The 1980s were rough for General Motors. After losing significant market share to Japanese imports, GM decided it needed to do something brave in order to build a decent small car: Create an entirely new entity known as Saturn. The brand was founded under a premise that became its slogan: A Different Kind Of Car Company. To escape the muck of GM, the only route forward was a new company, a new factory, a new workforce, new dealerships, a new sales model, new cars, new engines — new everything. It was one of GM’s most radical plans ever, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it took forever to come together. From the time Saturn was publicly announced in 1983, everyone knew it wouldn’t be an easy process. After all, GM was so entrenched in its way of doing things that a clean-sheet company with fresh philosophies was seen as the only way forward, despite the massive effort it entailed.
Welcome back to GM Hit Or Miss, where we rummage through the oddments drawer of GM’s pre-bankruptcy product planning in search of the automotive gold we need.
While the first Saturn concept car was ready in 1984, Saturn itself wasn’t even incorporated until 1985, and groundbreaking at its Spring Hill, Tenn. production site wouldn’t happen until 1986. According to the Baltimore Sun, it took until 1987 for Saturn and the UAW to reach agreement on how workers should be paid. Production didn’t start until 1990, at which point Saturn as a plan was eight years old. According to Time Magazine, Saturn’s ambitious and lengthy start largely sowed resentment among other GM divisions. From the magazine:
Saturn’s long and costly gestation — it took seven years before the first model rolled out of its Tennessee factory — drained $5 billion from other car projects and stirred anger and envy within GM ranks. And Saturn’s special status as a stand-alone company within GM has created a snooty attitude on the part of its dealers toward the turmoil in Detroit. “Most of our customers don’t know who makes the car,” says a Los Angeles Saturn dealer. “So when people come into the showroom and we explain that Saturn is a separate corporation, they think of it as Saturn first and GM second.”
See, the framework that Alfred P. Sloan established ran deep at GM — every brand existed in a hierarchy; Cadillac was at the top, and nobody would challenge anyone’s positions. Having a fresh, semi-separate entity run amok, soaking up $5 billion in the process? That was considered out-of-order, and it’s hard for humans to take advice and absorb all processes from something they hate. After all, part of Saturn’s mission was to be an experimental brand to help build a better GM.
Remember Saturn’s slogan? Once production-spec cars rolled around, they turned out less different from standard GM fare than one might’ve expected. For instance, the concept of plastic panels over a spaceframe was lifted from the Pontiac Fiero. Oh, and there’s more. Look at the greenhouse of the first-generation Saturn SL, then look at the greenhouse of the front-wheel-drive W-Body Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Notice anything?
Eerily similar, right? This wouldn’t be an issue if wraparound glass was simply the style of the time, but in North America, it was largely a recent GM development. Strange how this so-called different kind of car came out looking much like an existing GM product.
While the S-series was a much better car than the Chevrolet Cavalier, its protracted development meant that while it was competitive, it wasn’t leaps and bounds beyond established Japanese small cars of the time. As Motorweek summed up the S-Series coupe and sedan, “They may not be superior overall to the best in import subcompacts, but they are in many ways both more advanced and friendlier.” Spend some good seat time in the original Saturn’s competitors today, and you’ll find that the AE90 Toyota Corolla is surprisingly refined, the Honda Civic was the benchmark for a reason, and the B13 Nissan Sentra is remarkably solid and athletic. While slightly embarrassing for GM given its mission to crush the Japanese, the car itself wasn’t Saturn’s ace in the hole – its production methods and dealerships were.
In Saturn’s factory, workers, management, and engineers were encouraged to collaborate to improve the cars being built. From the outset, Saturn claimed it would create a collaborative environment where workers coul “forget about hierarchy, red tape, time clocks, and all the other trappings of bureaucracy that so often come between people and the product they’re building.” While this should be familiar to anyone who’s toured a Toyota facility, this was a novel concept at GM since line workers and managers had been locked into adversarial relationships for years. Historically, problems on the production line were fixed in post, often resulting in shoddy cars. I mean, I once owned something from GM’s Sainte-Thérèse Assembly plant, so I can tell you all about dodgy build quality. As a result, Saturns simply held together better than most similar GM products of the time, and quality was key in fighting in the small car arena.
