1991 Saturn SL sedan. Photos courtesy GM Media Archives.
By the early 1980s, General Motors had finally begun to accept that its small car lineup wasn’t particularly competitive with models from Japanese brands like Honda and Toyota. Rebadging cars manufactured by partners Isuzu and Suzuki offered buyers variety, but at the expense of per-unit profit margin. To be truly successful, GM president Roger Smith rationalized, the automaker needed its own domestically produced compact car, one designed from a clean sheet of paper to beat the Japanese at their own game. In 1982, GM’s Project Saturn was born.
Initially, GM envisioned Saturn as a sub-brand, sold through volume (and price) leader Chevrolet’s dealer network. Early in the planning process, it became clear that the only way to design a truly “clean sheet” automobile was to rethink everything in the design, planning, manufacturing, sales and service process, and thus Saturn was officially established as a stand-alone brand in January of 1985. Its plant would be located in Spring Hill, Tennessee, out of range of those in Detroit who thought that an entirely new car, and the requisite new division, was utter folly. For his part, Roger Smith played the role of pitchman, making promises about Saturn automobiles that he’d never have to deliver upon himself.
In the summer of 1983, the first Saturn prototype was revealed, with Smith promising the car would deliver remarkable fuel economy, along the lines of 45 MPG city and 60 MPG highway. The car would be priced competitively against Japanese rivals, but would far exceed them in terms of quality and design. Never one to eschew controversy, Smith declared that the Saturn would be, “a quantum leap ahead of the Japanese, including what they have coming in the future.” Few details were released on what would make Saturn models so different at this initial press conference, but GM committed that the car would launch with its own unique aluminum engine and would use dent and rust-resistant polymer body panels, as the automaker would shortly debut on the Pontiac Fiero.
Progress on the Saturn automobile’s design proceeded slowly, but the group had no difficulty recruiting workers from other GM facilities. For 3,800 initial jobs, GM received some 16,000 internal applicants from 46 states. Of those flown to Spring Hill for interviews, 90 percent accepted Saturn’s job offer, and these employees had an average of 13 years’ experience working with GM. Pay was set below what many were used to making, but Saturn offered performance incentive bonuses for reaching sales and production targets; perhaps more significantly, Saturn was not GM, nor was it entirely UAW. Early in the planning for Saturn, the UAW and GM negotiated a separate memorandum of understanding (MOU) that would govern the Spring Hill Plant; later, this would come back to haunt the UAW, as Spring Hill workers repeatedly refused to sign newly negotiated UAW contracts.
Another thing that drew employees to Saturn was the division’s basic principles, which were:
- At all levels, employees were committed to both the customer’s needs and one another’s success.
- Workers would demand accountability for results and develop multi-skill flexibility.
- Employees would treat all Saturn stakeholders as partners.
- Saturn would do whatever it took to be competitive with the best carmakers in the world.
Indeed, nearly every aspect of the Saturn operation was, at first, unique. Assembly line workers would sit beside management in team meetings, and even shared a common dining room (much to the dismay of those in Detroit). Instead of designers working in isolation from engineers and suppliers, Saturn relied on “simultaneous engineering” to partner designers, engineers, outside suppliers and line workers through every stage of the development process. Finally, when the cars reached Saturn dealerships, even the sales process was to be different: Although manufacturers are expressly forbidden from setting a retail price by U.S. law, Saturn models were priced such that negotiation on the “suggested retail price” was strongly discouraged, as was price gouging by dealers during times of short supply.
Becoming a Saturn dealer was no easy process, as GM sought to limit the number of dealerships in each market to prevent excessive competition. Those accepted into the family were required to build stand-alone showrooms and service areas, primarily so that Saturn business would not come at the expense of other GM brands. So dedicated were Saturn retailers to the cause that most agreed to pay the division a 1 percent rebate on the sale of each and every new car, in order to fund a third production shift and ease supply shortages. As a result of this, the brand was profitable as early as 1993, a full year before the company’s own projections.
“Job One,” the first Saturn to roll off the assembly line, was completed on July 30, 1990. The car, a red sedan, was ceremoniously driven by Roger Smith, who’d step down from the helm of General Motors later that same year. Sales to consumers officially began on October 25, 1990, with the Saturn product line consisting of the SL sedan and the SC coupe, offered in multiple trim levels with two engine choices. The base engine, a 1.9-liter, throttle body fuel-injected, single overhead-camshaft four-cylinder, produced 85 horsepower; the optional engine used the same displacement, but relied on multi-point fuel injection and dual overhead camshafts to produce 123 horsepower. Both were sandcast using a “lost foam” process that allowed casting of oil passages instead of later milling, saving time and money in the manufacturing process. Though base models came only with five-speed manual transmissions, those shopping higher-trim cars could opt for a four-speed automatic transmission. Automatic-equipped cars included both “Normal” shift mode and “Performance” shift mode, which simply delayed the upshift to extract the most power from the engine. Fuel economy was as high as 27 MPG city and 37 MPG highway, on par with competitors, but a far cry from the impressive numbers promised by the now-departed Smith.
Styled much like an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme in three-quarter scale, the SL (and SC) models used a steel spaceframe from which polymer body panels were suspended. The trunk, roof and hood were also formed from steel, but the spaceframe design was supposed to make styling updates simpler for the division. As long as the front-wheel-drive platform remained competitive, updating the Saturn models was (theoretically) as simple as designing a new skin and, perhaps, a new interior. As promised, content was on par with Japanese brands in the lower trim levels, but potentially higher than rivals as the price climbed. The base Saturn SL certainly delivered on one of the brand’s promises: Priced from $7,995, it was less expensive than the base Honda Civic sedan (by nearly $1,500) and the Toyota Corolla (by roughly $1,000).
In the beginning, customer service was a focal point of the Saturn brand, with one recall sending technicians to customer locations to install a modified seat bracket. A later recall for improperly formulated antifreeze saw Saturn take back an estimated 1,100 cars, exchanging them for new models instead of simply replacing the coolant (or even the engine). All Saturns were initially sold with a money-back guarantee, which gave buyers 30 days or 1,500 miles to return the car for a refund, no questions asked. Such outside-the-box thinking fostered rabid customer loyalty, and the brand routinely placed in the top three on J.D. Power and Associates customer satisfaction surveys. Further proof came in the form of the initial 1994 Spring Hill “Homecoming” for Saturn owners, which reportedly drew more than 45,000 attendees.
By 1999, the year of the second “Homecoming” event, trouble was brewing for the once-popular GM brand. While Roger Smith may have seen “different” as good, current GM management did not. Worse, the UAW was no longer behind the experiment, preferring instead to have all its members unified under a common contract with GM. Factor in the downturn in small car sales, the lack of diversity in Saturn’s product mix and an air of animosity from other GM divisions (who still felt slighted by the money used to launch and support Saturn), and it’s easy to understand why GM killed off the brand in 2010. The real irony was that Saturn’s initial unconventional thinking fostered both its success, and ultimately, its demise.
As an automobile, the Saturn SL fell short of its promise, but as a division, Saturn proved that innovation can indeed foster success, as long as a parent is willing to write big checks to launch, sustain and grow the brand. In the years since Saturn’s demise, no manufacturer (save, perhaps, for Tesla) has stepped forward to offer up such a tabula rasa starting point, and, sadly, it’s not likely to happen any time soon.