Long ago, before the turn of the century (21st not 20th), there existed a car company that very well could have been the best in the world. While the company was not killed off until 2009, it’s pretty obvious that its glory days were the ‘90s. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about Saturn, an experimental branch of …
In case you are homesick
First new car I ever bought was a 1997 SL2 with the 5 speed in a beautiful dark blue. They did a thing where your car would be inside the dealership for delivery, they'd take your picture, and then you'd drive it out of the building. Pretty neat experience overall. I loved that little car and occassionally miss it. It wasn't particularly good at any one thing, but I enjoyed driving it. I did wind up having to have a motor put in it when it was only about 4 or 5 years old with 130ishk miles on it. But I hadn't really developed my mechanical empathy at that time and I suspect it had more to do with how it was owned than how it was built.
I know they wanted to move up-market and do what all the cool kids were doing, but they really just lost the script when they became just another re-badge of GM products.
I was always impressed by their NEW sales technique. My whole fam went to the saturn dealership in daytona sometime mid 90's. Of course we expected to he assaulted by the sales goons as soon as we parked.
Instead, a single sales guy greeted us on the lot, he says his obligated schpiel, whatever welcome to saturn, etc. After greeting us quickly, he says my name is Rudy, take a look around the lot, let me know if you need anything, i'll be inside" and off he went inside to let us just do our thing. We were all dumbfounded and majorly impressed. Close to 30 years later im still impressed.
and we bought a green SL2. Good car but mom put some crazy mileage on it in the first year, like 50k+ miles and i dont think the car was real happy about that. We needed more room anyways so it got traded on a big baller ford aerostar! It was actually our 2nd aerostar.
Love the S-series. When my wife's Accord rusted to the ground in 1998, we bought her a '95 SL1. Then my dad lost enough vision that my mom had to start driving more and wanted a Saturn like my wife's. So we sold Mom the '95 SL1 cheap and bought my wife a brand-new '01 SL2, complete with the picture-taking experience wae described. Then my wife got pregnant, so I sold my Miata and bought a '98 Sl2 5-speed, which was an absolutely great car. Then my mom decided she wanted a coupe, so she bought a '99 SC1, but still loved the '95 SL1 too much to sell it. Which is how we ended up with FOUR S-series for three drivers for a while.
My son is 20 and he has fond memories of being driven everywhere in Saturns. The first car he ever got to drive was the '01 SL2. All our Saturns got sold off at one point or another, except Mom's '99 SC1, which she crashed last year. Naturally she had to have another S-series. We found her a nice '01 SC2 90 miles away.
Glad my family wasn't the only one that had good experiences with Saturn. I was too young to really get it, but I remember both my parents going on about how nice it was that Saturn didn't do the typical (at least back then) car-buying song and dance.
The main desk in the lobby always had donut holes (the really cheap ones, probably from Wal-Mart), and I was always allowed one while we waited.
Side note: If you look hard enough at the lead photo, you might be able to see me sitting in the driver-side rear seat. My dad is behind the wheel, my mom is the person waving and my brother is seated behind my mom.
In reply to Colin Wood :
That photo rules on so many levels.
And JG had a Saturn, too. Rather fast E Stock car at the time.
My first from-a-dealership, with-a-car-payment car was a 1995 SL2 that looked nearly identical to the car above, except for body color bumpers. It got stiffer lowering springs and struts, sticky tires, ceramic brake pads, a cone air intake and a custom exhaust. It took on daily driver duty, went to car shows, got a thrashing in STS autocross, a few HPDEs and even some runs down the local 1/4 mile. I had a blast with that car.
And I wasn't the only one. I met a bunch of cool people doing similar things and formed great friendships. I met a woman who ran a mean Saturn drag car with a ram air intake. I met a guy who campaigned his Saturn in One Lap of America. I knew a guy that took one to rallycross school. I was just talking to one of my old Saturn buddies about the time we campaigned a white 1994 SL2 in the $2004 GRM challenge. For me, before the answer was always "Miata" it was always "Saturn S-Series". I miss that car.
Hawaii 1993, my wife and our 1993 sl2 5dpeed manual. Ordered it from the factory. All options except lethar and the aluminum rims. No E36 M3, got 40mpg on the highway.
wae said:First new car I ever bought was a 1997 SL2 with the 5 speed in a beautiful dark blue.