Then there was the dealership experience. Although markup gouging has reared its ugly head over the past few years, many younger folk haven’t heard tales of how cocky Japanese car dealers were in the ’80s and ’90s. They knew their products were better than the American competition at the time, so sales staff could have a, um, unique attitude. Infighting certainly didn’t help. As Nissan Master Technician Dave Murray wrote about his back-of-house time in the ’80s in Hemmings, “The sales managers kept an overly large crew of “land sharks” on hand, as the cost of commission-paid staff was low and having everyone hungry all the time led to keen competition for each potential sale. Those guys were always wary of their coworkers, and more than a few physical confrontations took place.”
When my dad was shopping for a new car in the late-’80s, his local Honda dealership treated him so poorly that he just walked down the street and bought a Colt. Granted, Chrysler dealers of the time weren’t paragons of customer service either, but the new car game in the early ‘90s was due for a shakeup, and Saturn delivered with no-haggle pricing that consumers liked. So what if it ended up more expensive than the traditional dealership model? It reduced hassle.
See, Saturn’s sales model was to make its customers comfortable. According to Saturn, its retailers aimed to “Bring a welcome end to the hassle that typically muddies the buying experience.” Instead of business attire, Saturn dealership employees were decked out in non-threatening sweaters, and the sales consultants, as they were called, sold cars at open tables rather than closed-off cubicles. The whole concept was to elevate transparency and customer service to the point where the cars virtually sold themselves. Oh, and the attention to customer service didn’t end after customers signed on the dotted line. The new car delivery process was moved indoors into glass pavilions, giving buyers the opportunity to really check out their new cars, even in inclement weather.
Let’s set aside the dealer experience for the time being and answer a more pressing question. Even though Saturn’s cars weren’t groundbreaking, were they any good? By 1991 standards, absolutely. The available twin-cam engine was reasonably gutsy, while lightweight construction and good suspension tuning made the cars easy to chuck about. In a 1992 Car & Driver comparison test, the magazine noted that “Ride is pleasantly firm without being harsh. Chassis controls body motions well, and the car seems nicely tied down,” and that the Saturn S-Series offered “Good chassis composure and lots of stick.”
For years, twin-cam Saturns made for great rallycrossers, as the plastic panels could shrug off stone chips without fear of rust. Plus, for the most part, the cars were fairly reliable. Twin-cam models were consistently solid and although single-cam engines from 1992 to 1998 occasionally developed cylinder head cracks, that issue seemed to only affect a small percentage of Saturns.
You could buy the S-Series as the SL sedan, the SC coupe, and later, the SW wagon, a level of choice that feels unthinkable in 2023. Compact front-wheel-drive coupes are dead, and small wagons are all jacked up and sold as crossovers. Oh, and Saturn loaded these things up with standard equipment you just wouldn’t get in Japanese cars at the time. By the early ’90s, Toyota would’ve charged you for all the air inside a Corolla VE if it could. All things considered, the original Saturns were competitive cars that remained relatively smart used buys through the ’90s. Sure, fuel economy could’ve been better, but what’s life but a tale of compromise?
Thanks to the quirky cars and unusual business practices, Saturn quickly developed legions of fans, some of whom would make pilgrimages to the brand’s Tennessee plant for Saturn Homecoming events. The Washington Post reports that 28,000 Saturn owners made the trip for 1994 from as far and away as Taiwan, sometimes spending hundreds of their own dollars to attend. Saturn even made special edition models to commemorate Homecoming events, which are somewhat sought after today. For a few short years, it felt like the whole Saturn experiment was working, that some sort of change was happening at an oddball division of General Motors.
However, after a promising start, Saturn started to develop the same malaise that enveloped GM as a whole. For 1996, Saturn rolled out the second-generation S-Series and although it looked markedly different from the original, it was still quite similar underneath. You still had a choice of 1.9-liter engines, either in single-jingle or twin-cam guise, both without recent developments like variable valve timing. The interior wasn’t a huge step up from that of the original S-Series either, and it all added up to a car that wasn’t revolutionary compared to its predecessor. As the Toronto Star summed it up, “Saturn still has some work to do to reach the top rung of the small-car ladder.” Adding insult to injury, the Chevrolet Cavalier had made its leap into the ‘90s a year earlier, transforming from a blocky economy car into a sleek entry-level vehicle for less money than a Saturn SL1 commanded.
