Saturns are not rare in junkyards and generally I pass right by them. Exceptions are made for old ones to see if I can beat the astounding 556,016 miles that were racked up on one I found last year and, well, that’s about it. But this one obviously grabbed me on a whole ‘nother level, as I thought my sunglasses had all of a sudden acquired a new superpower.
Saturns (initially, anyway) had as one of their claims to fame their plastic body panels. Besides blessing them with the largest panel gaps in the industry due to the growth and shrinkage of the material depending on temperature, they are also impervious to dents and dings, demonstrated at autoshows across the country in the early 1990s with a bowling ball on a rope that would be let loose on an unsuspecting door. Over and over and over again. I imagine the door eventually came to suspect what was about to come but stoically just sat there and took it. But here we have one that somehow lost all of its plastic panels!
This particular Saturn is an SL1. There was also an SL (without the 1) but that was the total base price-leader model that is rarely seen due to not being available with an automatic transmission. If you know anything at all about the U.S. automobile market, you will know that not offering an automatic means you don’t intend to sell very many cars. It is hard to shift while eating a double cheeseburger and slurping 44oz of something carbonated at the same time, hands have their priorities. No power steering either on the SL, but standard on the SL1.
There was also a fancy SL2 that got a more powerful engine, some extra doo-dads and a higher but still no-haggle sticker price. For 1995 (which was the last year of the initial generation) there were some changes made to all of the sedans as compared to the earlier ones which we can explore too.
At first I thought the obvious, that obviously someone somewhere had been in an accident and needed a new set of panels. Or just wanted to change the color of their car. This is after all a self-serve junkyard. But later I realized that this car has its lot ID stickers on the rear panels, those are applied when the car wanders through the not so pearly gates and don’t get replaced even if the rear quarterpanel is removed. So something likely happened to them before the car got here.
I don’t know why the front bumper is still attached though. It’s plastic too and matches the rest of the body colorwise, the rear bumper conversely is just unpainted plastic on the SL1. Maybe someone didn’t like the way it was peeling a bit.
For those not in the know about Saturns, the upper surfaces (hood, roof, trunklid) are still metal, so just as susceptible to hail, rust, and other damage as any other car.
1995 saw a new version of the SOHC engine, still 1.9liters but now with 100hp@5,000rpm and 115lb-ft@2,400rpm, mainly due to replacing the Throttle Body Injection with Multi Port Fuel Injection. It’s a little hard to see but that label on the front crossmember reminds the under that this isn’t an engine, but rather a Saturn Power Module. The label has all kinds of facts and helpful information as to where stuff is, what the correct spec is, etc.
Two is always better than one so here’s a second shot worthy of another thousand words. You can fill in the blanks. I’m sure someone was a service advisor and has some stories. We’ll look at the odometer in a bit so don’t get ahead of yourself with how these never broke 75k miles or whatever.
The logo was designed in 1987, five years after GM first studied creating a new small-car division and three years before the first ones rolled off the line in Spring Hill, Tennessee. It’s one of the best things about the cars (in my opinion) and has aged pretty well. The color here is Aquamarine, being a 1995 model, this is right when that was a most popular color. It was not available on the more base SL model so that didn’t help the sales of that one either.
See, here’s the back bumper devoid of paint. It’s hard to see but the Saturn name is debossed into the bumper, saving GM the money for another badge back here. They didn’t even get model badging, the SL1 had a body color panel between the tail lights (all gone here) and the SL2 had a wide reflector strip between them.
1995 was the year that Saturn sold its one millionth car, surely there were many balloons and hot dogs at dealerships to commemorate the big event. The second million took another four years, not really generating an impressive angle on the growth charts.
From front to back, let’s get a better look under the skin. Here’s obviously the front fender area. The panels were just bolted on to the inner substructure, in this area not so different than most cars. Surprisingly the wheel well liner is still in place, I wonder how far or how long this car may have driven around like this.
Front door. The door handle operates just fine. The rocker panels are missing on this one as well, also being body color. There’s the safety door beam in the middle, window regulator, speaker and the back of the door card.
Rear door. Not much different except no speaker back here.
And the quarterpanel area with a little bit of corrosion under the rear window. Note that with this design there is no real exterior D-pillar structure, just glass bonded to the inner piece and adjoined by the rear door frame.
