Saturn was the most well thought out and the most poorly marketed auto firm in recent memory. GM shot their foot off when they tried to pass Opel's for Saturns, not to mention jacking the prices to nearly $30,000. This is in a time when few have the credit or employement to purchase a motorcycle, let alone such an expensive piece of junk.

@Jim Topoleski: Thanks for the tip. I'm driving a '95 Saturn with a broken odometer but easily 3-400k km on it, through Nova Scotian winters (ridiculous levels of ice, wet, AND cold). The thing is a tank - it's survived ridiculous levels of abuse, including being rear-ended while at a dead stop by a car doing 90 km/h. Passengers were fine, the mark on the bumper is so tiny you have to know where it is, and the other car was totalled.

As an owner of a Saturn (my third), I'll miss the company very much but I'm going to keep my last Saturn (a 2007 ION 3 with the rarely ordered 2.4 engine) for as long as possible. I'm sure I can still get parts and service for some time, thanks to GM's parts sharing. But my dealer has been great to me through all the Saturns I have owned, and I have loved all three cars.
Call me among the last of the hard-core Saturn fans. I'll worry about my next car when the time comes.

I bought my oldsmobile alero in 2000, about a week before they announced they were ceasing production of olds. Don't be like me and live with regret! You might be able to get saturn parts, but you'll pay through the teeth to get them. Plus, those parts you'll get after 2011 won't be machined to the same standards, so luck be with you!

Hummer will always be made as long as there are wars. Beyond that, it is an irrelevant car now and dealerships are closing and folding into Chevy franchises, GMC dealerships and other GM signs as it fizzles out.

Give it up , Bob, and all those like you at the other 2 companies. Time really has passed you by and it's time for the young turks to take over..way passed time.

Going by 2008 sales, which is MUCH more valid, Saturn is selling more than those I listed.

People seem to forget that for years the many American brands where IT. There was no Japanese, German, or Korean manufacturers here and when they started out here, they where junk.

So back then it made a lot of sense to sell 4-5 different versions, because they ALL basically came back to you in money. These days there are somewhere close to 20 different car brands as opposed to 10-11. THATS where the problem came, GM didnt see the coming storm in the late 80s and early 90's that was Japanese cars. They didnt expect Americans to ever get over their national loyalty and NOT buy American.

Thats why Saturn died. A few in GM did see the problems coming and started the company to explore how to restructure GM. 7-8 years later, they where all fired and Saturn was brought back into the GM fold after being autonomous (AND making money)

BUT GMC also has a bigger commercial truck production than Chevy, even though both make the SAME commercial trucks.

Quite honestly if they killed GMC and made it a badge version of their Chevy trucks (like Pontiac is going to be performance versions of Chevy cars ala the G6 as well as one offs like the G8), they could get rid of all the dealer and managerial back end while keeping their production, thus saving money.

But then they would have to again pay off their dealer network which will kill any savings they would have gotten from it.

Most of the GMCs I see on the road are luxury versions of Chevy rigs.

I feel sorry for the owners of the brands that are headed for the sunset. I had an Oldsmobile Intrigue that dropped in resale value 50% the day they shuttered Oldsmobile.

@ekthesy: No problem, you can always count on me for a public Saturn bashing. Or at least a stern talkin' to!

Very immature. The guy has been on the job less than a month , was dealt a shitty hand and this kind of sniping from the cheap seats is supposed to make us all feel...Better ?

I didn't vote for the guy,but he's my president (and yours too,like it or not). I want him to succeed, and I want to see a rebirth of respectful diasgreement with the party in power.At least give him SOME time to either succeed or fail on his own merits.

As for Saturn,I guess it's too bad that you can't pick your parents.They were the only GM brand that I would even consider,but I guess that a quality car sold by caring dealers didn't fit into GM's long range plans.

Cadillac is the luxury line
Chevy is the regular line.
Buick or Saab, but not both...to be the off brand semi-lux line merging models from cadillac and chevy.
Saturn, the cheap/efficient line

Dump the rest...
Also, if you keep saab....i mean come on.... the pricing is a joke...right...

They are axing Pontiac, GMC is their main commercial vehicle brand (though Chevy also sells all those models), and they are trying to sell Saab.

So 3 out of 4 isn't bad.