Just three years later, the second-generation car got a facelift with all the bits you see above to become the third-generation S-Series. New plastic panels were hung on a familiar frame, the interior received a refresh, but this was largely new skin draped over old bones. The mechanicals were still largely similar to the ones on offer in 1991, and it showed. At that point, Toyota had the all-aluminum 1.8-liter 1ZZ-FE four-cylinder engine with variable valve timing in the Corolla, and it only took a five-minute test drive to feel the difference in refinement between it and Saturn’s engine lineup. At the same time, Honda was wrapping up production of the brilliant EK Civic, Nissan had rolled out the roomy B15 Sentra, and Ford had the brand new Focus on offer.
Mind you, by 1998, Saturn already felt like it had an uncertain future. No truly new ground-up product, no decisive plans to follow up the earth-shaking first act, no idea how lessons learned during the program would carry through to the rest of GM. However, because GM was simply considered too big to fail at the time, Saturn soldiered on. First came the lackluster L-Series midsize sedan, followed by the unusual Ion and popular Vue. With each new product and especially full absorption into the GM hivemind, Saturn grew less and less unique, repackaging the bones of existing GM products and eventually selling Opels wholesale. The brand itself was finally extinguished in the Global Financial Crisis, but Saturn as it was promised had flatlined long before that.
As much as I like the Saturn S-Series, there are two ways of looking at it. On the one hand, it was a miss because it didn’t actually have a long-term impact on GM. It was a big, ambitious experiment that resulted in zero change whatsoever. It was a good car, but it was an awful business decision, as everyone should’ve known that you can’t un-sink the Titanic on hopes and dreams. Hubris is infectious, and rot can only be cured by cutting it out and starting fresh. While it represented an idyllic future for Detroit’s most-sprawling automaker, it’s impossible to not wonder what could’ve happened if GM ploughed the initial $5 billion investment into existing brands. Then again, maybe that $5 billion was worth it for a quick burst of joy.
Viewed simply as a car, the Saturn S-Series was a hit — an unorthodox small car with impressive longevity and a forward-thinking design. As 187,000-mile Saturn SL2 owner Carol Baber told the Washington Post, “We haven’t had any real problems, and whenever there was a recall or something, they really took care of us.” While part of this longevity comes from love, part of it comes from ease of servicing. As Saturn collector Jessieleigh Freeman told Hagerty, “You can drop the entire engine and transmission cradle together, and aside from a few common issues, they’re mechanically solid.”
I’m going to call this one both a hit and a miss — The S-Series was great, but Saturn as an entity was always destined to float in space. Something this great could never survive the belly of the American industrial beast. What do you reckon?
(Photo credits: Saturn, Google Maps)
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Right or wrong, it seemed like at the time that Saturn was a GEO brand replacement. Basically use GM Euro parts to build the things they no longer wanted to pay Suzuki, Toyota and Isuzu to badge engineer for them.
I think that actually hurt the street cred a little, but the vehicles were pretty simple aand ran for a decent number of miles without too much issue, so it kind of hurt them when they started badge engineering GM cars from Europe directly.
Also, we claimed to hate the plastic panels, but then complained about the metal versions rusting later.
Panel gaps were also a common complaint about the body panels since they needed extra room to expand in the heat. But there was nothing Euro about the S-Series – that wasn’t til the L where it borrowed from GM Europe. And even then it was a mishmash.
I think they were trying to hedge their bets both ways. Chrysler wasn’t shy about saying what models or parts were built by Mitsubishi, maybe so they didn’t have a lawsuit like GM had with the Chevy engines in Oldsmobiles. Some Fords were derived from Mazdas and Chrysler & Mitsu had jointly designed models like the DSMs. But GM was probably too proud to do a joint design and figured they could do it better all on their own.
Ex Saturn master tech here. Spring Hill ’96. There was absolutely no parts or systems sourced from GM Europe for the S series AFAIK. Clean sheet. And for the first time, a GM division was allowed to source parts from any supplier they wanted, not just traditional GM suppliers. So you saw things like NGK spark plugs being OEM fitment on a GM designed and built engine and car.