See, I told you the door opened fine. Note the passenger airbag, two cupholders and different dash design, all new for 1995. Here we can see that the driver doesn’t even have a door panel, just a flimsy plastic vapor barrier and then an internal door card – it seems that the doors have an outer skin, then an internal panel, then a door card, sort of a three layer sandwich.
The interior is Gray, the only color available with the Aquamarine exterior. The other interior color was….Tan. So thrilling.
Here’s a semi-early example of a radio that sort of looks like it could be easily swapped out but no, the faceplate is an odd size, dooming anyone who dares change it to living with some sort of filler plate that never looks right. Air conditioning was optional but included on this one. The four speed automatic optionally replaced the five speed manual on this one and many others.
Always a good reminder when driving a 1995 Saturn SL1 “Superleggera” without body panels. Hey, does the SL actually stand for Superleggera? Nawww, couldn’t be. If you have an accident though, that legend would be imprinted on your forehead, interesting…
The randomest stuff accumulates in junkyard cars. Here there’s a rather large diameter hoseclamp on the seat and there was an employee name badge from Chick-Fil-A. I think your server was named Rachel. Let’s keep moving, it’s time for the money shot.
190,701 All-American miles! Not terrible even if it’s nowhere near the record. In fact this isn’t uncommon even with the unlamented single cam engine. I guess the ones that met an early demise cycled through here a decade or more ago. 26 years isn’t a bad run for a car that was pretty inexpensive up front. Those gauges, I believe also new for this year, are quite nice, almost Honda-like. The twin-cammer got a 130mph speed and an 8,000rpm tach, the 5,500 rpm redline here is on the meager side.
It doesn’t look terrible at all. Decently designed actually, at least visually. Whoever sits in the middle is screwed though, that center console protrudes awfully far back and that’s a huge hump for a FWD car. Maybe it’s not designed so decently after all.
June of 1995 sounds like a hot and humid month in Tennessee. This must have been the last month or two of production for these first generation sedans, the New! And! Improved! (supposedly) second generation 1996 model would be on sale by September of this same year.
Saturn was an interesting experiment and lots of people loved them to the point of either deciding to go work for a Saturn dealership or promote them while doing their regular job. Or drive from across the country to the assembly plant for annual gatherings! And Saturn used all of that in their advertising. I guess let the happy owners sell the cars. For a while it even seemed to work. Until GM stayed GM and people saw right through it.
These, along with GM A-bodies, are truly the Rodney Dangerfield of cars. They don’t get no respect.
Wow! Reminds me of the transparent cars that sometimes appeared in auto shows. GM did it with Pontiac in 1940, which isn’t too far away from Saturn.
Also, the cascading gasket on the shifter is a neat gadget.
“Honey, I shrunk the Cutlass Supreme!”
I like the “Keep calm, carry on” sticker on the steering wheel hub. I wonder if that philosophy was in play in Saturn boardrooms after the initially sustained strong interest and quality had started to be compromised.
“Honey, I bulletproofed the Cutlass Supreme for the Aussie PM!”.
The passion for Saturns continues, but it seems to have taken a different form for some as recently seen in a YouTube video. This young lady of about 20 has just over 20 first generation Saturns in her collection. She has one of each color offered, one of each body style, and, if memory serves, has one that is right-hand drive.
Thirty years ago, I used to see stories like that about Corvair collectors.
The Saturn experiment showed so much promise. Yet, with Roger Smith out of the picture, as stated, GM couldn’t help but be GM in the end.
And, while those initial ‘true’ Saturn cars got generally positive reviews, something that I seem to recall being disliked was the rather coarse 1.9L engine. It wasn’t that it was particularly bad (especially for a GM car). It was that the Honda and Toyota engines were still way smoother. So, Civic and Corolla sales went merrily along with little to no worry about Saturn. Nonetheless, Saturn cars seem to be remarkably long-lived with many happy, satisfied owners.
The irony is that, after GM (finally) had to file for bankruptcy protection, they actually got it right with the 2011 Chevy Volt. That car is widely credited with being good enough to oust the Prius as America’s best-selling hybrid.
Imagine if the Volt had been a Saturn. It would have been a perfect fit with Saturn continuing to be GM’s progressive, future-oriented division. Instead, those final Saturn vehicles ended up being nothing more than the usual rebadging of other GM products.
