One line of compact cars I've always had a soft spot for (besides 80s/early-90s-vintage Mazda GLC/323/Protege and the 2012-2017 Buick Verano) is the Saturn S-series, in production roughly from 1990 to the early 2000s. (I myself owned an SL-2). These cars were unique in many ways. They utilized thermo-plastic body side panels that were dent/ding/corrision-proof, special waterborne paint-process that allowed the paint to flex with the panels without cracking (though, in some circumstances, the paint could chip or scratch on impact), a space-frame for torsional/lateral solidness, and spin-off transmission filters (with removable internal magnets that trapped iron and steel particles) that went on and off just like oil filters, simplifying transmission service. The dealerships (Saturn called them "Retailers") that sold and serviced them were also quite customer-friendly........all deals were list-price only (plus tags/tax and, if applicable, factory-accessories), which eliminated the traditional haggling that many people despised. To deal with Buyer's Remorse, a money-back guarantee from the factory, was in effect for 30 days after the sale, for any reason (even if you decided you just didn't like the color)...provided there was no significant damage and/or the title cleared, if applicable. (this 30-day policy and no-dicker applied to used Saturns as well). The cars were reasonably-priced to start with, even with a roughly 14% mark-up, from wholesale to retail, that paid for some of those customer-perks. Sales personnel (even the managers LOL) wore bright-colored, open-neck T-Shirts with the company logo.....none of that stuffy business-suit stuff. Service appointments, especially for minor stuff like oil changes, were often done on a drive-in basis...sometimes you didn't even need an appointment. All cars in and out of the service-bay were hand-washed before pick-up (I willingly turned that offer down, and washed my own Saturn, there in the dealer's wash-bay, because that's just my policy...I almost always wash my own car, to avoid scratches). A special factory, in Spring Hill, TN was built specifically for the S-Series, and the workers, with their own special contract with the UAW independent of other GM workers, had air-conditioning and other comfort features throughout the plant. The modern (for that time) plant, benevolent treatment of workers, and careful inspection-process led to generally well-built cars that had better-then-average reliability ratings, which, at that time, was quite unusual for American-designed products. The factory and ordering-system was set up so you could order almost everything individually.....exterior color, interior color, individual options, engine, transmission, accessories, etc.....without being hamstrung by mandatory bundle-packages. So, you got petty much exactly the car you wanted....with little no compromises. No wonder people went nuts over these cars....and I have to admit that I myself was very impressed. 1996 and later versions also had one of the most simple, well-designed, easy-to-read gauge-clusters in the industry. It led to one of the most noted automotive success-stories of modern times...though, sadly, it was not to last when senior GM officials screwed up the management royally after the early 2000s.

The cars were not perfect, however....no vehicle is. Until the late 1990s, the aluminum four-cylinder powerplants tended to be noisy and unrefined (the standing joke was that Saturn's telephone number was 1-800-TOO-LOUD). Wide gaps were needed in body-panel fit to allow the plastic panels to expand and contract in the heat and cold (and doors to open/shut) without binding on adjacent panels. Because of the way the low front air-dams were designed (buckling when driving up ramps), and filter/drain-plug location, oil changes were difficult to do at home...the cars pretty much needed to be on a lift. The plastic door-panels closed with a rather tinny sound. The dull and unimpressive interior, except for the nice post-1996 gauges, was the typical-GM plastic-crap of the 1990s. Later versions of the SC coupe, with the small half-rear-door on the drivers' side, may (?) have had an asymmetrical structural-integrity problem that led to a shimmy at cruise-speeds. And the upper dash panels in some cases, had about the same consistency as cardboard LOL. But, overall, a unique (and excellent) attempt to try something different.....and to satisfy customers.

I owned an SL-2 that I was well-pleased with. Later on, I ordered a Special-Production (only a few thousand units that year were built) Chrome Yellow SC-2 coupe. Unfortunately, the coupe, unlike the earlier sedan I had owned, had that cruise-shimmy that nothing could seem to fix. Both me and the Tech-Foreman of the dealer's service-shop, there, worked on the car several times, trying special wheel-balances, wheel-tire replacements, alignments, and a number of other tricks.....nothing could get rid of the steering-wheel shimmy, which was small but annoying. So, after several weeks of this crap (before the 30-day-deadline) I simply handed the keys to the car back to Saturn and got all of my money back (even the tax/tags part, which they didn't have to refund by the terms of the contract, which stipulated only the actual purchase price).