As a long time 97 SL2 owner, it drove better than the 95 Escort, not quite,as nice as an A1 Jetta but the AC was an order of magnitude better than the Jetta. In 15 years and over 120,000 miles we battled a squealing serpentine belt caused by a leaky valve cover and replaced the alternator, radiator, and water pump before the catastrophe. The S series had two well known flaws in the transaxle. The first was reverse slam caused by a sticking plunger in the automatic’s valve body. This was fixable with a fluid and filter change or at worst a rebuilt valve body which was an easy repair. The other flaw was the differential pin of death. Failure of this component grenaded the transaxle and because the case was broken you needed a complete unit. In 2017 after 15 years our Saturn went bang, dumped all of the ATF and got donated.
Regarding the S series as misstep, GM executives thought Saturn buyers would “step up”to Oldsmobile or Pontiac hence the similar styling of the early 90s W body. Buyers didn’t go to other GM divisions so Saturn rushed in the L series which was too little too late. Case in point, my mother had a 94 SL2, loved the car, seriously considered going to a homecoming and when she wanted a larger car in 2000 she got a VW Passat. We never bought a new Saturn after inheriting the SL2 and its replacement was a pickup
Many instances of trans slam were caused by people removing the ring shaped trans magnet from under the spin on trans filter and not putting it back. This let metallic debris build up on the electromagnetic shift solenoids, causing the rough shifting. A new set of shift solenoids fixed it, and a new trans magnet under the filter.
GM built a car, company, and dealer network that people actually enjoyed buying and owning. Can’t have that now, can we?
Similar to the Corvair, as soon as you create something new at GM, even if it is successful, the long knives come out and starve it to death over the next decade until it dies a desiccated husk.
It does seem that post-bailout GM is less toxic but man what a dysfunctional company it was at its peak.
Saturn had the same problem as the Japanese cars of the era. No room for us altitudeinally advantaged souls to squeeze in. The interiors were tiny.
My only experience with Saturn was when my ex was buying a new car around 1998 or 1999. She was leaning towards an Accord but also wanted to look at Saturn because her mom had one at the time. We went to the dealer and she told them what she wanted to test drive. They asked her a few questions and said you don’t need this car, you need that car. She said that’s fine, but I want this car. They said no, you should buy that car. We ended up leaving the dealership without a test drive and she bought the Accord. I get what the dealership was trying to do, but when you have someone ready to buy a car you probably shouldn’t refuse to sell them what they want.
Is GM getting a hit, getting to second base and then proceeding to discharge a firearm directly into their left foot and hobble over to fielders choice out on third an option. This brand was something GM never did before or after, listen to the low budget consumer. But respecting the customer doesn’t fly at the Ren Center! The forced long walk off a short pier GM did Saturn via an Opel shaped stick was really a phenomenally irrational decision from GM. It was like they looked at the possibility of success after 30 years of trying to be competitive with JDMs, and went “Can’t be having that”. It’s cool though, we all gave them a nice check so the invisible hand of capitalism can continue to make irrational choices. Rest in Power Chevy Bolt.
I inherited a 2000 SW2 5 speed, it was fun and always looked respectable.
In life it needed, rear window rollers, a clutch, a steering rack and front subframe due to road salt and of course brakes and tires and consumables.
After a couple of years I had it perfect for one day and it was attacked by a RAV4 in a snow storm, did I mention it was white, anyway despite it’s rarity the insurance company wrote it off after a heated battle with me for replacement value, to them all S series wagons were the same. Anyway I miss it, but I have to agree it was no longer a modern car, GM was being GM.
Back in the Saturn days, the family of GM brands were a dangerous place to be. Each division fought with every other division to the point that you’d almost think that they didn’t care about Ford, Honda or anyone else. They were saddled with parts bin products and that left really only marketing to set them apart from each other. To some extent the territorial battles still exist, but Olds, Pontiac and Saturn corpses have been buried. Fewer players to compete for the GM dollars.
Speaking of parts bin cars, Ultium might be the ultimate example of that in the history of GM. At least it has promise as being quite good, especially compared to the rushed tech that Ford is putting out.
