SW17LS

Plastic panels...the negatives just outweighed the positives.

sm1ke

iTrader: (5)

That's all I'm saying.

PDR.

You just ignored what I said. Doesn't matter though, the idea was nixed and never revisited so

mmarshall

OK.....I did not intentionally ignore your question, but I'll try and answer it a little more clearly.

On the question of (possible) damage, of course, anything is possible with a ham-fisted or careless DIY'er....and, on occasion, even professional mechanics/Technicians make mistakes or slip-ups. But, IMO, the simplicity of the way that the spin-off filter goes off and on, without having to unbolt and take off the whole bottom of the transmission-housing, risk losing the bolts/nuts that hold it on, having transmission fluid run out all over the place, makes screw-ups a lot less likely...all you have you to is take out the magnets, clean them according to a simple procedure, put them back inside the new filter, put a thin layer of fluid on the filter's O-ring/seal, and screw it back on to the proper torque. In most cases, there is actually more chance of getting the transmission's fluid level wrong from an under-fill or over-fill, since you don't just pour in new red fluid until it shows full on the dipstick (if equipped). With most transmissions, the fluid has to be exposed to circulation and some heat to stabilize, and carefully topped off to the proper level. It also must be remembered that, unless the transmission is completely flushed out with assure (which many automakers don't recommend), there will be some fluid left in the torque-converter after the drain, and if you add the official capacity by the numbers, the transmission will be overfilled and at risk of damage from too much pressure.

Does that explain it better?

UDel

LOL, yeah working conditions weren't that comfy at the Wilmington Plant, it was a big dirty plant that had no air conditioning aside from the offices so it felt like a oven the whole time, it was funny walking into the plant when it was in the 90's outside how hot it would feel and walking back outside would be a relief in the middle of summer. It got the hottest in the plant at night when it retained all the heat from during the day. In the beginning I worked one pre paint area where the cars just got out of the oven after being baked and they were hot to the touch, radiated heat and you had to wear a thin protective coat and could not use regular deodorant because it could effect the paint, luckily heat does not bother me too much especially back then, I did see some people pass out.

sm1ke

iTrader: (5)

To clarify, my point is that a spin-on filter can introduce more risk than a standard transmission filter by way of making it too easily accessible to potentially inexperienced DIYers. A typical transmission fluid/filter service was/is complicated enough for most casual DIYers to cause them to seek out a professional, who is a lot less likely to make the mistakes a casual DIYer might make (even when it comes to something as simple as spinning a filter on/off). Consider that some may use the wrong filter, or unknowingly cross-thread the filter. If you make it easy enough for everyone to do it, you give everyone the opportunity to screw it up. Further to the point, regardless of whether the filter was a spin-on or not, the person doing the service would need to fill the fluid to the proper level as you mentioned. Someone with experience (or a certified mechanic) is much less likely to over/underfill transmission fluid, compared to Joe Saturn who thinks it's "just as easy as changing the engine oil". Thus, making the process complicated enough for the casual DIYer reduces the potential for screwups, IMO.

As far as the move to "sealed" transmissions, my understanding is that better manufacturing, better quality ATF, and design improvements (dipstick and vent being the only potential points of contamination) all influenced the sealed transmission concept. Regular servicing made sense back then, but it doesn't make as much sense in most cases these days. Exceptions could be made for those that tow or climb/descend hills frequently, but even then, some manufacturers utilize methods/equipment to offset that kind of use (to a degree). Sealed transmissions still fail because manufacturing still isn't perfect, and you can't really control how individuals will use/abuse their vehicles.

GS69

mmarshall

^^^^ A generally good and accurate video, but it forgot to say three significant things.....the spin-off transmission filters on al of the S-series, the somewhat high levels of engine-noise on the early-model S-series, and the 30-day money-back guarantee for unsatisfied buyers for ANY reason. Otherwise, it verified exactly what I have said for many years......GM had a real winner in the S-series, satisfied customers, and in the way the company was set up and operated, and then blew it from indefensible corporate mismanagement and an attempt to turn it into what was essentially another mainstream Division with rebadged products. Its was a classic case of rags-to-riches, and then squandering the riches.