I am not a color geek, I don't really get worked up about this or that shade of whatever.
Except for THAT blue. It was perfect. My dream Saturn is a '95 SL2 in that color.
L5wolvesf said:In case you are homesick
Fun fact. Saturn is actually named after the Rocket, not the planet.
I'd love to bring back Saturn. Build a small honest car. 3 models. Coupe, sedan and wagon with shared underpinnings and a lightweight composite body.
Full electric, I know which way the winds are blowing. Something like a modern EV1.
But unfortunately my father was a firefighter and not the owner of an aparthied era south african emerald mine.
In reply to AClockworkGarage :
Saturns very much had a steel body, and they loved to rust out the rocker box area between the B and C pillars. You couldn't tell there was a problem until the back doors stopped closing properly.
The front subframes were also quite fragile, at least before they added a reinforcement between the top of the TCA mount and the front subframe. Bumping a curb would bend the subframe before it would damage a wheel or the TCA. I replaced quite a few of them in the years 1996-2001 when those cars were common and I worked in a certain repair chain. Given the timeframe they must have all been the early cars. Oddly enough, when I jumped ship from there and started working at a Saturn dealership, I never saw a bent subframe 
This was also in Columbus, where cars rust an order of magnitude or two less than in Cleveland.
That is the other kind of weird thing, the front subframes were these remarkably heavy perimeter monstrosities because for whatever reason they used a Ford style suspension where the front stabilizer bar doubled as a tension rod. If they didn't do that, they could have shaved an amazing amount of weight from an already light car.
The FSM of the early cars allowed for grinding the strut holes to adjust camber. Thanks SCCA racers working in Saturn engineering design.
I can't wait until these start showing up at car shows (other than Radwood) and the nostalgia will transfer from 40s and 50s parents to their early teen children.
The 91 Saturn is now as old (32 years) as a 1955 Chevy was the year I graduated high school (1986). Yikes.
Everyone that walked into the dealership was paying MSRP, of course they'd sing, send you birthday cards, and let you wander around. The same people that were "impressed" by the "no bs" wouldn't think about paying sticker anywhere else. Saturn was actually the most profitable dealership to own for a long time because of that.
Steve_Jones said:Everyone that walked into the dealership was paying MSRP, of course they'd sing, send you birthday cards, and let you wander around. The same people that were "impressed" by the "no bs" wouldn't think about paying sticker anywhere else. Saturn was actually the most profitable dealership to own for a long time because of that.
They were well made inexpensive cars - we hardly had two nickels to rub together after the mortgage and car payment (97 SW1) but it was reliable as dirt, got 30s around town and near 40 on the highway, and was less than most anything else worth looking at (Hyundai back in the day did not have the rep they do today).
All that and no BS. Nothing wrong with profit when a company is doing it that way.
I was bummed when they started putting a badge on Opels or whatever it was.
In reply to ГУЛАГ мальчик УР следующий :
They were good cars, but you could walk into any Chevrolet store and get a Cavalier for less, paying sticker, but if a dealer quoted you MSRP on that "they were ripping you off" even though there was more profit in the Saturn at sticker. It was great marketing to convince people to pay sticker out of convenience.
Sure, you could get a cavalier for less, but a cavalier was less car.
Steve_Jones said:Everyone that walked into the dealership was paying MSRP, of course they'd sing, send you birthday cards, and let you wander around. The same people that were "impressed" by the "no bs" wouldn't think about paying sticker anywhere else. Saturn was actually the most profitable dealership to own for a long time because of that.
There is a LARGE segment of society that views that as a worthwhile thing to not have to play the endless games most dealerships play, myself included.
Bending subframes...I forgot about those. Been at least a decade since I've had a claim on a S series but that was very common.
Owners loved these things. Most would admit they weren't perfect, but they liked the car well enough and viewed Saturn as an admirable endeavor. Like pretty much everything, GM managed to berkeley it up to the point it made more sense to kill it.
In reply to ddavidv :
You can walk into any dealer and pay what's on the sticker, no games involved, but somehow that's different right? If Ford came out and said "it's sticker, no negotiation" people would flip out. Yes, the last 2 years were an anomaly, and everyone was trying to get down to MSRP, but even now, people are expecting discounts to return.
