars from an American manufacturer?

If only it lasted longer.

ranwhenparked > 2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered 04/21/2019 at 14:55

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Unfortunately, building an entire new  brand and dealer network around selling only one, low margin small car was not a super smart business move for GM.

By the time they started adding additional product, they were already past the tipping point to bankruptcy.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > 2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered 04/21/2019 at 14:56

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They were a very good attempt to compete with the japanese imports

Nick Has an Exocet > 2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered 04/21/2019 at 14:57

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I don’t know about reliable. A lot of them got parked around 80k miles. I had a friend who’s dad kept buying them, driving them, then parking them when they died. Between his house and the Ex’s, I think there we like 5 of them. 

Chuckles > 2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered 04/21/2019 at 15:09

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I still miss my 96 SL2

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > 2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered 04/21/2019 at 15:16

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Ah yes, 90s GM - where literally the rest of the company was so jealous of how successful Saturn was that they went and kneecapped someone else in the corporate family rather than improve their own brands. Saturn wasn’t perfect by a long shot but damn did it do a lot of things right. And imagine how dominant GM could’ve been if they took what worked and applied it to other divisions rather than ham-fi stedly shoving other brands' mistakes onto Saturn.

2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 04/21/2019 at 15:17

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Thats all I'm saying, nobody else has gotten as close.

This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: > 2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered 04/21/2019 at 15:19

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All the cool kids wanted Berettas though.

2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 04/21/2019 at 15:19

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Saturn was something special at the beginning, but GM’s family plans really handicapped each brand, making all of them complete with each other and in the same market. Chevy should’ve stopped making cars and just had Saturn and Geo do it, and the truck divisions were still a mess.

Oldsmobile and Buick at the same time!

2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered > This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: 04/21/2019 at 15:20

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Saturns looked better, although paper cups were in style

CPT Speedbump > 2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered 04/21/2019 at 15:25

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I wouldnt mind a old saturn or dodge neon  for 24 hours of lemons things 

ranwhenparked > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 04/21/2019 at 15:54

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Nah, it was one of Roger Smith's follies. They spent way more setting up the division than it would ever be able to pay back. The Saturn project started out at Chevy as a Cavalier replacement, before Smith decided it needed to be a whole separate division with a separate UAW contract and a separate dealer network and a separate advertising account. The only reason the brand survived as long as it did was because all those stand alone dealer franchises were so expensive to buy out. Saturn was only profitable for a single year in the mid '90s, it was in the red for the entirety of its existence otherwise. 

LongbowMkII > This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: 04/21/2019 at 16:01

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Radical

LongbowMkII > ranwhenparked 04/21/2019 at 16:07

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If they’d put the j body out to pasture in the mid 90’s when it deserved I’m sure more  profit would’ve been there.

LongbowMkII > ranwhenparked 04/21/2019 at 16:09

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Alternate history: Saturn sells the EV-1 and eventually  becomes the electric brand

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > ranwhenparked 04/21/2019 at 16:55

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It had amazing customer retention and loyalty at a time when GM as a whole was bleeding out customers left and right. The UAW contracts for the rest of the company were, and still are, monsters that *will* ruin the company or at least play a part in it. And the Saturn advertisements and ideas were truly revolutionary and gave you a legitimate reason to buy one. The fact that it ever had a profit was amazing given how different it was. The profits would come when the rest of the company took on similar bits and pieces of the idea as needed. Even if they phased out saturn in the 2000s, I’d say they could’ve done so with great success if they had taken the good parts of Saturn and spread them amongst the rest of the company.  

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > 2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered 04/21/2019 at 16:56

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I am still amazed that the oldsmobile aurora and buick riviera were the ones that got the most advanced car chassis GM had ever made and cadillac decided that the thing to do was rebadge an Opel and sponsor a doctor on a soap opera to be named “Lease-a Catera”

ranwhenparked > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 04/21/2019 at 18:09

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Which is what they should have done. The silo effect from walling Saturn off from the rest of the company clouded management’s thinking.

And customer loyalty is only a good thing if you have enough customers in the first place. 

ranwhenparked > LongbowMkII 04/21/2019 at 18:11

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They couldn’t justify spending the money on a redesign, because the development costs of the 1st generation hadn’t even  been paid for.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > ranwhenparked 04/21/2019 at 18:27

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They weren’t walled off to prevent the spread of ideas, they were walled off to keep the problems that were weighing down the other brands from killing Saturn before it had a chance to begin. It was only when the SL/SC line finally was too old to continue and they needed followups, that the rest of the sludge was let in, rather than the Saturn design and engineering seep out.

To put it another way - Chevrolet and Pontiac were mad that Saturn got to sell the SL and SC while they had the cavalier and sunfire. But rather than saying “Hey, we need to get the Z-body for ourselves and have a better car to compete, what do we need to do for the next cavalier to be like the SL?” they instead said “Developing this chassis was too expensive, so Saturn is going to get what we base the next chevrolet/pontiac compact on.”. And thus the Ion was farted into existence.

Funny story about sales figures - Saturn’s sales were consistently above 250,000 a year while just selling the SL, SC, and SW. One chassis. Then they got the Ion, the L-series, the Vue, and the Relay. Oh and the Outlook. And it didn’t help. Literally none of those years with 3, 4, or more models on the lot helped them eclipse their high water mark in the 90s. All because the entire structure at GM decided it was too much effort to be good, and they could skate by doing what they always did rather than succeed with something new. So does saturn innovate a new SUV? Nope! Instead you get a chevrolet equinox with a Honda V6.

My mom was corporate GM in the 90s and 2000s and the absolute waste of the talent and engineering they had is just....disheartening. I grew up in Warren, by the tech center, and my mom worked in one of their buildings on that campus. Lot of fun memories seeing concepts and designs and other fun stuff.

ranwhenparked > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 04/21/2019 at 18:40

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Saturn only topped 250k 5 times in their history, 1994-1997, and once more in 1999. 1997 was the only year when they actually turned a profit, which was their peak sales year of over 310,000. Of course, Chevrolet sold something like 302,000 Cavaliers that same year and didn’t have to support an entire corporate structure and dealership network with just the Cavalier. 

wafflesnfalafel > This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: 04/21/2019 at 20:59

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my grandfather had a Corsica for a while... man was it junky.... but it had that sexy GM v6 growl

This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: > wafflesnfalafel 04/21/2019 at 22:40

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I literally remember people referring to them as "fast" if you can believe that.

Nauraushaun > 2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered 04/22/2019 at 17:38

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I guess it’s only fitting then that mismanagement killed saturn off.

That’s what we deserve

Tristan > This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: 04/23/2019 at 00:42

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The 1990 Beretta GTZ could do 0-60 in 7.6 seconds and the quarter in 15.9. That’s not much slower than the contemporary Camaro RS or Mustang GT.

RT > 2Fast2Furious: Rotary Powered 04/26/2019 at 14:12

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Roger Smith, GM Chairman at the time , described Saturn as “ a quantum leap ahead of the Japanese, including what they have coming in the future”.

It was a fair attempt , but I wouldn’t list any Saturn ahead of an equivalent Civic.

GM also fell into the habit of repeating themselves, as they often did.

If we’re being harsh , we can even trace this back to the design of the original Saturn models. The Oldsmobile above hardly looks different, at a glance.