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R.I.P Saturn

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The Saturn brand should be gone in 2011.
No new product will come out after the current one run out.

This is just too bad.

I have been driving a few Saturns lately and I can tell you they are as good or better than most cars out there.
Like most people, I was underwhelmed by the Vue hybrid. But the “real hybrid” two mode version was on its way.
And the Aura is one of the best family sedan I have driven lately.

Dealers are trying to take it over and use it as a distribution network for foreign cars.
Of course, most people are thinking of Chinese cars.
But how about using it to sell European cars. You know, these brans we don’t get. Like Peugeot, Citroen or others…

But it seems that Chinese brands like Chery or Roewe would love to take advantage of the existing dealer network.

What do you think?

Conversation 21 comments

  1. Saturn never made a profit and the new lineup lost even more money. The Euro platforms are coming to the other divisions anyway.

  2. Vince, It is really a foreshadowing of bad things to come in this country! I have a Saturn folder from 1999 in front of me and they explain how they are a different kind of car company and how the phrase ‘ I have an idea’ was used alot by the employees at the Springhill Tenn. plant. They encouraged all their employess to offer up new ideas on how to improve their products the old fashioned American way. The 1999 models had new refined quieter engines made possible by imput from the people who worked as a family! And, just to think, that was only 10 years ago! What will this country and its major industries be like 10 years from now?

  3. GM should sell the plans and rights to the “S” series cars to someone. I drive a 1999 SL-2 and it gets 40mpg highway, the composite body panels aren’t bothered by shopping carts, and the car is a dream.

    We don’t need hybrids when my “stock” SL-2 gets 30mpg city, 40mpg highway!

  4. I like a few Saturns too but would never buy them because

    1) They offer only average value or less at MSRP, and

    2) I associate the brand with hippie losers and cowards who are afraid to negotiate.

    I think the dealers are sincere in wanting to market other stuff, but assuming there are 450 dealers or so, how are you going to get them to agree on anything to market? The proverbial “herding cats” would be easier in comparison. Maybe the dealers can be turned into frisbee golf parks under the massive pork bill that our beloved leaders just drunkenly signed.

  6. GM has too many brands. They should kill some long time ago. This becomes the biggest drag of the company.

  8. GM consistantly makes bad decisions. The ion was very ugly. No wonder they didn”t sell. But GM can’t tell an onion from an apple. Keep taxpayer dollars away from these ignorant auto execs.

  11. GM never took Saturn seriously enough. While they kept redundant divisions like Pontiac and GMC around they could have giving more to Saturn to make it successful. I was always a Saturn fan but once Saturn is gone I will NEVER consider a GM vehicle. I can only hope present Saturn owners will abandon GM when it comes time to buy another vehicle.

  12. In 1994, Saturn sold 286,000 cars (when they only had the S serie)
    In 2007, Saturn was down to 240,000 cars (with Ion, Aura, Vue, Sky, Outlook, Relay). A failure.

  13. “Dealers are trying to take it over and use it as a distribution network for foreign cars.
    Of course, most people are thinking of Chinese cars.
    But how about using it to sell European cars. You know, these brans we don’t get. Like Peugeot, Citroen or others…

    But it seems that Chinese brands like Chery or Roewe would love to take advantage of the existing dealer network.”

    Of course because of the sad state of our economy, we will be bringing Chinese cars and not anything really exciting or even safe. Since we seem to have outsourced quite a bit of our manufacturing to China already, it seems to make poetic, if not logical, sense that we should outsource our auto industry to China as well. We have made our bed with the Chinese, now we must lie in it.

  14. Saturn screwed themselves with their no haggle pricing that made them uncompetitive…Saturn is pointless anyway just like “near luxury” (whatever that is) Buick.

  17. i would have killed pontiac first because i dislike them even more than saturn. aleast saturn seemed to have a breath of fresh air. who would really buy a “loaded” Pontiac G8 for $40 grand?

  18. Too bad, but a monument to GM’s crappy management. Saturn was created by the late and not great, Roger Smith back in the 1980s when GM’s cars were horrible compared to almost any import other than Yugo and Hyundai (which is a good brand now!).

    Saturn was a separate subsidiary with a more favorable union contract than the rest of GM, too–Saturn was able to exist only because the UAW didn’t kill it before the first car was sold.

    After GM’s overall quality improved, GM neglected Saturn. Then GM tried to add a mid-sized Saturn by creating a bastardized Opel Vectra that looked horrible from every angle. That Saturn LS was a flat failure in 2000.

    The Aura is one of the best looking sedans out there IMO, but who needs it? The Chevy Malibu is much the same and is updated and better.

    When you think about it, except for the no-haggle pricing and the dent-resistant side panels, the Saturn was nothing more than a substitute for a Chevy at a time when GM’s market share was falling. Adding another brand was ridiculous except for the more reasonable treatment from the UAW.

    Too bad that GM is just about bankrupt at a time when some of its vehicles are quite good. But it’s been a slow death that neither management nor the UAW would face until now.

  19. For those of you with negative comments about the different GM brands, do not forget that real people bought them. Just because these brands do not fit your criteria, it does not mean that they are worthless. I am not a GM buyer, but,they have done a much better job lately.

  20. The price is the price thing turned me off when I looked at Saturn. That and the very low value for my trade in. Never bought one but looked.

  21. I liked Saturn’s dent-resistant side panels. The problem was that panel gaps had to be wider because the plastic panels needed more space for expansion and contraction in extreme temperatures.

    If Saturns were built with panel gaps as narrow as Hondas, the doors would probably be jammed shut after a Saturn was parked outside in a Palm Springs, CA day in August.

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