http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-saturn4-2008dec04,0,2209720.story

I've never known anything but greatness from Saturn, especially when they kept their R&D in-house. Dent-resistant panels, steel space frame affording excellent safety, very durable and fuel-efficient engines. (The S* cars) My dad's SL2's odometer broke getting close to a decade ago at 160k miles and it's still on the road getting near 30 mpg. I would bet it's got close to 300k on it. No bad oil consumption issues to speak of. Everything is mechanically sound and the transmission is in great condition.

These day's I love the Sky to death. Even the Astra and VUE are great cars for a niche market. Pontiac and Chevy have long been fierce competitors until the last 20 years where Pontiac and Chevy lost their uniqueness. There is little use in keeping them a separate division. If anything, Pontiac needs to go instead of Saturn. The entire point of competing divisions were to improve upon each other's designs. Take a look at the offerings of the various divisions, and there is little difference between some cars of different divisions. No radical cosmetic changes to speak of.

It's a damn shame they don't innovate much at all. When was the last time we had some serious performance cars with a turbocharger? (Excluding the Solstice/Sky, which are Opel's design.) The last one I can think of were the Buick GNX and the Chevrolet Syclone and GMC Typhoon. The previous car was the Sunbird with, surprise surprise, an Opel 1.8 and 2.0.

GM suffers from Reaganomics. Cut the costs and watch the profits roll in... my ass... Why make good interiors? Good interiors cost money! Why make engines that can get great fuel economy with a turbo? Fuck that shit, R&D costs money, too! And don't even bring up designing manual transmissions! :rolleyes:

One thing, just one thing I'd like to see before I die. I want a completely modular vehicle. One space frame, and you can order it with a variety of engine options based on a single platform (LS* and Ecotecs, hell, maybe even Duratecs? please? in varying number of cylinders) with manual and automatic transmissions. Another space frame and you could get that in RWD. (The Ecotecs both in RWD and FWD have the same tranny bolt patterns) Another space frame and you can get it in a Ute. The space frames come with several plastic body panel options.

This makes WAY more sense than throwing money at designing a new chassis for some other car you will only use for a few years. GM seems to be shifting towards a more modular car with it's Greek platform designations, but it's far from me being able to pick and choose my options. Software engineering has used code reuse techniques and object oriented code (modular code) for decades in order to cut costs and gain much reliablility. There is no reason that automotive manufacturers need to keep with monolithic designs that build little on the next iteration.

If nothing else, this makes me feel better about getting myself fired from the job at the Saturn dealership, it looks like I would have just gotten laid off anyway.

The entire point of competing divisions were to improve upon each other's designs. Take a look at the offerings of the various divisions, and there is little difference between some cars of different divisions. No radical cosmetic changes to speak of.

Nooooo......

Looks like they are going the same way British Leyland did then. They had competing divisions "to improve each others designs" but instead they just started hating each other and refusing to work together, resulting in the death of some really good cars. Had Triumph put the Rover V8 in the Stag instead of their own, it would have been a tremendous car.

Obviously GM isn't suffering from the same cataclysmically bad management as BL yet, but just you watch......

Yeah, GMinsidenews has some scary coverage of GM. The last time I read any of it (last night), Saturn was closing, Saab was being sold, GMC most likely dissapearing, and Pontiac absorbing a couple Saturn cars and becoming a RWD only niche brand, keeping only the vibe (I think) and the G8 series. Hummer is being retained, because it actually makes money.
Oh, and IIRC because Pontiac is being revamped, you can now buy a new Pontiac G6 for like $2500 if I read right.

Anyway, here's the latest: http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/
Haven't read the update yet, just about to begin (this thread reminded me). If I find the actual thread I'll put the link up, it's a bit hard to find right now. It's chaos in there. He died with a Felafel in his hand was a good film.

If nothing else, this makes me feel better about getting myself fired from the job at the Saturn dealership, it looks like I would have just gotten laid off anyway.

No way dude, if Saturn had have closed and you'd be made redundant instead of absorbed into somewhere else, you'd walk out the door loosening your tie with one hand and straddling a surfboard sized cheque with the other. Do you know how much ex GM employees get in pension? Enough to make the worlds biggest automobile manufacturing company go broke! They rake it in.

Nooooo......

Looks like they are going the same way British Leyland did then. They had competing divisions "to improve each others designs" but instead they just started hating each other and refusing to work together, resulting in the death of some really good cars. Had Triumph put the Rover V8 in the Stag instead of their own, it would have been a tremendous car.

Obviously GM isn't suffering from the same cataclysmically bad management as BL yet, but just you watch......

...British Leyland went bankrupt because they made shit cars and everyone knew it. Full stop, end of story.

No way dude, if Saturn had have closed and you'd be made redundant instead of absorbed into somewhere else, you'd walk out the door loosening your tie with one hand and straddling a surfboard sized cheque with the other. Do you know how much ex GM employees get in pension? Enough to make the worlds biggest automobile manufacturing company go broke! They rake it in.

Lol, for the management and senior technicians maybe, bottom level hourly employees like myself get told to fuck off.

Pontiac absorbing a couple Saturn cars and becoming a RWD only niche brand

That's hot. :)

...British Leyland went bankrupt because they made shit cars and everyone knew it. Full stop, end of story.

Exactly, because they wouldn't work together. Reliant were the fibreglass experts, Rover had the legendary V8, Triumph had the design bureau, Jaguar had all the luxury, Austin were good at building cheap cars. Imagine if all them came together to work on one car. It would have been a beast.

Fractioning GM into specialist divisions has the potential to increase tensions between them. Like Pontiac develops some kind of new awesome RWD technology, Chevrolet (they are part of GM right?) wants the new technology to stick on the Corvette, Pontiac feels angry that they spend all the R&D developing said technology and don't see why Chevrolet should get it just because GM owns both of them and tells Chevrolet to fuck off, thus denying the Corvette becoming the even better car it could have been. It will happen I'm telling you.

Exactly, because they wouldn't work together. Reliant were the fibreglass experts, Rover had the legendary V8, Triumph had the design bureau, Jaguar had all the luxury, Austin were good at building cheap cars. Imagine if all them came together to work on one car. It would have been a beast.

Fractioning GM into specialist divisions has the potential to increase tensions between them. Like Pontiac develops some kind of new awesome RWD technology, Chevrolet (they are part of GM right?) wants the new technology to stick on the Corvette, Pontiac feels angry that they spend all the R&D developing said technology and don't see why Chevrolet should get it just because GM owns both of them and tells Chevrolet to fuck off, thus denying the Corvette becoming the even better car it could have been. It will happen I'm telling you.

Yeah I know what you're saying. GM also fucked themselves up by rebadging their own vehicles for different divisions to please the American buying public who judge every car by it's badge. Not a wise move to operate several different subsidaries that sell the same crap beside their glory models.

Also: Leylands demise wasn't helped by their attempt at cornering the Australian car market. The assistance in a mismanged Leylands' doom brought to you today by the letters P, 7, and 6.

Both were/are dangerously mismanaged empires.

I'll be the first to say it was a pretty lame move by GM to take the Acadia, Malibu, Solstice and Ion and just slap a few trim pieces on them and call them Saturns, when Saturn actually used to have it's own unique models.