It is surprising how many budget cars last for fairly shockingly high miles. Sure the first owner might have taken care of it, but after that? Deferred or non existent maintenance is generally the order of the day. I always thought, at least fairly early, Saturns seemed sort of honest in a podunk Americana kind of way, and considered a few wagons with manual transmissions as $1500 beaters a decade or so ago. Amazing and somehow predictably unsurprising that GM failed to capitalize on a cultish fan base. They have been savaged here and elsewhere so frequently and deservedly that all I will say is that they remind me of (more than one) company I have worked for where every challenge was viewed as though nothing similar had ever occurred in business history. How could anyone predict that removing the elements that made the brand a success lead to brand failure?
Saturn seems like another one of those great auto industry ‘what ifs’, i.e., instead of dumping all that money into creating Saturn, what if GM had, instead, invested it in Pontiac and Oldsmobile? Would they have survived instead of all three divisions going down the tubes? I’ve read that internal, corporate jealousy and intrigue had a lot to do with Saturn’s eventual demise.
I could have seen it the other way, take the Pontiac/Olds money and put it in Saturn instead. As one that isn’t emotionally invested in the Pontiac/Olds legacies of the pre-1980s the Olds lineup was handily covered by Cadillac and Buick, and the Pontiac lineup was covered by Buick on the upper end, Chevy on the lower end, and Saturn easily could have handled most of the sporty end.
Saturn showed that people were ready to give it a chance, we all know that many Saturn buyers did not realize it was a GM company. What greater opportunity could there be! Well, except for the egos of those on the 14th floor having to then admit that there were sales to people because they were unaware it was GM underneath.
Instead Pontiac tried to be some sort of US BMW (with the exception of Firebird which of course Chevy was handling as well), but also put out very non-BMW stuff like the T-1000 and the Parisienne etc. Either you build excitement or you don’t. Pronouncing you are chasing someone never works, you automatically brand yourself the store brand cola. Cadillac has been making that same mistake for close to two decades now as well…and their best seller is still the one that has no real peer across the pond.
There’s no reason the Cutlass couldn’t have been a big Saturn in concept at least, after all they already used the styling of this car here and scaled it up. Eventually there were small Saturn SUVs and sports cars too, albeit always changing, nothing ever stuck since nobody was really at the helm and there were too many other competing interests internally.
That’s all just my 20/20 hindsight of course. YMMV.
Can’t really argue with the logic of cutting Olds and/or Pontiac loose in lieu of Saturn. But that was really the problem: those old-school Olds and Pontiac guys still had a lot of power within GM. So, in the end, instead of saving the one division that might have still been viable, all three of them went down.
I can sure see bitter Olds and Pontiac guys’ sour-grapes mentality of “if we’re going to sink, we’re taking everyone else we can with us”.
An insider’s look at a Saturn; very insightful!
I now have visions of buying one as a rounabout and removing all the plastic panels. If there’s a market for used ones I might get a free car.
I wonder if they were staring at the “keep calm” badge as they plowed through seven backyard fences and tore off the bodywork.
I always have thought it ironic that Saturn could not use a more literal image of its ringed-planet namesake in its identity, that iof course having been long preempted by its GM brandmate.
I owed several “second hand” saturn S wagons over the years (all automatic) and found them to be excellent and very reliable vehicles we used for both daily drivers for my parents and I also had one that I bought second hand RV towbar mounts for and flat towed it back and forth from properties we would drive up towing it then one person would stay later and drive it back like a borrowed rental car! Heck I remember folding down those back seats in the wagon and sleeping a few needed hours in it in rest stops on long trips too! Was always amazed that the auto tranny would allow it to be pulled 4 wheels down in neutral hundreds of miles with no damage. I have only seen manual shift cars able to do that and was really surprised that tech seemed to have “died” with saturn as it would be excellent for the RV “towd” market. if I could find a cheap one that wasn’t to whipped I would buy another S wagon in a minute!
Saturn was an example of GM’s money wasting. The 1991 Saturn should have been the 1991 Chevrolet Cavalier.
Ah, the memories. A friend had a Saturn coupe from the mid nineties. Around 2000 the power window stopped working and I offered to help replace the motor. Upon taking off the interior door panel I was presented with…a vast expanse of sheet metal. Removing the external plastic sheet was about the same difficulty as removing the door card. My friend was horrified to see what her car looked like under the skin.
Wow, there are not many cars that you can get into the body that way with just a wrench.
