General Motors continues to falter; may discontinue Saturn
Saturn’s slogan is now “Rethink”, but it’s beginning to look like the GM-owned automaker is taking that sentiment in a completely different direction. After making an effort to rebrand the Saturn line and produce a variety of attractive vehicles, General Motors might pull the plug on the 23-year-old auto line. With rumors of bankruptcies and dealers going out of business (none of which were true), Saturn’s reputation has been taking some serious hits lately. It’s also no help that the US automotive industry is suffering and relying on the government for a bailout, so GM is going to strongly consider shutting down Saturn while it forms plans this week in terms of an impending reorg. We imagine it’s not going to be a tough decision since Saturn hasn’t been profitable for GM at all. Along with axing the celestial brand, the automotive giant is considering selling off the Saab line and turning Pontiac into a “niche” brand, much like Saturn is now. So, after several years of producing what seems to be like one or two models, Saturn now offers several decent vehicles: Astra, Outlook, Sky, Vue and Aura. Still, it has failed to gain any real popularity and is likely going to disappear forever. Is anyone actually going to miss it?
Thanks, Alex R!
Though I’ve never owned a saturn, all the people I’ve known with them they’ve all been very reliable.
Rethink American, Rethink Saturn! Someone should go out and ACTIVEly promote the brand in hopes of saving it! It’s a good idea if you ask me!
The first car I ever bought brand new was a 1997 Saturn SC2. I beat the living shit out of that car. Until it got ran over by a tracker trailer all the way out in Potter county, PA. Damn trucker insurance companies too man, they don’t pay if the driver says it wasn’t his fault. Luckily my CO from the Marines was a PA State Trooper and was able to “convince” the tucker to change his story.
Car was totaled though and took the money and bought a 2001 VW Jetta. I liked the Saturn. Until its demise, it gave me 4 years of complete joy. Reliable, and took a beating like a good little car should.
Saturn is finally starting to turn the corner on car design. Perhaps they’ll just slap a Pontiac nostril on the front of those designs? I hope so as Pontiac hasn’t designed anything nice in decades, with the Solstice as the exception. It wasn’t until recently that they figured out the plastic cladding wasn’t popular. And GMC which is just a higher trim level of Chevy models? Why is that staying? GM, you’re so set in your ways.
When will these guys realize that people are having a hard time paying $30,000 for a new vehicle. This was before all the crap came down. They don’t seem to get that a $500 car payment along with a mortgage payment is rough. We went and looked at a new SUV for our family. They wanted $32,000. Our credit scores are 750 and 730. We can afford to get it. I just started thinking why would we pay that??? Plus the the sales guy who was very nice and not pushy was honest and said once we get it and drive it off the lot it will be worth $25,000. We decided to by a used SUV for way less and it had a lot more add ons. These guys will never get a clue. They need to go bankrupt.
@alejandro Oh jeeeeezzz….
I always feel some sort of sadness when I hear that a business is going under.
I will miss Saturn, actually, I heard that Saturn was the best thing to happen to GM, offering more contemporary, affordable and more practical vehicles.
To be honest, this comes as a shock to me that of all brands that GM has domain over, Saturn, of all things is the one going to the guillotine.
Myself and my family are extremely loyal to GM (Chevrolet specifically), so I am pulling for them. The Camaro is coming out in a few months so that should boost profits GM’s way a good amount.
lol, saturn. i dont think anyone will care too much.
ill miss seeing the astras around here in the us. i love the opel version and was so excited to see it come over here…oh well!
Car news what’s up with that
@Chris: Maybe because both Saturn and Pontiac are borrowed designs these days (Opel and Holden) and Saab was never that popular in the first place?
I LOVE the Skye! Then you look at the Solstice. They look EXACTLY alike. I mean that is evil. They wanted that brand to die. Why are you going to have two cars that look exactly the same? I agree with ‘The Couch,’ they will just slap another logo on it and it will be the same thing.
I will miss seeing their little Syke’s driving around…oh my bad that was a Solstice.
*shrug*
Ya what’s up with the Saturn news???
I guess the poster of this article has a Saturn and is feeling disgruntled by the news. Guess i could see that.
Maybe they should put ipod/iphone connectivity and bluetooth support into the car, then maybe it wouldn’t go out of production.
And i’ve always wanted Skype support built into a car with a screen that projects an image of the person ur speaking with, in the center of the front windshield but just above the dash board. Think of Cadillacs Head-Up Display (HUD) technology but more to the center of the windshield. U could have a camera behind the rearview mirror and there we go.
