(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
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”! 😂😂😂😂