Saturn fans really hate when you point out they just paid MSRP and will defend it as proved in this thread. Like I said, great (and very profitable) marketing.
Had a friend in the late 90s that owned an early coupe (not sure what model) with a 5 speed that he drove like a Formula One car and loved it. SWMBO still loves the Sky Redline her mom gave her, but being an '08 I'm guessing that's from a different era?
I knew I was paying MSRP but I wasn't cross-shopping with the Cavalier or Sunfire. When I bought mine, I was 21, didn't know E36 M3 about E36 M3, and needed a car because my Subaru GL wagon got hit and was totaled out. I had been working in IT for 3 or 4 years at that point and making decent money but wanted something on the cheap side. I may have been paying sticker price, but it was less than what the Subaru dealer wanted for a Legacy Brighton wagon with zero options beyond A/C - it was a 5 speed with no tachometer, for crying out loud! - and while a Honda Civic was closer, it still was more. The biggest difference, though, was that the dealership experience was completely different from what I was getting at Subaru or Honda. It may have been all marketing, but the process of shopping the Saturns was much more pleasant that the other stores so I guess you could say that I was willing to pay a higher price to get a better level of service in the buying process. For me, going through the car buying process for the first time in my life, they just did a great job of giving me the warm fuzzies while Honda and Subaru just made me feel like I needed a shower when I left.
Funny story about the Subaru dealer... I had gotten the call from the insurance company that the final check was on its way and they'd only cover the rental car for another few days - or something along those lines. My decision was down to the Subaru or the Saturn so I headed out to sign on the dotted line with one of them. The Subaru dealer that I had been dealing with already was on the way to the Saturn dealer so I stopped in, told them that I was buying a car today and it would be theirs or a Saturn. I gave them a number that I would pay - which was slightly more than what the Saturn's MSRP was - and told them that if they hit that number, I'd sign all the paperwork right then and there, otherwise I was going down to Saturn to buy. They did the back and forth dance and said they couldn't do that number and all that and did the typical chase me out the front door and across the parking lot asking me to come back inside. So I went down and bought the Saturn. The next day, I got a phone call from the salesman at Subaru and he starts telling me that he finally was able to get his manager to agree to work with me and that if I came back in they could try to get to my number. I told him that I appreciated that, but like I told him already I was buying a car that day and I had a brand-new Saturn in my driveway. His answer was that Saturn had a 7-day return policy so I could just take the Saturn back, get my money back, and then buy the Subaru from him!
So, yeah, I knew I was paying sticker price, but it was worth it to avoid those kinds of games. The Saturn dealership was really an experience of "these are our cars. We think they're great and we'll tell you why. If you want to ask questions or go for a test drive, here's my card. Browse around and let me know if I can help".
My stepmother bought a 97 SL2 5 speed. At the time, I thought it was a riot to drive hard.
I can't disrespect a Saturn by comparing it to a Cavalier. I was selling Cavaliers new for a summer and those cars were turd buckets compared to Saturn. And you could count on the $100 minimum commission and problems getting your fresh-up through finance. Had a Malibu customer call me, wire full MSRP for a new one sight unseen (to both of us,) only to have it smoking like a freight train when the showed up.
Working a Chevy dealership back then, the best cars I sold were used Hondas.
wae said:
....So, yeah, I knew I was paying sticker price, but it was worth it to avoid those kinds of games. The Saturn dealership was really an experience of "these are our cars. We think they're great and we'll tell you why. If you want to ask questions or go for a test drive, here's my card. Browse around and let me know if I can help".
That's pretty much the buy and sell model that CarMax is using some 20+ years later. And by all accounts, it's still working.
In reply to wae :
You could have paid sticker at Subaru and avoided all of the "games". That is my point. You decided to play games at Subaru and it's somehow their fault. The price of the Subaru being higher than the Saturn is not relevant at all, as they are different cars. Like I said earlier, it was great marketing. MSRP at Saturn is "worth it to avoid those kinds of games" but not far enough below MSRP at Subaru is a shady dealership? If the Subaru guy just said "the price is on the car" would you have paid it?
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