Poor Geo always getting left out
Geo was always the odd man out, and destined for a brief lifespan. How else would you throw together cars made by Suzuki (Metro), Toyota (Prizm) and Isuzu (Storm/Spectrum)?
Between immediate and extended family, we had a couple SL2s and an SL1, all 2nd-gen, and they went on to be replaced by an ION and a VUE. My first car was a low-mileage ’94 SC2 that presented well but I think had secretly been a flood car or something, because it had a myriad of issues that was a bit of a story itself.
My family mostly bought GM then, with a J-car and a Lumina being the trade-ins on our first Saturns, but the dealer experience was still a big draw for us. And it was the business and dealer model that was more significant about Saturn. There are people who say it should have been sold at existing GM brands (usually more hardcore GM fans, or even specifically Chevy), and I don’t disagree, but it also wouldn’t have achieved the same thing. Their research showed import buyers specifically wouldn’t go to a domestic showroom at all then.
The original plan was supposed to be more Chevette-sized, so closer to the Civic/Corolla at the time; the upsizing put it closer to the Accord of the time in size IIRC, aka J-body sized. But the Accord grew by the time production started, and the production model was sized somewhere between a Civic and an Accord.
There’s another image that has circulated somewhere with early prototypes, that also had a tall wagon/mini-minivan considered.
Re: the first SL’s Cutlass Supreme resemblance – the original red sedan prototype looks like what became the Isuzu Stylus, and the wagon rear 3/4 view seems like a 4-door Geo Storm wagonback (aka Isuzu Impulse) – certainly some sharing at the GM design studio went on. To me the original coupe also had a familiarity to me somewhere between the 1985 Buick Wildcat concept and (though less so) the Reatta.
I spent two years out of tech school working for Saturn, I think the biggest issue was going to badge engineering instead of spending money on the S Series, Saturn customers specifically don’t want a Cavalier, so making them buy one just sends them out the door.
We used to get the announcement over the intercom when there was a delivery so we could all go cheer the new owner on as they pulled out of the bay. They would get a picture taken with their car and we would put it into a photo album that was there, I think we had 5 binders when I left, you could watch peoples kids grow up as they came back every few years to buy new ones. One of our salesman had a series of photos he always went back to where you saw Dad buy a 92, then a 96, then bought his daughter a 2001 as her first car and she was in every picture. It was honestly something special.
We hired one of our parts guys because he would buy wrecked and broken S cars and spend time with us buying new parts to flip them. He used to do 15-20 cars a year.
I have a mostly rational hatred for the S-Series.
My In-Laws bought my now wife a 3rd gen SL when she was in college to replace a totaled Toyota Matrix. They bought it for $2k, using less than a quarter of the insurance pay out of the Matrix. They put it in her name when they bought it. It was a downgrade in every way. Nine months later when the transmission broke they refused to help us cover any of the $1100 it cost to fix it.
The year after that multiple AC components failed right before my wife drove it to Texas in July. And I won’t get into all the other issues we had with it.
We eventually dumped it on her parents during the pandemic when we no longer needed two cars. I still get angry any time I see it in their driveway.
So…your in-laws gave you a free car, you didn’t like how they treated you, and that’s somehow the car’s fault? Doesn’t sound rational to me.
These cars have a special place in my heart. I drove a 2000 Saturn SL1 from 2002 until 2016, putting about 260k on it, driving across the country about 4 times. Manual windows, no power steering, 5-speed manual. It took me from a single guy in college, to a married guy with two kids and a commute. I sold it in 2016 to a guy, and in my mind it’s still going strong.
I had no issues with it aside from general maintenance, a new clutch at 200k, and a valve cover gasket at 220k. Fuel economy was amazing at 40+mpg.
They were great cars.
And it was 5 billion well spent. Look at production quality pre-1990 and then post-2000. Competition from Japanese imports drove quality competition, but internal competition from Saturn showed GM that their workforce actually COULD take pride in their work and could actually produce a quality product. It’s too bad that the Dealership experience didn’t stick.
What do you mean about not great gas mileage? Granted all my Saturn’s were sticks, but they got fantastic mileage for the time. We LOVED our vue.
