RIP Saturn

Roger Penske is no longer buying it. GM therefore is killing it.

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB125434260817353567.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

 

For a second there I thought we lost a planet.

 

Al Gore did say that if we kept using aerosol Right Guard this would happen. Dam.

 

Pluto: He's back. He's armed. And he's seriously pissed off.

 

Somebody think of Rhea and Iapetus!

Titan's big enough to make it alone.

 

Both of these posts are gold.

 

Sounds like Saturn could be dead as soon as the end of January, so I'm bumping this up.
My dad owned a '92 SL1 (brother later owned it about 7 years). I later owned two used Saturns ('93 SL1 and a '94 SC2, favorite car I've owned). I have fond memories of those cars, especially the SC2. Great handling, decent power, loved the looks inside and out (aside from the motorized belts), good value for the money. Plus pretty reliable, as long as yours didn't have bad oil rings.
To me, what killed Saturn was GM cutting off the money for development in the mid-1990s. It was all downhill from there, as Saturn had basically the same S-series on the market for 12 years and no real product for people to move up to aside from the L-series disaster. The Ion was embarrassing, and by the time Saturn started getting some decent rebadged products like the Aura and Sky it was too late.
Saturn started off well, and could have reached great heights if that early momentum had been taken advantage of. But then again, this is GM we're talking about.

 

Too bad. It was an American car company taking a chance with a quality, different product and a unique approach. Would have been better for the industry if it had worked, but ultimately it didn't.

Saturns were the first two new cars I ever bought. One sedan early on, when it was actualy tough to get one; another sedan a few years later. Great cars for the money, and a great buying experience. The breakthrough "pop an old plastic panel off, pop a new one on" plan for minor accidents came in handy and cheap for me on at least two occasions.

Not sure why the line never took hold after the initial wave. Did Americans not really want Toyota/Nissan/Honda-style cars from American manufacturers? Not that I'd argue Saturn had achieved that level in quality, but they were good cars and a viable, economical alternative for people who wanted to buy American. It just seemed like if this (turning the tide back toward the American product) was going to work, Saturn was the best hope.

Sad to see the great experiment fold.

 

I thought from the thread title that Marvin the Martian had pulled the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator out of mothballs and put the ringed planet atop his hit list.

It's obstructing his view of Uranus.

 

Saturns were decent cars sold through a revolutionary dealer network. It seemed GM never really fully committed to it, though. If they had continued developing the cars and stuck with the dealer model -- and expanded it to other brands -- it would probably still be alive and thriving.

I seem to recall that an incredibly high percentage of Saturn buyers had never owned a GM car before, and an incredibly high percentage of people didn't even know it was part of GM.

It was an interesting (if expensive) experiment, and a wasted opportunity.

 

Do we still have Uranus?

 

Unavailable for comment.