But I dont dissagree with you in the fact that yse becuse a couple of years ago GM made Buick Pontiac GMC dealers consolidate their shops together, it makes it a LOT harder to get rid of Buick.

But that being said,Pontiac, Buick and GMC are dogs from a financial standpoint.

Its a slew of excessive backend for

1) a company whos best selling products are a American/Japanese shared platform, a rebadged Chevy Cobalt, and a car thats been replaced by the Aura/Malibu and whose coupe version was one of the 10 LEAST sold cars in America last month.

2) a company that barely sold 50 cars per dealer

3) a company that for all purposes is rebadged Chevy and Chevy commercial vehicles. The few that are not are easily transferable.

I would also rather see Saturn survive over Pontiac.

I drive a 1993 Buick. It's not a bad car, considering I drive like Batman. :)

Someday, however, I hope to have a car that was made in this century. Old cars with original parts shed them faster than I can replace them.

For what, exactly, did you admire the Saturn brand?

Personally, I admire them for their remarkable ability to consistently lose money for GM. You have got to admire that sort of dedication.

Oh, and not to mention the negligible headroom on virtually every model prior to 2000.

Then there's the fact that they managed to make small cars with all the handling of cars twice their size, but none of the ride quality. That was great.

And the priceless sight of dent-resistant Saturn doors that had shattered in cold weather.

Oh, and let's not forget the two plateaus of failure one sees in most 1990s Saturns on Carsurvey.org, at around 70k miles and 120k miles.

Hell, their first 10 years were a decade of shunning success in any form. That's dedication right there.

So what do you admire them for now?

From another forum:

A friend of mine inspects/breaks parts for Hummer. They're required to make "3 years" of spare parts, which they are now doing for Hummer. Also, these spare parts are *not* meeting specs.

I don't know what specific sub-assemblies he works on, but they're for the fake Hummers. The H2/H3. His job is to inspect them, and then periodically break a part to see if it breaks correctly. Back in August he was saying since the line was being discontinued, no one gave a crap any more. He'd get a part that didn't meet spec, his super would say "send it through anyway, it's a spare part", he'd mark it bad and send it on its way.

He's been laid-off for about a month and a half now. I think he's going back to work in two weeks.

Commercial vehicles. That probably explains the brand loyalty, too.

Also some had exploding differentials.

And on the plus side, transmissions aren't as expensive for CVs as for a lot of other cars.

GM reliability is not predicted by brand, it is predicted by platform. When GM makes one shitty car, 2/3 of their brands get the same shitty car. Same goes for their good cars.

The reason Buick has gotten such a good reputation for reliability is that Buick has relied most heavily, more than the other marques, on the proven, reliable, boring (it's a 3500+ pound FWD platform, of course it's boring) W-platform. Those that haven't used it have used at least some of the same engines and transmissions. You might recognize the W platform from other such "my parents had one and that was a great car" GM models as the Impala, Monte Carlo, and Grand Prix.

All the brand means is different packages of bells and whistles, and different bodywork. If you want to predict which GM models will be good and which will be crap, just forget about brands.

@gardenwzl:

I think GM should have axed Pontiac, made GMC a commercial brand and sold Saturn and Saab.

I don't think you have to worry about settling. Pontiac is getting the axe, too.

And both the Sky and Solstice were going to be retired soon, regardless (both are and have been unprofitable).

And not the shitty Pontiac ripoff.

Gah.

Exactly. Not only is this a waste of resources, it's also confusing for the consumer. Choice is good. But too many (redundant) choices can be bad and might scare off consumers.

@Kaessa: When I moved to VA I kept wondering "where are all the subes?"

The Outbacks are incredibly popular here... plenty of power in the mountains, they can drive in all kinds of weather, decent gas mileage. They're perfect for this area (or any area that gets a lot of snow).

@mbz32190: I grew up in Denver where approximately 1 in 3 cars is a subaru (I made up the figure but it seems about right)

I just got rid of my 95 SL2 last year and put less than $700 into in during the 5 years I owned it. I stupidly bought a ford focus and miss my saturn all the time

@k6richar: Driving a 94 Saturn and it's still going fine. I have to change the oil a little more then I normally would, but it's no big deal. My odometer is broke so I'm not even sure how many miles it has on it now. But it stopped on 147,300 and that was about 4 years ago.

