This is another one of those “Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I’d see this here” sort of deals. Italian exotics, US muscle cars and British roadsters are a yen a dozen in Tokyo. The real strange encounter is that of the most mundane, yet relatively obscure. The question then becomes: Is there anything more mundane and obscure as a late ‘90s Saturn wagon?
I’m pretty sure I have never seen an S-series Saturn in Europe, nor in any Asian country before this very odd encounter. It’s funny how coy GM were about Saturn on foreign markets. Chrysler had a bright idea with selling Neons everywhere, Ford foisted the Fusion upon the wider world, but GM did not broadcast their new small American car to other continents – or so I thought.
After all, GM in the ‘90s had Chevrolet, Opel, Vauxhall, Holden, Isuzu and Daewoo to wow and woo the world with. That was plenty to go on, surely. Saturn was supposed to be strictly a domestic affair, even though the new marque was remarkable international-sounding. Planetary, even. Turns out that GM did try to sell the Saturn in Japan in the late ‘90s, but chose the wrong moment, the wrong car and the wrong country.
Japan is a notoriously difficult market for American manufacturers to crack, though there always a few folks who will want something a bit different. But eccentricity is more often the purview of the wealthy. GM could compete in certain niches, such as big luxury wagons (Buick “Regal” Estate), deluxe vans (Chevrolet Astro), performance (Corvette) or full-fat luxobarge (Cadillac). One just cannot expect the Japanese public to pay extra for something they could get from Nissan or Mazda, i.e. a strangely styled small wagon with RHD and a 4-cyl. engine. That’s what they export to the US and the world!
The only way to get a foothold in the Japanese market with a smallish 4-cyl. model is to either go for exclusivity, like Alfa Romeo or BMW, or to have a reputation for solidity like VW or Peugeot. With Saturn, GM were not entirely clear on what they were doing. They stuffed as many extras in them as they could, including the DOHC engine and ABS, so it looked like they were going for exclusivity. Problem was, nobody knew Saturn, so having one was nothing to brag about. A bit too exclusive, in other words.
This drove the price up a bit, though it was still in the right bracket. At ¥1.77m in 1997, the SW2 wagon was sandwiched between, say, the Toyota Corona and the Mitsubishi Libero, though the buyers for those cars would never have cross-shopped anything like a Saturn. GM felt the need to put the steering wheel on the right, as the received wisdom in Detroit at the time was that “We’re not selling any cars in Japan because our models are all LHD.” They failed to realize that nearly all the Mercedes-Benzes, Lancias or Jaguars sold in Japan have the steering wheel on the wrong side (and still do, to a large extent, to this day) because it’s dead chic to have a fancy imported car with LHD. Right-hand drive equals domestic car, LHD equals desirable exotic. American car with RHD equals mixed message.
Couple that with the range’s Japanese launch in the spring of 1997, just as the Asian financial markets were in meltdown, and you get a recipe for disaster. Period tests damned the Saturn with faint praise and claimed that its dynamics would have been ok ten years before. Not for the last time, GM found that the competition were running rings around Saturn: only about 3000 sedans, wagons and coupés were sold until the year 2000, when GM put a stop to this painful experiment. Succeeding in Japan, for a foreign maker, is a very high bar to clear. Still, this might serve as a funny footnote to the Deadly Sin that was Saturn in general.
Related posts:
Curbside Classic: 1993 Saturn SL – GM’s Deadly Sin #4 – The Eulogy, by PN
Automotive History: Saturn’s Early Years – Corporate Camelot, by Jeff Nelson
Automotive History: The Sad Final Years Of Saturn, by Jeff Nelson
Something About Those Saturns, by Mark Borcherding
GM did get some value out of the RHD tooling, though, as they sold RHD cars in the US as well for postal delivery use, as I recall.
That was to be my comment as well. There was a movement to service postal carriers with RHD vehicles during the late 80’s and early 90’s. Subaru, Jeep, and Saturn offered RHD vehicles. It lasted until the end of body styles. I have seen one RHD Jeep Liberty but they were rare. There are a couple of importers repatriating first generation Cherokees from Japan. They’re marketed to rural route carriers. I’ve saw one at the Jeep dealer I worked for and a different one on it’s route.
Currently most of the carriers I’ve seen use a “dummy” wheel on the right side. It
uses a v-belt to drive the standard column. For a while, JK Wranglers were available in RHD. I don’t know about JLs.
The Mrs. had a fondly-missed SL and we kicked around getting an SW for a while as the goof-off project. There was an attractively-priced RHD former-postal wagon we passed on.
So that begs the question. Did GM make RHD for the postal carrier market first, and then decide to try to sell those in Japan, or vice versa?
I would guess that the US postal market makes more business sense, due to a lack of any competition, but I have no real idea which is correct.
I would love to know the timeline of this importation effort vis a vis the team(s) who cooked up the the Toyota Cavalier and if there was any sort of awareness and/or cooperation between them. The Cavalier started in ‘95 IIRC and should’ve been warning enough given its (un)popularity.
Also, on the subject of driving dynamics and their influence on motor publications – does the average Japanese buyer even care about that? I’ve been led to believe that the majority of speeds don’t exceed 35MPH and is fairly stop and go compared to our 80 cruising speeds on meandering highways
The Toyota Cavalier program ran from 1995 to 2000, so the Saturn fits in to that time frame. See my comment below.