I still think of Saturn as the last gasp of GM trying to be what GM had originally been – a collection of autonomous companies that shared a few small components but little else. And it worked for awhile – people didn’t think of them as GM cars, they thought of them as Saturns – they way people once thought of Oldsmobiles or Pontiacs or Buicks. Sadly, that autonomy did not last, and that was when Saturn finally sank.
Base unit construction is fascinating and I’m disappointed that it fell out of use. A driveable chassis with non structural panels has lots of benefits for both repairs and styling changes. Citroen, Rover/Landrover and GM all tried this and eventually stopped
I had a 97 SL2 for years and apart from some ergonomic issues it was a decent car. The upgraded suspension handled well and the twin cam engine felt smoother and more powerful than the 1.9 CVH in our Escort, which is an admittedly low bar. From doing DIY repair the transaxles are the only weak point in the S series with automatics sufferin from buildup in the valve body causing “reverse slam” and both auto and manual suffering from a pin in the differential breaking free and destroying the transmission case. This is what killed ours in 2017 with only 130000 miles on it .
The Ion was a real disappointment since it was less attractive, less well assembled and less of a Saturn. I think GM really lost an opportunity to retain loyal Saturn customers by not offering other models and then offering the mediocre L series.
I had a 1994 Saturn SL-1 and loved the car. It rode well and was fun to drive. It was a manual transmission car. The cars still looked good in 2008 when I finally sold it. I bought it used in 2002 or 2003. The 1995 was the bridge year between the first and second generation. The exterior was the same as the 1991 to 1994 Saturns but the interior was like 1996s uptil I thing 1999. The engine ran good but suffered damage once due to oil not getting to one of the cylinders. Was a common fault of Saturns. It cost $800 to “fix” but it was still somewhat noisy. Problem was solved by adding STP to the oil to thicken it. It didn’t burn any oil when I sold it. I forget the ending mileage but it was over 100K.
I’ve been wanting to scoop one of these up for the Houston Art Car Parade for years now. It’d be like a “human body car”, you could take all the panels off and re-color all the bits of vehicular anatomy as analogues to bones, arteries, etc. in an anatomy book. And maybe throw in some hoses or have it belch gak or something.
Of course, it may not be well-suited for hot parade duty, as I recall my old twin-cam SC2 would overheat in traffic.
We had the same 1995 as in the photos. I bought it used on eBay for $2200 with 100 K miles on it in 2000 or so. My youngest daughter drove it 80 miles per day back and forth to college for a couple of years. Each fill up was graced with 1/2 quart of oil on average. Tires and oil were the big expenses.
We sold the car to another student and he drove it for a few more years. Wonderful little car.
That rear window reminds of what the Austin Montego could have been….
I had two Saturns that I bought used….a ’95 SL that had about 150K on it when I got it, and a 2001 SL2 that only had about 45K. The first was just a cheap second car to have around, and the SL2 replaced it about a year later once my wife had a job change and we needed a second daily driver.
I really miss the SL2 now and I’d buy another one in a heartbeat if I could find a 5-speed in good shape with reasonable mileage. Sold the SL2 about 10 years ago when I felt I needed something bigger, but now regret the decision. The more knowledgeable I get about modern cars the more I don’t want one…something simple, reliable, and easy to work on like the Saturns would perfectly fit my needs.
About 15 years ago my stepson bought a ’92 SL2 auto for the princely sum of $100. That was from a friend who had obtained it from his father. At time of purchase it showed 245k miles on the clock. It was rumored to have had a cylinder head redo at some point. Other than the sacked struts which I replaced, it ran and drove absolutely great. As I recall, it used nearly no oil and delivered impressive fuel mileage in local driving. At about 265K mi. he traded it to someone for something terrible with a manual trans.
That car replaced a pricey low mileage ’98 SL1 SOHC model that he had soon ruined with some stunt driving. There was little to recommend that particular model, having many troubles of all sorts during his ownership.
Both of the Saturn’s earned their reputation for engines with plenty of NVH. I do believe that the single cam model was the worse example. I seem to recall that Saturn did improve the engine bottom end of those engines by the third generation.
I do so love Saturn. I had 3, or should say have a 3rd.
My first was 2002 SL2
I learned about the sport coupe, and my next was 2001SC2, and my current is a 1999 SC2 bought in 2019 with 43,000 on it. Now 46,700. They age well, but not free of about 25 quirks. Still, when this one finally wants to rest, I believe I’ll look for another. Talk was of a reboot. I could only imagine the beauty of an updated Sport Coupe with the Saturn badge.