No car payment in these days and times is magic.

Buick Cadillac, Hummer, and Saab all sold less than Saturn.

Difference is all of them are considered premium cars.

Saturn: 400 retailers, 5 models = 188,004 sales = 470 sales/retailer

Buick: 2700 dealers, 3 models = 137,197 sales = 51 sales/dealer

Saturn sold over 50,000 more cars than Buick.

If GM knew what they were doing...they wouldn't be in the position they are in.

I live in American car country (Iowa), and, I see more Saturns than Chevys any day of the week.

I guess GM doesn't measure success by the # of cars sold.

@David Brodbeck:

I can see that.. "Super Sport" isnt often the first thing you think of when 'SS' is mentioned.

My current cars a 96 SL2 which has been a bit more trouble but considering how poorly it was treated by the previous owner (he used it to tow things...seriously) its running well. I dont want to get rid of her...but she's not long for this world. Nor is saturn. Sad. GM should have tossed pontiac first, atleast saturn had a soul.

@sockrockinbeats:

We still have our 2001 SL1 too. It currently has 160,000 + miles. Of course its only function at this point is to drive my wife back and forth to work, but hey...no complaints from us since we bought it.

- Because almost everything they sell is a badge-engineered Chevy, it probably costs them almost nothing to keep the brand. GMC doesn't even advertise heavily. How much can it cost to crank out badges?

- GMC is rumored to have absurd levels of brand loyalty. If GM drops the brand it's not guaranteed those people would move to Chevy instead of Ford.

Well maybe now they will bring back the Buick SkyHawk and Skylark.

Another thing is many automakers will heavily jack up the prices on old parts they stock as they get rarer. I was once quoted over $400 from a dealer for a special radiator hose for a VW.

@scootinger:

I actually see the process of automobile manufacture being 100% automated in the next 25-40 years. To the point of people only being involved in the raw-materials transfer and loading-unloading process.

Your factory will wind up being staffed with only a few hundred maintanance people and fork truck drivers..

@acarr260:

As low volume as they are, high performance cars are critical to building brand recognition among enthousiests and the general public.

It gets people in to the show rooms and often leads to other sales, far above the numbers of the performance model.

Its a bad move IMO.. Expect to see more of that as things go "green".

Thank you! I have been bagging Saturn on multiple boards and for some reason everyone just loves their Saturns...my wife had a 2001 SC1 and it was quite possibly the worst car ever made. I think she would have been more comfortable behind the wheel of a Trabant or some other Eastern Bloc thang. Poor construction, uncomfortable seats, an automatic seatbelt that would strangle you if you were over 5'5", the accelerating power of a team of very old oxen, way way WAY too much plastic, on and on.

Finally, someone else who hated their Saturn!

"This is an exciting time at the Saturn Brand"

Really? What meds is Jill on?

@gardenwzl: ITA. I had a Saturn for nine years and it was easily the best car I owned. Of course, I've never been in a position to have, like, a Bentley.

Saab is having major discussions today about being spun off but the Swedish govt won't give them loans. There have been NO interested buyers. If the Swedes don't cough it up Saab will be dead.

Here's what to do:
Drop all the Chevy cars. Make Chevy 100% trucks and SUV's. Move the Corvette over to Cadillac and keep that going. Close Pontiac and Buick and keep Saturn to develop a new car line.

It's that simple.

The new Buick Lacrosse looks to be an excellent new sedan and the Enclave was a big success for them lowering the avg age of their customers. GM has made a lot of mistakes but Saturn is clearly a brand without a direction while Buick has an upside.

Yeah, if the thought of your job, brand, and your entire industry collapsing is your definition of excitement.

@lars2112: Everyone has that story about *some* car model - for me it's Chevy. The one I had, I had to keep taking back to the dealer once a week for the first 6 weeks I had it. Other people swear by the brand.

Heck, look at the cab companies who get 250k-500k on their ford crown victorias.

When I bought my 1967 Plymouth Fury, it had over 160,000 miles on it, and yet the air conditioning, AM radio, and all other options still worked like a charm.

Your Mileage May Vary, indeed.

Saturn's dealership structure makes it the obvious choice among GM's brands given that the dealers seemingly have little recourse for the brand getting the axe. That is only exacerbated given the fact that Saturn no longer has stand-along models - they are all rebadged GM products from other brands.

