I just want to say, since I graduated college in 1993, I've had only Saturns. I've gotten a total of 400,000 miles from both, 190,000 from the first (1993 SL) and 210,000 from the second (1996 SL) and only spent about $10,000 total in maintenance. I'm still driving the second 150 miles a day and getting 35 - 40 MPG. Great car as long as it's not a 2000 or higher...
Saturn was, at one time a great car and a great company... division of GM. I'm sorry to see the slide.
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Saturn was Supposed To Save GM
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GM in the early 1980s still ruled the global auto industry. But the company had been jolted by the recession of that era, and lost money for the first time in 60 years. The import market nearly doubled—from 13 percent to more than 24 percent—between 1970 and 1985. And the fledgling Japanese auto plants in America were building top-quality products with just half the workforce that GM factories needed.
To counter the Japanese invasion, GM launched a project named after the rocket that carried Americans to the moon during the space race with the Soviets. Smith was determined to blow up the corporate model and start over—employing novel techniques from the assembly line to the showroom. The United Auto Workers feared Smith's vision would translate into more robots and fewer workers. But Smith found an unlikely partner in Donald Ephlin, the portly and disheveled head of the UAW's GM department. Ephlin had traveled to Japan with Ford executives in the early 1980s to see the competition's management methods firsthand.
In July 1985 GM reached agreement with Ephlin on a "Memorandum of Understanding" just 28 pages long. Saturn would not be bound by the union's cumbersome standard contract—featuring nearly 200 job classifications at some GM factories, with rules prohibiting members of one group to perform work reserved for another. The new brand would have just a handful of classifications. The memorandum stated: "We believe that all people want to be involved in decisions that affect them, care about their jobs and each other … and want to share in the success of their efforts."
It was a remarkable, even revolutionary document, taking Saturn beyond the Japanese in establishing joint decision making. Workers would receive only 80 percent of the UAW master-contract wage, with the other 20 percent tied to quality and productivity. Instead of a traditional fixed-benefit pension, Saturn workers would get a profit-sharing plan akin to a 401(k). In return, GM pledged to devote at least 5 percent of each employee's annual working hours to skills training, and not to lay off more than 20 percent of the workforce under virtually any circumstances.
While the factory was being built, labor and management joined in team-building exercises at a nearby obstacle course. Employees and bosses alike scaled a 40-foot wall while roped together and took a "trust fall," flinging themselves backward off an elevated platform and into the arms of their colleagues.
Ann Fox remembers those years fondly. In her mid-20s then, she previously had worked at a GM components factory in Alabama, shoving a bootlike contraption onto a steering mechanism. "It was endless pain," she recalls. Saturn, in contrast, was "like heaven—a nice, clean, new plant," where her physical work was made easier by robots and other machinery. Workers had a voice in everything, even hiring decisions. "You felt more loyal because you were really part of it all," says Fox.
All the corporate cheerleading stirred resentments. Among the other brands—Chevy, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick—Saturn was viewed as the insufferable teacher's pet whom the other kids couldn't wait to beat up when the teacher wasn't looking. One GM engineer who had jumped at the chance to join Saturn recalls running into resistance when he tried to recruit others within the company. "People would shoot back: 'You Saturn guys are supposed to be the experts'," he recalls. " 'Why do you need our people?' "
The tensions extended to the executive suite. By 1987, with Saturn still in gestation, the company was falling behind arch-rival Ford in earnings, quality and every other measure. Executive vice president Elmer Johnson told the GM board that the company should fix its existing operations, and asked the board to pull the plug on Saturn. Smith, who had publicly staked GM's future on Saturn's success, wasn't about to lose this battle. Within months, Johnson, once regarded as Smith's most likely successor, resigned.
In the summer of 1989 Ephlin retired from the UAW, and a year later Smith also stepped down. But a few weeks before his departure, Smith drove the first Saturn car off the assembly line. Such events usually are public ceremonies. But GM's financial performance was lagging, and Smith had taken a shellacking from documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, who lampooned the executive in his hit satire "Roger & Me." So Saturn's publicists held the drive-off ceremony in private to avoid tainting their spanking-new brand with the bumbling image of their boss.
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