I still remember, at the D.C. Auto Shows back then, where Saturn company reps would take a baseball bat (no, I'm not kidding) and whack the side panels, full-force, to demonstrate the excellent no-dent characteristics. Quite convincing, to say the least. They invited me to try it myself....I, of course, was happy to oblige.

Most of the cars that later expanded on and replaced the S-series never really measured up to their former stable-mates....the L-series, in particular, had noted quality problems, and weren't even built in a Saturn plant. The Saturn Ion was little more than a joke, though I have to say that the Opel-based Saturn Astra and Chevy-Malibu-based Aura were pretty nice products.

So.....how many of you here on Car Chat actually owned or leased an S-Series? What did you think of them......and/or the dealerships? Fire away.

 

I owned a 2001 SL2. I had it for almost 5 years, and put 105k miles on it. It was my first brand new car. The only thing that went wrong was the fuel pump went out and the sunroof motor died.

I thoroughly enjoyed that car.

 

Back in those days, I think they still had emergency hand-cranks for the roof if the electronics failed.

I've never had a car with a sunroof.....for several reasons. But, I understand their appeal to a lot of drivers.

 

i've never been in a noisier car on the highway than a saturn. couldn't speak to anyone else in the car...

 

I worked at a auto plant when I was younger that built the Saturn L series. Never cared for it, it was inferior to the Japanese competition though not terrible for a GM car.

 

Absolutely. The larger, mid-size L-Series never had the same kind of quality and/or attention put into it that the small S-Series, which was built in Spring Hill, TN did. The L-series was built in a run-of-the-mill GM plant in Wilmington, DE.

I was very unimpressed with the first L-series sedan I sampled. Right out of the factory (not even 20 or 30 miles on it), it had rattles, creaks, a misaligned steering wheel, an unimpressive stereo, and pulled slightly in one direction, even on a level road.

(This is no offense on you, UDel, or any kind of criticism of you personally. From what I have seen from much of your other posting, you were probably one of the better employees at that plant).

 

The early Saturn four-bangers, up to the late 1990s (like GM's larger Iron Duke 2.5L and Quad-Fours), indeed had a reputation for engine noise....a standing joke in the car magazines was Saturn's 1-800-TOO-LOUD phone number. Plastic body panels are also more difficult to sound-insulate than metal. By the late 1990's, though, a lot of progress had been made in that department. I had a 1999 SL2 sedan, and the 1.9L four in that didn't seem significantly noisier than even the most refined fours, at that time, from Toyota and Honda.

 

Before I comment, I will say that I have never driven any Saturn, not even the Saturn Astra; all my experience with Saturn was seeing it at autoshows. I can understand that someone who owned one may have good memories of the experience, but my experiences were negative.

Sorry, you did say "fire away".

My impressions -- consistently through its production run -- were that it was a cheap (but not necessarily in the "inexpensive" sense). It seemed to me to be another in the run of American "import fighters", those small cars produced by the American Big 4 (including AMC when it was around) to take back some sales from Japanese imports, including the Pinto, the Vega, the Cavalier and the Gremlin.

The ones I had the misfortunes to see all seemed to be cheaply designed and built: interior plastics were terrible, with parts falling off in my hand, and the rear seat, with its oddly-shaped seat back, all but useless.

I remember Canadian ads stating that vertical panels were plastic, so it would not rust. Instead, the metal horizontal panels -- front hood and rear trunklid -- rusted.

I no longer see any Saturns on the roads. I don't know if they have all migrated to junk yards or if they have been garaged, in the hopes that they will be considered classics when found in 10 or 20 years.

 

I do see the occasional Saturn sedan around. And even one of the Saturn SUV's with a grandma on her way to bingo. But I can tell you I'm more likely to see a 25-30 Toyota Camry or a Honda Accord. Just saw a 2000 Accord sedan, V6 in front of me today.

Saturn's problem was that they took a different approach to doing things, and for a monolithic institutionalized corporation like GM, you knew it was too good to last. The company executives loved the idea and promoted it at first. And then we were back to the infamous GM rebadge-engineering with substandard components.

We may collectively pooh-pooh Saturn as Toyota/Lexus fans, but believe me, Saturn got JD Power customer satisfaction ratings only second to Lexus at one time. I liked the Aura - that's a nice looking sedan and even thought about buying a VUE, until I discovered that its known for cooking its five speed transmission.