They should’ve had “Saturn” buy GM and get rid of the Sloan-era GM shit and the UAW. Fire all the legacy GM “executives” and put Saturn in charge.
Supposedly, Saturn’s UAW contracts had much less fine print in them.
Hard disagree. I am a total Stan for my first car, 1995 SL2 5-speed. In college a friend got a 1992 SL auto and that interior was much, much worse. 95 was best with the more unique exterior styling, and the updated interior. My dad had a 93 Corolla and I’m not saying the SL2 was better than it, but it was an upgrade over the original.
Car was a hit. Engines were good until 200,000 miles, then add oil often. Great to drive, easy to live with, cheap to fix. The twin-cam and stick are really the only way to go though. They make it so much better than missing either one.
When I had an accident I considered a Vue (1st gen only). I never wanted an L-series or Ion. While I liked the Sky, it still wasn’t really a Saturn.
I drove a 5-speed VUE for a while. 143 horsepower, 3800 pounds. Not fast! But honestly, fast enough for Michigan and Kansas. It was a reallllly reliable car.
Post ’05 2.2 EcoTecs were SOLID.
But you could get 30mpg in an SUV with a stick, or you could (later) get the Honda V6! I was intrigued by the fold flat front passenger seat also.
It comes in handy. I have a 2006 Manual Vue that we love.
Our 02 5 speed vue was excellent. Over 200k trouble free miles at roughly 30 mpg.
That’s awesome. Ever have any clutch hydraulics issues?
Nope. The only issue we ever had was the coil pack igniter went out once just after I put plugs in it, and that was because I put the wrong kind in it. They were very picky about plugs apparently.
Weirdly, they are very picky about only getting cheap plugs. We put platinum plugs in my gf’s 2000 SW2, and it ran like crap. Checked Saturnfans, then installed cheap copper plugs and it was back to purring again. Supposedly something about the waste-spark arrangement. Same car also balked at synthetic automatic transmission fluid. Every Saturn I worked on definitely had personality.
I actually have a fair amount of respect for the pre-Ion Saturns (No experience with models after 2000)
Yes, the SL series cars were very specific about needing the factory spec plugs to run right. The coil packs fire forwards and backwards, on the power stroke and the waste fire. They sense the load difference and use that information to sync the SFI. When I was a dealer tech in 1996 we had an entire 5 gallon bucket we filled with fancy “upgrade” aftermarket spark plugs from cars that were brought in with driveability complaints and misfires. Anyone remember “splitfire” spark plugs and those early Bosch Platinums? Lots of those went straight into the trash from our 4 bay dealership.
Can’t speak for Unclesolverine, but the Lovely Wife had a Vue when we got married. Not a bad little SUV, but the slave blew and soaked the clutch the first time (ya, you read that right, FIRST time) somewhere around 60-70K. After that we put at least three clutches in that damn thing in about five years, all of them due to the slave blowing out.
I did replace my clutch around 160,000. Turned out it was the slave cylinder, but naive me didn’t know much about cars and let a mechanic hose me.
My college roommate and his sister both had used SCs. Hers developed an oil leak from somewhere in the rear end–we all looked at her like she was crazy, but nobody could figure out where the oil was coming from. Her trunk was empty and unused. We thought.
Turns out she’d had a quart of oil fall under the carpeting into the little cubby between the rear wheel and the back of the trunk, and it’d leaked all over everything underneath before eventually finding a drain to drip out of. (There was damage to the carpeting but it was old and dried up by the time anyone had realized.)
The dealership–not hers, they were from out-of-state–had a laugh about it, cleaned up the trunk, replaced the carpeting, washed the car as per Saturn’s standard service, and sent her on her way with a $0 receipt.
We were all stunned.
I loved the credit card spare key and how you could use the drivers door key to roll windows up and down. Saturn dealers were awesome. I hope I can find my old soft rubber key chain somewhere!
How did the key roll the windows down?
IIRC, you put it in the door, turn to unlock the car, and just keep holding it until the windows rolled down.
exactly. 2 quick turns unlocked all doors. just keep holding it and the windows and sunroof would all open until you released the key. opposite operation to close.
“Look at the greenhouse of the first-generation Saturn SL, then look at the greenhouse of the front-wheel-drive W-Body Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Notice anything?”