SW17LS

Well, rags to somewhat better rags lol

mmarshall

Actually, IMO, it was riches when you look at the number of satisfied customers with the S-series, the way dealerships operated, (oops.....Saturn called them Retailers), and all of the customer-friendly procedures the company had. The entire Saturn atmosphere was set up to be totally different from virtually every other automaker in existence. Salespeople (and managers) traded their dull, plain business-suits for bright-colored T-shirts with the company logo, vehicles could be custom-ordered with almost any option as a stand-alone, so buyers did not have to purchase packages which contained things they didn't want or need, and one could call the Service Managers and get an oil-change or other appointment almost instantly, even during crowded periods. And, of course, with the plastic panels, you had extra protection in parking lots from morons who target the side of your doors every time they get in and out. I didn't even have to ask for them (since I get free D.C. auto show tickets every year from a number of local dealerships)...but, when I owned my SL-2, Saturn used to send me two of them in the mail each December.....the show, back then, started right after Christmas. When one got a new Saturn, an official company photo was taken (in fact, I think I remember you telling me you once worked for a company that contracted with Saturn to do that). You got a free wash with your Saturn no matter what you brought it in for service for......unheard of for a low-priced vehicle in those days. (In fact, because I liked to wash my own vehicle, they even let me do it myself in the wash-bay). Some would call it gimmicks....I call it treating customers with the respect they deserve.

SW17LS

They aren't gimmicks, they just aren't sustainable as a business model at that price point.

mmarshall

Didn't you mention once about being associated with a company that contracted with Saturn for those delivery-photos?

(Yeah, that's me......the Jolly Red Giant LOL) The Sales Manager is in the black T-shirt, and the saleslady on the right.

SW17LS

Yep, I actually owned a company that produced those photos for Saturn dealers (well, we sold the packages and facilitated the orders) Wasn't just Saturn

mmarshall

Well, if Saturn had to pay your fees, no wonder they went out of business LOL.

(Just kidding.....don't take it personal)

SW17LS

Haha, yep...$25 a car killed Saturn!

mmarshall

Here is another good article on what caused the stunning 1990s success at Saturn to be squandered in the 2000s. Its a somewhat dated article, but clear and factual.

https://www.forbes.com/2010/03/08/sa...h=7994ac5d6ee3


Mar 8, 2010,12:06pm EST

How GM Destroyed Its Saturn Success

This article is more than 10 years old.General Motors is once again reshuffling its management team--a common occurrence ever since the government took control of the company to save it from bankruptcy last July. One has to keep asking what is so deeply wrong at GM that it can't escape constant turmoil and ongoing struggle. And what really happened to its Pontiac, Hummer and Saturn brands?

A look at the story of the Saturn Corporation provides some answers. Saturn, a GM company that had great promise in the early 1990s, ultimately failed because senior GM leaders couldn't see the benefits of new ways of doing things and a new kind of organizational culture.

In the 1980s Roger Smith, then GM's chief executive, and Donald Ephlin, head of the United Auto Workers for the company, stood together behind the creation of a new kind of American carmaker, but their successors were less committed to breaking with tradition. The initial passion and vision gradually dissipated, and now it is being officially extinguished. Saturn stopped production in October and is expected to close down completely later this year. Apparently GM and the UAW really didn't want a "different kind of company" or a "different kind of car."

The company was launched at a time when confidence in American cars and the morale of American autoworkers were both plummeting. Smith and Ephlin wanted to prove that a U.S. car company could hold its own against formidable foreign competition. The basic concepts behind the Saturn Corporation were simple and self-evident: having a team of people who were committed to both their customers' needs and one another's success; demanding accountability for results and developing multi-skill flexibility throughout the system so that team members could work and assist others wherever there was a need; treating all stakeholders as partners, because that was exactly what they were; doing whatever it took to be competitive with the best carmakers in the world.

I became acquainted with Saturn first hand when it became my client in 1993. I worked with all its leadership team members and interviewed people representing every hierarchical level, function and work assignment. Then I became an owner of a 1994 Saturn SL-2. Depending on your point of view, I either know enough to sift reality from mythology or I was infected with the Saturn disease.

Whenever the name Saturn has come up in my conversations through the years, it has usually gotten either of two opposite responses. People either admired the company and its cars or were skeptical, cynical and belittling of anything it did. Some of the most passionate in the latter group were GM managers, employees and UAW officials in other GM divisions. They resented Saturn and are happy to see it go. But here are some impressive early accomplishments that were largely unpublicized at the time and have been forgotten in the years since.