And they wonder why they're having problems. I'd never buy a GM, but I always admired the Saturn brand.

@scootinger: I agree, Get rid of GMC and keep Chevy, Saturn, Buick and whoever else. Not that I would buy a GM product, except for a Corvette. Saturn does have some nice looking cars though.

@scootinger: Yes, they're downright stupid to scrap Saturn and keep GMC

Not necessarily. GMC is their commercial brand - heavy trucks used in construction, dump trucks, etc. It isn't meant to be a consumer brand except for the one or two models consumers buy from them. Most of what GMC sells is heavy, and GM needs a brand in the heavy equipment market.

@badgeman46: ...in a beautiful stainless steel casket no doubt.

Similarly, you would have Saturn most likely doing the design/support/marketing/distribution for the vehicles, but most likely outsourcing manufacturing to other car manufacturers. You already see car manufacturers in similar joint ventures today: there are GM vehicles that are essentially rebranded Suzuki/Toyota vehicles (such as my Pontiac Vibe, aka Toyota Matrix), Ford vehicles that share a platform with Mazda vehicles (Ford Fusion/Mazda6, or Ford Escape/Mazda Tribute), among many other examples.

I love Saturn. My family has had 7 Saturns over the past twelve years. We still have 4. Two were sold and one wrecked. They've been really reliable and the one I wrecked kept me safe in a bad wreck.

My Saturn got totaled too and I would have driven it till it died otherwise. It was the best, most reliable car I've ever had and it suited my needs perfectly. I'm very disappointed by its closing and don't know what I'm going to do now when it comes to buying another car. :(

*moment of silence too*

The Aura shares NOTHING with the similar Opel Vectra. Just design cues. Its actually similar to the G6 which came before it, and the new Malibu which is actually a carbon copy of it with a Chevy body.

In my opinion GM is almost as undeserving of the bailout as the morons at Citibank.

Saturn was NOT part of GM originally. They where funded by GM, but everything about them was separate.

separate platform, engine, management, engineers, UAW contract, plant, dealer contract, you name it.

Saturn was a experiment by GM to see if their plans to restructure GM to compete with the imports would pan out.

What happened was a number of things. First the people who supported Saturn inside GM left or where fired. Then after GM turned in a loss for 1993, and Saturn turned in a profit, GM folded them back in under the guise of "experiment failed" to use Saturns profits for GMs purposes.

Then while claiming Saturn would still retain their autonomy, they stripped and changed all the contracts with the UAW and dealers, took all of Saturns engineers, and eventually took their plant leaving them just "brand name" without any support structure left.

Ended up buying a Saab. Solid-As-A-Brick, but without the feeling of riding on one.

GM also just Axed their entire "SS" performance department as well.. No more high-performance projects out of GM.. They have lost their minds.

Not true. There is no requirement that they continue to make replacement parts for X years. They do have to warranty the emissions system for a number of years, which by definition, implies that they will continue to make some parts for that period.

Saturn was the only GM brand I would ever consider. I owned a 1998 SL2 that was a great little car and we had the Saturn ownership experience up until the car was totaled in 2000 and, in which I still say to this day, the car saved our lives. We went back after the accident to look at getting another car and noticed that the sales staff wasn't the same helpful people any more and were more like the slime you'd see at any other car dealer so we didn't buy a Saturn.

Fast forward to 2002... we wanted a SUV, and we felt the Saturn VUE was a good bet and we bought one regardless of the slimy salespeople. It was good for the first 30,000 miles before the transmission began to fail. They had a recall and revised the warranty to replace the transmission, but with another poorly designed one. It failed before it had 30,000 miles on it and Saturn wouldn't cover it and insisted on us paying for useless maintenance work (fluid flushes, inspections, etc.) before they'd even consider doing anything. We traded it in and gave up on Saturn. I do have to laugh that there is a class action against Saturn for this very transmission problem.

