Nineteen years after emerging
as a "Different Kind of Car Company," Saturn is headed for oblivion.
A moment of silence, please, because Saturn once represented a new beginning
for General Motors (GM),
which hoped the brand would catch the ascendant Japanese. The experiment
fizzled and instead became an
object lesson in what happens when a company fails to back up bold thinking
with bold execution.
Saturn was a stroke of marketing
brilliance. Not only had GM created a standalone company with its own factory
and dealer network, it had torn up the rules of auto retailing. Saturn's original
S Series compact had one fixed price,
a revelation for buyers who hated haggling with salespeople.
The debut car sold for less than $11,000 and was a bona fide hit.
But the newborn Saturn had sibling
rivals inside GM. In 1990, just a year before launching its first car, Saturn
lost its
patron when then-CEO Roger B. Smith retired. Soon it was battling for money
and attention with GM's other brands,
especially Oldsmobile. That partly explains why it took GM eight years to
come up with a larger car, the doomed
L-Series sedan, and almost a decade to replace the S-Series.
By the time GM started giving
Saturn decent cars earlier this decade, the parent no longer knew who its
offspring was.
Pretty soon, Saturn began lurching from one brand message to the next. In
2001 it became a "forward-thinking company."
Before long it was all about the customer again. When that didn't work, Saturn
emphasized its cars—hawking new
models with the slogan "Like Always, Like Never Before."
In 2007, GM nudged Saturn upscale
and began selling the Aura family sedan, which boasted Lexus-level style and
comfort. Suddenly, a brand that had started out selling affordable cars was
charging up to C$35,000 for a family sedan.
That might have worked had GM spent several years reaching out to affluent
buyers. But it didn't.
By then, GM's research was showing
that the Saturn brand was badly damaged. When the automaker showed buyers
the Aura with the nameplate removed, the car scored a respectable 3.4 out
of four. With the Saturn badge affixed to
the hood, the same car scored a measly 2.0. Saturn, in a way, tells a larger
story about GM.
The automaker is making better cars, but most of its brands are so diminished
that few buyers believe it.