They even sold these at Toyota Vista dealerships. Why, you ask? The Toyota Cavalier. Yes, you read that right, and it’s mighty strange that GM wanted to market both this and the Cavalier at the same time, and the craziest part being the Cavalier was positioned well above the Saturn:
It’s a bit more complicated than that. In response to concerns about the trade imbalance, and to help stave off any further US restrictions of Japanese imports to the US, Toyota entered into a deal to help facilitate imports of genuine made in the US Chevys and other good GM stuff of the era. Not only did Toyota offer help, advice and facilities for the cars imported (without the slightest “restrictions”, which Japan has never had in modern history) under their original US brand, but Toyota went a giant step further. Toyota offered to upgrade and modify Cavaliers and sell them under the Toyota brand name. How’s that for import restrictions!
I assume (but am not sure) that the Saturn was part of this program too, to one extent or another. The whole thing was a political-oriented publicity gesture at a time when the balance of trade with Japan was a hot-button issue.
I agree 100%, and was aware of the motivation. What I find to be the crazy part is, and I guess it’s subjective, was the Saturn was a superior car, but the Cavalier in Japan was positioned to be competing with lower end Toyota Mark II’s and Nissan Skylines in terms of price, but with higher road tax because it went past the 2.0 limit. What?!?
It was destined to fail. But the PR value was there. Toyota could say: “we tried!”
The 2.4 litre engines of the Cav killed it in Japan, where taxes are high on anything over 1.5 litres.
The same can be said of the Mercury Sable. The 3.8 litre engine made it almost as expensive to run as an S-Class MB.
“Restrictions?” How in Buddha’s name could a Cavalier been an enticing buy in Japan, home of the best small cars in the world at the time?
After all the pixels expended here discussing the general hubris of GM, here’s an example that really takes the cake.
I just goes to show that those dummasses actually believed in their own rhetoric. To think that someone believed the Cavalier or Saturn, both of which were ostensibly GM’s “Japan-beaters” were actually going to steal Japanese sales in the US was deranged enough, but to actually believe that the Japanese would buy these things on their own soil? Crazytown!
See my comment above. Or my post on the Toyota Cavalier:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/history/toyota-week-postscript-1995-2000-toyota-cavalier-gm-tries-to-invade-the-japanese-market-with-a-little-help/
…because it’s dead chic to have a fancy imported car with LHD.
I can’t imagine. Driving a RHD car as a daily driver in the US would be disconcerting unless lots of mailboxes were involved.
Depends on where you drive. Toll booths are almost all being replaced by electronic toll sensors or plate readers. Paying at parking garages would be an issue, though. As would the fast food drive-through, although you could interpret that as God’s way of telling you to stop eating that stuff.
Disconcerting, yes. Also dangerous; see here.
Quite a find, whether or not it was GMs best idea to export these to Japan.
I always liked the Saturn wagons. Sure they weren’t the most sophisticated rides under their plastic bodies, but they are a nice size for a hauler.
In need of some TLC.
Would sell well to a US rural route postal clerk since the mail boxes are on the right side of the road.
I understand there is a company that ships Japanese RHD Jeep Cherokees back to the US for rural route delivery clerks. I’ve also seen a RHD Jeep Renegade doing similar duty.
A couple of obscure bits of lighting-related trivia:
1: Look closely at what would be the front side marker light on an American model. See how there’s no reflex reflector built in, and it bulges outward in the middle? That’s because it’s not a side marker but a turn signal repeater, bulged out so it meets the rearward visibility requirement. Slightly later American-market Saturn models had bulged-out front side marker lights with unusually wide visibility angles; the same part was used in Japan for their turn signal repeater.
2: When GM started putting daytime running lights on their American-market cars by running the high beams at half rated voltage (which gives ~10 per cent of rated intensity) the Saturns came in for a disproportional share of glare complaints. That’s because the JIS high beam pattern, uniquely, had a relatively high intensity requirement at a particular point which is horizontally centred and a degree or so above the lamp’s centreline. Meeting this test point didn’t interfere with meeting the US high beam requirements, so the same high beam optical prescription was used for the American- and Japan-spec headlamps. That made these DRLs seem unusually bright, thus spurring the glare complaints.
It would be interesting to know how they argued the business case for doing this. A new brand, with no heritage, no reputation – and they wanted to sell it in Japan. Not only that, but in a size class the Japanese did best. Hubris, or ignorance?
Interesting Mr Tatra Ive seen a red Saturn coupe here I presumed ex Japan it had a green L/F guard and bonnet so I guess at lest two are here and one got wrecked for parts the I saw another for sale on trade me I must take more notice ass to whether they are LHD or RHD if I ever see another,
Toyota Chevy Cavaliers are here too quite unpopular due to reliability issues and lack of parts, when you lob up to your nearest Toyota dealer and ask for parts for any used import they politely tell you to have sex and travel, at least thats the reception I got about a car Toyota actually built.
Thats an amzing find! I have 2 postal wagons, they are actually suprisingly fun to drive! I wiuld love to get hold of a japanese saturn one day. If you hapoen across any for sale i would love to know!