RIP Saturn

It is interesting to see the logic and reasoning for brand killing. Oldsmobile was killed off because the people who bought them were in nursing homes or dying, leaving only two models that really sold, the Alero and the SUV which was a blazer twin. GM learned from its mistake with this, which is why Cadillac cars suddenly became sporty and youthful instead of land yachts driven to the Cracker Barrel at 5 in the morning around this time. I suspect GM wants to keep Buick for similar reasons, it is really the only brand it has that would appeal to older/elderly buyers. I do recall a time in the early 90s when EVERYTHING GM sold was an old lady car. Ala lumina, Cutlass. I am upset that GM took John DeLorean's Pontiac division and let it languish to a fleet of twins. DeLorean is probably rolling in his grave.

[autos.yahoo.com]

Although I'm calling bullshit on GM's "hard work" on the brand (it's well documented GM hasn't done shit for Saturn), it sounds like Saturn was a victim of its own benefits. I guess there just aren't enough dealers or enough people who don't want to haggle. Too bad. Saturn's new line up looked promising, and they're one of the few GM companies I would consider for a new car.

I think my dad's '96 Jimmy is hovering around 300K miles. Kinda on life support though.

And nothing says they couldn't close Buicks US operations and leave the china one open (since the China one is independent of the US brand and has cars the US brand doesn't even offer

The only reason they are chucking Saturn and keeping Buick is the name. Buick has been a GM brand for ages, Saturn? only since 1985 (and then only started selling cars since 1990)

It wasn't profitable under the almighty umbrella that is GM. You'd be surprised the amount of wiggle room an independent corporation has when they can slim down their supply lines, dealerships, and other bloaty things that come with being part of a huge mega-conglomerate such as GM.

Not saying SDC will ever be profitable or successful by any means, but it's not impossible either.

They've always been a part of GM. Saturn was created by GM... how did their customer service go downhill before they were even created?

Well that is kilometers, so it is 260k miles. My 93 F150 is pushing 220k miles atm.

Anyone know what will happen to Saab and Hummer?

If Saturn was a part of the company that was making money, why cut it off? If it wasn't making money, why make it into an independent spin-off?

If some jerk hadn't t-boned (and subsequently totaled) my '03 L300 (130ishK miles), I'd still be pushing it - although it did have quite a few problems.

*moment of silence*

They aren't still making the parts becasue it's what they want to do to help the little guy. They are required (by the federal government) to make replacement parts for 10 years after a model has been discontinued. After 10 years the owners are SOL if the junk yard doesn't have them.

my first car was a 96 saturn SL1. i bought it with 100K+ miles on it, and put another 100K on it--and it still ran great. i'd probably still be driving it if i hadn't totalled it. :(

my current car is a 2001 salturn SL1. i love saturns. *tear*

Good riddance. I just got rid of my Saturn Vue POS- the line that they state: "While this process proceeds, we will continue to do what we have always done best: sell great vehicles and take care of our customers." Pffft, hardly.

Their customer service went downhill when the company joined the GM line, as well as their individuality. They aren't as affordable and gas efficient as other automakers, and their warranty doesn't hold a flame to others as well. The only part of their warranty that was worth it was it was transferrable- and trust me, the next owner would need it.

The only part of this that saddens me is the existing, die hard Saturn fans. Unfortunately, many of our domestic brands are a dying breed to foreign.

If GM does this, my wife and myself have coincidentally chose to go to Volkswagon as our next new car purchase. This was done indepently thinking hard about if this was to happen, and when I asked her what she thought, I was pleased to see we are on the same page.

I agree with you totally. Jalopnik released the sales numbers for various domestic manufacturers about a month ago that showed the statistics of each brand/model sold. I was amazed to see that GM, when you count all of the brands under it, had close to 100 different car models to choose from. And there were a lot of stinkers in there. It just made me think, if they had focused on making 75% fewer cars, but making them 75% more reliable and cheaper...they wouldn't be in the mess they are in now.

@gardenwzl: Saturn was the only american made car I owned that did not DIE before 100K. Not saying all american cars do die before 100K but I treated my saturn like crap and putting on 75K in 1 year the thing was great. My F250 and Jimmy (both of which were serviced a lot) died or had serious repair bills before reaching 100K.

I hope someone buys Saturn or they get a chunck of the bail out going to GM and just become a stand alone car maker.

Buick sells extremely well in China as well. They love the floaty ride.

It's about time GM started doing something about this. Diversification has a negative impact on profitability when you're mass producing vehicles like this, and some of the savings can be used to plug their hemorrhaging cash flow, the rest can be passed on to the consumers.