 

The Astra you mentioned, BTW, was an almost total rebadge of the Euro-market Opel Astra, and sold here only as a hatchback. Like later-generation Astras (which the Buick Verano came from) it was solidly-built....but the original Saturn version had a poorly-done dash and hard-to-decipher buttons. Still, it was a thousand times better than the awful Ion, which it replaced.

The Aura, though a very nice car (I thought highly of it) was not a true Saturn, but a rebadged Chevy Malibu with orange dash-lighting instead of light blue. In fact, as I see it, there were no true Saturns except for the plastic-bodied S-series. Even the plastic-bodied Ion, which superseded the S-Series, dropped the unique Saturn drivetrain and its innovate spin-off transmission filter, substituting other generic GM engines and transmissions. And the Ion used the classic cost-cutting trick of putting all of the gauges in the center of the panel, which makes it easier and cheaper to do both left and right-hand drive versions.




Absolutely. Go ahead. When I start a thread, I know I'm not necessarily writing to a group of fanboys. I expect to get answers from all ends of the spectrum. I've been posting threads for almost 15 years now.

The S-series, though, even with its limitations, went beyond just "import-fighting". The car, and the Saturn Division itself, became essentially a customer-friendly cult.

Well, no arguments there. I fully agree (and I mentioned that in the opening post) that the S-class interiors were typical GM dime-store junk. But, then, again, the S-Series was not designed to be a luxury car, but a unique and innovative compact.

 

Correct.....and it was the right thing, at the right time.


See, that's where they messed up....and when they undid most of the good that had been accomplished in the 1990s. But, it didn't have to happen....nothing was cast in stone, especially if more lower-level managers at GM and Saturn had simply put up some resistance and not rolled over and played dead as Yes-Men and Yes-Women). The bosses can't fire everyone in the company if enough of them stand together and put their feet down. But, typical in the auto industry, the high-level managers succeed in calling the shots, and the hugely successful Saturn operation of the 1990s was transformed into what attempted to become a replacement for then-defunct Oldsmobile, with disastrous results.

I also want to make it clear that I'm not being a Monday Morning Quarterback, commenting after the action. Before I know any of you at CL, back then, when this first happened (I didn't even have a home computer yet), I strongly opposed the dropping of the S-series cars, and told the company reps that it would eventually come to no good.



That's because Saturn's official policy was to bend over backwards to satisfy (most) customers with the best treatment possible. About the only exceptions were those customers who actually enjoyed bargaining, Middle-Eastern-Bazaar-style......they, of course, needed to shop elsewhere.

Yes...nice car. See my comments above on the Aura.

 

I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but I'm having a hard time trying to wrap my head around a tribute to a car that had so many problems and ultimately ended up failing. The majority of what I read about the car, as well as my cousin's own experiences (SL-1) where nearly all negative. Even the majority of your words above are negative.
I think in the end, anyone can write a tribute about a car they owned. There will always be a setimental value and a personal memory if one spent a lot of seat time in it. But to use the word "tribute" doesn't seem to match something that did not rise up to a standard.

 

Saturn was an experiment by GM that ultimately failed for a variety of reasons. They gave it a shot and it ultimately didn't work out.

 

Actually the Aura was a rebadged Opel Vectra.

Agreed. I had a girlfriend in high school who I drove from Ann Arbor, MI to DC in her SL1 Saturn, 550 mile trip, it was awful. So loud, front end out of alignment. No center armrest, ugh. The things we do for adult relations LOL.

Id say it was the worst car I’ve ever driven, but my wife had a 1991 Chevy Cavalier when I met her. That car was worse lol. I actually fried the whole electrical system replacing a battery in it. I did her a favor lol

Apparenlty I’m attracted to women in crappy cars.

 

Not my bubble. I didn't design the car. And it was the idiot managers at GM that brought the car down, not any of us.

What problems? Its reliability was actually quite good for a American-designed car of that era. Some individual owners might have had some problems, but, overall, it was better than average.

I respect your viewpoint. But I don't agree that it did not set a standard. It did set new standards, at the time, for customer service, reliability in an American-designed car, simple deals, and innovativeness in a car's design. Saturn was introduced in the same year as Lexus and Infiniti were (1990), and, according to both Consumer Reports and J.D. Power, virtually equalled them in customer-satisfaction, which, at that time, was virtually unheard of in a small, inexpensive American-designed vehicle.