A lack of blind spots.
for real, disability was amazing! I also loved how there was a power passenger mirror, but the drivers mirror was the rod to adjust. Lower trims and no passenger mirror, and you had to adjust drivers mirror by hand. Also, shout out to center window switches to save on mounting an extra one on the passenger door!
I got so used to those center switches! They also let the front passenger reach the switches for the back windows. Handy for a family occasionaly
I had a dark green metallic ’95 SL1, manual. I thought it was a great car aside from how you could break into it with a screwdriver in the door lock. Beats breaking the glass, at least! I dare say it was even fun to drive for what it was, even with over 150k on the odo. I’ve always thought that early Saturn face was hideous, though, even when it was new.
I thought that about the face at first, but I love it in hindsight compared to the blob face that followed. I had the same color (almost teal?), but SL2 was far more peppy!
I still don’t love it, but I think I’ve at least gotten used to it. I appreciate how nothing else on the road looks like it, even now.
The first car I bought with my own money was a 2001 SW2.
The second car I bought with my own money was a 2004 ION3.
The 3rd car was a Subaru.
The dealership experience and ownership experience of that little wagon absolutely sold me on returning to the brand when my SW2 got totalled on the way home from work in a snowstorm. But by 2004, I could see that Saturn as a brand was shifting: that ION was the same thing as a Cobalt and – while that meant parts availability was STELLAR for the decade-plus I kept it – it meant that Saturn’s leverage to be “not GM” was quickly failing.
When the Relays started showing up in the showroom (truly the ugliest minivan ever devised by man) and the entire lineup had become an exercise in rebadging, Saturn was as good as dead to me.
But oh, did I love the plastic panels while I had them. I loved going into the dealership and knowing up front the price that car was going to be. I loved the servicability of the ION’s Ecotec. I loved the test drive I got in the supercharged Redline coupe. I loved the center-console window switches on the SW2 and the wierdo center-mounted dash on the ION.
Ion was technically a cavalier, the Cobalt came in 05 and was mostly a clean break from the Cavalier
The ION was unrelated to the Cavalier, aside from the corporate GM Ecotec engine. ION and VUE predated their Chevy counterparts, ‘test beds’ you could say.
The Cobalt did come out for ’05, but it was no secret for the years up to that point that the Cavalier replacement was going to be on the Delta platform shared with the ION.
These Saturns were basically like swedish cars of the same era. There were two outcomes:
I saw more examples of #2 than #1…. where people got rid of them (recently) because they were hand me downs and they were just sick of driving the damn things.
The auto transmission issue was real (as stated below), but if you had a manual version with the DOHC powertrain during whatever years didn’t have the weird spark plug issue…. damn things wouldn’t die….
I do remember the interior plastics being so Playskool quality that even in the 1990s/early2000s it was kind of like “dude… come on… really”
My GF at the time had a 1995 SL1 wagon with the single-cam motor she bought new and it was REALLY slow, it was one of those cars where you automatically switched off the A/C before a freeway merge or steep hill. It also had the fairly-common cracked head issue where the pressurized engine oil leaked into the coolant, causing a milkshake that brought all the mechanics to the yard. GM eventually agreed to cover the issue, but I’d already had to buy a new head from GM and install it a couple years earlier.
There’s also a known issue with the automatic transmission-equipped models – the valve body warps, with the most common symptom being a delayed engagement into Reverse which gets worse until it goes into limp mode, which I think locked it in Second. We got hit with that one too, at about 85K miles.
Plus 1.9L motor didn’t come with balance shafts and consequently was pretty agricultural-feeling compared to the Japanese competition. It wasn’t too much of an issue in 1991, but by the end of the model run, it was very noticeable.
That said, it was much better driving than other GM shitboxes at the time, and if had been a twin-cam with a five-speed, mechanical issues would have been nearly nil. She loved it and it looked and drove fine after 130K and ten years, so I can’t be too negative about Saturn.