--Because of an enthusiastic market response to their "different kind of car," Saturn retailers were chronically short of vehicles for the first five years of production.

--Saturn was the third best-selling car model in the U.S. in 1994. When the production lines switched over to the 1995 models, there were only 400 '94 Saturns left on lots across the country.

--J.D. Powers consistently rated Saturn as among the top three cars in owner and customer sales satisfaction. Even as late as 2000 it ranked second in owner satisfaction, behind Lexus.

--Most of the 9,000 Saturn employees (at the mid-1990s peak) came from other GM plants, through an agreement between GM and the UAW. This different kind of company was created by people who all came from the old, traditional kind of company. They changed the way they thought about the workplace, committed themselves to being world-class and altered many work habits to keep their promises to their customers. And they did so without any external incentives.

--Thanks to a unique partnership between Saturn and its retailers, in 1993 the retailers rebated back to Saturn 1% of the cars' sales price, to get GM's permission to start a third production shift. That brought $13 million to Saturn's bottom line, moving its finances into the black a year ahead of plan.

--Owner enthusiasm went off the charts, as was demonstrated when nearly 100,000 owners attended two "homecoming" celebrations in 1994 and 1999.

But that was then and this is now. What happened to that 1990s success story? Despite what you may read elsewhere, there were just two underlying forces behind Saturn's demise: GM's insistence on managing all its divisions centrally with a tight fist, and the demand by leadership at both GM and the UAW that Saturn get in line with traditional ways of doing things.

As I learned from many GM executives at Saturn and elsewhere, GM manages its businesses monolithically. When it launched Saturn, it told the other divisions they couldn't have any money to upgrade or introduce new models, because the Saturn launch was gobbling up all the funds. Hence everyone in the GM family was hostile toward and jealous of the new arrival. The same dynamic hit Saturn again a few years later when the market shifted and it desperately needed a midsize car and an SUV. Sorry, GM leadership said. It was the other divisions' time to get the money. Everyone had to take a turn--and every division was penalized in the process.

GM also came to want Saturn to be like the rest of its offerings, a compilation of standard GM parts with a different nameplate, not a different kind of car. Saturn's unique power train (the so called "smart" transmission), its polymer body panels that didn't dent or rust, its sand-cast aluminum engine block and its no hassle, no dickering retail sales experience--those were all nice experiments, but they weren't really the GM way. Company leaders even lectured Saturn that the GM way was more profitable, because it used the same parts across many automobile platforms.

Just as GM management wanted to scrap the different kind of car, the UAW wanted to end the unique memorandum of agreement between Saturn and UAW Local 1810 that permitted profit sharing, more rigorous accountability for results, multi-skills assignments and job flexibility. Despite Saturn's early success, Local 1810 came under constant fire from above to get in line. One local president was removed from his position by the UAW, and a successor was treated as a heretic for wanting, as he put it, to "create a viable model for the labor union in our modern era."

Three times the UAW International came to Saturn's Spring Hill, Tenn., production facility with its international contract in hand and told Saturn's workers to vote for it. Three times those workers voted no and clung to their memorandum of agreement. (Which, by the way, was the size of a brochure, not the volumes one typically sees in such agreements; when the commitment is clear and genuine and the partners trust each other, you don't need volumes to document your agreement.) A local union membership rejecting the standard labor contract? Such a thing had never happened before, at least not in the auto industry.

The problem, GM and UAW executives came to realize, was the new organizational culture that had been born in Spring Hill. Saturn people didn't think of themselves as GM subordinates or as UAW card carriers. They were Saturn team members with a common mission.

The only way to overpower such a culture is to draw and quarter it. GM, with the UAW's obvious blessing, broke up the Saturn empire. Production was taken out of Spring Hill and divided among other GM plants. Saturn's workers, now only one small piece of a larger population, became part of the larger GM workforce in their new locations and subject to the UAW International contract.

Unity was achieved. Tradition was protected. Everyone was back in line.

To all the outsiders who have witnessed Saturn's failure, if you ever find your corporation in a losing position in the marketplace, if you feel your people just can't compete with world-class, if you don't believe your organization can make enough changes to stay in the race, or if you feel someone else needs to bail you out, just remember--you can create a different kind of company and a world-class product.

That is Saturn's legacy.