With the US made up of 70 percent immigrants…i’d say it sounds alright to me.
What’s funny is 1st this is a story about a brand of car dying on a tech blog and 2nd there are people sad to see it may happen but none feeling the same about Sprint.
When will these car companies wake up and design something nice for a change. Audi just designed the R8, which is over a hundred grand and they are sold out for 18 or more months in advance. If you design something people want, they will buy it. They also need to design them to last longer than three years..
saturn should have been out of business i have a female friend who drives a saturn its like a 2001 and i would have never thought that unless she told me the irony is as soon as they make some decent models this happens
If GM were really paying attention, it would dump its dog brands like Buick and Pontiac and focus all of its efforts into realizing the vision that Saturn was always supposed to be (the GM savior).
They have terrific, fuel-efficient cars, and are exactly what GM needs if it has any hope…
I’ve always felt that rebranding SATURN into OPEL or just bringing the OPEL brand over here would have brought some success for GM.
GM could have played the German engineering/European styling card with the OPEL brand here in America. Affordable, forward thinking cars.
Sad news.
17 years and 3 Saturns later, all three of which are in the driveway right now – the 1991 SL1 with 375,000 miles – I’ll have to pick a new name plate to give my loyalty to.
@MaxPayne79 Nope, no a Saturn driver here, sorry. The shutting down of a car brand is pretty big news, hence the car story. Just like the time Tesla axed a ton of their employees.
*not a Saturn driver
When saturn first hit the market, they exploded in popularity. Good build quality, fuel efficient, very affordable, and later became reliable.
in the late 90s they started following the rest of the auto industry’s example, and higher profits came from cheaper parts. These cheaper parts came from asian markets that used inferior tooling and materials.
You now have the saturn of today. Great looking cars, somewhat fuel efficient, but both reliability and build quality have been forgotten.
Saturn, GMC, Pontiac, Saab and Hummer should go grom GM lineup. Atleast save some money on advertisements. Or GM should buy Jeep brand from Crysler and fold Hummer into it. Saturn is totally redundant. They need to learn to keep their lineup lean and efficient. Just look at Honda. 5 or 6 vehicles with an EX and an LX in most cases. Just look at the efficiency in terms of streamlining production, inventory, spares, service, dealers, trainings etc. etc.
what about buick??? who the hell wants a buick?
@Marc Flores:
I didn’t mean it in a negative way I was actually being serious. I thought maybe u do drive it and u felt passionate about it cause an ariticle such as this doesn’t really belong on this Blog. If you want to mention that AT&T has layed off 12,000 employees or Google, as of December 4th, has layed off 10,000 then i guess that’s fine even thought there is no reason to bring negativity onto this blog, since we all know what the cause and effect of the Saturn brand liquidation is.
BGR is a media/tech blog not an american economy assessment blog. If you believe it is and you think i’m wrong, then if i go through the BGR archives, i should see the following companies in articles on Corporate mismanagement and the subsequent effect there of.
DuPont – 2,500 jobs
Struggling media company Gannett – 2,000 jobs
United States Steel – 4,175 jobs
Bank of New York Mellon – 1,800 jobs
General Motors – 5,758 jobs (US only)
Sun Microsystems – 6,000 jobs
Las Vegas Sands – 11,000 jobs
Morgan Stanley – 2,000 jobs
Ford Motor – 2,600 jobs
Citigroup – 53,000 jobs (60,000 since October 1st)
Google – 10,000 jobs
AT&T – 12,000 jobs
Motorola – 3,000 jobs (since October)
Xerox – 3,000 jobs (since September)
Yahoo – 1,500 jobs (since September)
oh and…
Hewlett-Packard – 24,600 (since August)
Most of these layoffs occurred since November 1st except where noted.
And what about Canada. My home town.
Air Canada – 2,000 jobs (since summer)
Daimler AG Truck plant – 1,400 jobs (St. Thomas, ON pop.-39,496)
Rogers Communications Inc. to cut an Unspecified Number of Jobs.
Chrysler – 1,100 jobs at its Brampton Truck Plant (A suburb of toronto)
GM – 3,600 jobs in Oshawa.
And this is only the beginning for us.
My point is that what does the demise of a car brand have to do with a leaked image of a nokia prototype, for example? Nothing.
You wanna include one article that’s a commentary on todays tough economic times, then include them all.