My first new car was a lovely sl1 in metallic dark teal. Back when cars were pretty colors. I was raised in a Toyota family but the 90s saw Toyota go small and expensive. No Bueno for newly married in grad school. With the 5 speed, that sedan was fun to drive and was a pleasant place to be in my driving one way to work and another to school. The experience was amazing too. No fighting off the paint protection or upgrade floor mats or undercoating. We would have such with them but after a while, the innovation faded and they become just another gm blah. The only lasting thing that came out of it was it seemed to convince some dealers that people don’t like the combative sales experience. I wouldn’t call it a failure but not a lasting success either.
The S-series was a hit – not a home run, but a double, at least, when GM was having trouble getting to first base.
Saturn as a company, as a culture, as an idea was a home run, but very infighting it was meant to cure ended up bringing it down. Look at everything you touted as new in the dealership experience – aside from no-haggle, that’s all basically standard in the business nowadays. And no-haggle certainly has its stalwarts in CarMax and Tesla.
Saturn couldn’t have existed without GM throwing money at it to start, but it couldn’t live because GM had other divisions to feed, and developing something is more exciting than maintaining it. Allowed to do its own thing, it would have thrived, but it needed GM’s money to get off the ground.
I will die defending Saturn and I lament its loss at least weekly.
Hear hear! We’d be buying them still if they were still around. I still think about picking up a manual V6 Vue…
I owned an S-series for a couple of years, an SC1 with the third door, and honestly, I couldn’t stand it. The single-cam engine was underpowered and the gearing was way too tall, so I was constantly downshifting into 3rd to pass on the highway. I think I used 5th gear maybe three times in the two years I owned it. And because of that, I never saw the fuel economy everyone raved about. Maybe if you drive them like an old lady they do better, but I never did better that 25-26 mpg in mixed commuting.
And my god did it feel flimsy. The driver’s side door latched against the third door, and the whole assembly wobbled sickeningly when you shut the door. The dashboard jiggled up and down over bumps. Every switch felt like it was something on a Fisher-Price toy. Nothing ever actually broke, but it all felt like crap.
It was reliable, but a pain to work on when it did need repairs. “Normal” GM stuff makes sense to me, but Saturn is on another planet (pun intended). The thermostat is WHERE? What’s it doing down there? Oh for….
Edit: oh yeah, and the oil consumption. Good grief.
Honestly, I think I would have preferred a Cavalier.
Interior was super cheap, but college/dirtbag kayaker me loved that freedom to sleep in it (I’m 6’2″) and toss in dirty stuff without feeling bad.
SL2 was so much better. I got 36mpg on the highway and wasn’t conservative driving. I could carry so much speed because of how light it was. It did drink oil (once the warning light while driving, and the Walmart I pulled into wouldn’t work on it because noting on dip stick), but never died! Most annoying plastic part was the ratchet in the hand break. It took me opening up 4 at the junkyard to find a replacement that wasn’t already broken. For awhile I used a block of wood under to hold up the parking brake, but my GF now wife really didn’t like that.
There was something wrong with your car. What year was it?
Cruzing down the highway at-speed you never shifted into 5th? So you constantly ran an injured engine (oil consumption) at high RPM and just complained about a lack of power and bad fuel economy?
Was my SL1 1.8L SOHC powerful? No. But it was a fun car to drive in a slow-car-fast way. Definitely learned about momentum driving and about looking ahead enough to get a running start to pass.
But I understand. This is the reason we have 500HP commuter sedans. No one wants to learn to look ahead nor to manage momentum, or to generally learn to drive. Just stab the throttle and solve their short-sightedness in the riskiest way possible.
EDIT: and I drove fast then too, with the required radar detector, even in my SL1. And yes, I’m defensive of my first-car love. 🙂
EDIT2: 35mpg in town, 40+ on highway for me (they cruise at 80mph+ just fine).
EDIT3: “constantly downshifting into 3rd to pass on the highway” How do you think torque curves and transmission gearing works? That sounds like expected behavior.
My parents owned one from new when I was a kid, and the thing I remember that seems funny now is the manufacturer sponsored owner’s events. I’ve been in plenty of owner-driven car clubs, and I’ve bought a lot of cars myself, but no OEM has ever invited my family to the zoo like Saturn did.
The other things I remember from owning a ’96 myself as a commuter car are that invisible rust under plastic is an unpleasant surprise, that popup headlights suck ass in icy climates, and most importantly, to always carry a quart of oil with you.