Saturn as a company was born in 1985 when GM head honcho, Roger Smith (the same Roger of the Michael Moore film Roger & Me) announced plans for a new subsidiary that was supposed to be free standing and would produce a line of cars to go head to head with the Japanese compact models that had been trouncing their American made competitors in the marketplace. Of course, these cars were being developed for a few years and consumers didn’t actually see Saturn dealerships pop up until the very early 1990’s. The brand debuted with a huge marketing campaign that was by most accounts, more successful than the actual cars.
Saturn was touted as “A different kind of company; a different kind of car” when their models hit showroom floors in 1991. That wasn’t a lie, either. For starters, down on the Saturn farm in Spring Hill, TN where the first Saturns were made, things were different from the rest of the American auto industry, which at that point was mostly situated in Michigan. The initial Saturn lineup consisted of two models: The SL sedan (also available in wagon form) and a slope-nosed 2+2 raked wind shield bearing fastback coupe called the SC -on a side note, my dad took my sister to look at and test drive a brand new SC coupe when she was in high school and my parents were considering buying one for their offspring to drive around in -that probably would have been 1993 or 1994 by my estimation. I didn’t get to go with, but my sister said at the time that she quite liked the strawberry red SC she got to drive -though we ended up with a series of other vehicles. These days, Sis is all about the Hondas, so I guess Saturn failed in their initial mission with her, at least. Bouncing back from my tangent now to discuss the SL and the SC; both vehicles offered owners the choice of a 1.9L 4cylinder with 85 HP or a dual overhead cam, fuel-injected version of that same engine with 123 HP. The 123 HP isn’t so bad, but neither one is particularly impressive. -Here's a photo of a 1994 SL sedan.
On top of the limited selection, Saturns differed from their competition in their very composition. One of the bonuses that Saturn liked to brag about was how door-ding resistant their cars were, thanks to the use of plastic body panels fastened to the car’s steel frame on all the vertical surfaces -they did feature metal body panels on the horizontal surfaces, though. So, while Saturns could probably take a slamming from a runaway shopping cart in the Target parking lot, they were just as susceptible to hail damage as any other car. The plastic panel thing may have seemed like a good idea initially, but if you’ve spent any time in cold climate areas, you’ve probably seen some older Saturns with shattered vertical panels. That’s because once that plastic gets nice and frozen in subzero temps like what Minnesota likes to serve up when winter really wants to stick it to residents, it’s not going to bounce back from a hard shopping cart impact or a mild backing into in the parking lot, it’s going to shatter like glass. On top of that issue, the use of plastic panels resulted in rather poor fit and finish.
The way that Saturns were sold was different than other cars. Saturn dealerships were renowned for their no-haggle pricing. That gave consumers a sense of satisfaction, knowing that when they bought their Saturn, they could count on the fact that nobody else got a better deal on the car than they did. This means that either all Saturn buyers got a good deal, or they all got hosed -either way, they were all in the same boat, and at the very least, misery could count on having some company.
Even the folks who made the Saturns were treated differently from the rest of America’s auto workers. Depending on how old you are and how much attention you paid to this, you may recall ads in the 1990’s featuring employees of the Spring Hill plant speaking in earnest about how proud they were to make Saturns. It was the type of thing that made buyers feel good about the purchase, knowing that they bought something that helped to support folks who seemed nice enough and were working hard to make a living. Indeed, unlike typical auto worker union folks, the people at Saturn had a different type of contract; one that, had it been implemented across the board for all of the American auto companies, may have made things very different and perhaps much better for all involved nowadays. In the normal UAW, there were literally hundreds of job classes, and a person holding one classification was forbidden to do the work of another classification or they would be in violation of the union contract. This set the whole works up for multiple monkey wrenches to be thrown into productivity at any given time. Much as I love the idea of unions, this particular bit of policy was bad. Saturn’s union contract, on the other hand, had only a tiny fraction of those classifications and allowed the various job classes to cross train and cross produce, which actually gave its workers a more firm sense of pride in and ownership of the work they were doing. Compensation differed from typical UAW contracts as well. Workers in Spring Hill got 80% of the UAW wage with the other 20% being made up of a sum that was based on the caliber of the work they did and the product they made.
Saturn’s marketing campaign was all about novelty, right up to when a new Saturn owner drove their car off the lot. It used to be that dealerships would have all their employees gather at the drive to applaud and wave goodbye to the new Saturn owner as they left in their new ride. Imagine having your own cheering section to make you feel good about the car you just bought. That’s one way to overcome buyer’s remorse, I suppose. A couple years in, Saturn Marketing hit again with a new campaign, trying to whip up cult status for the brand by having “Saturn Homecomings” wherein Saturn owners would trek across country from wherever they lived, back to Spring Hill, Tennessee to gather in what must have been a massive sea of plastic sided cars. Here, they would tour the plant, attend Saturn-hosted concerts, have BBQs with the folks who made their cars, and revel in their ownership of a Saturn. Supposedly, some 40,000 Saturn owners took part in this.
It would seem like Saturn was on the right track. In a lot of ways, the company was, but it had some fatal flaws. For starters, the Japanese companies that Saturn was supposed to take on did a little poking around themselves and discovered that their new competition was not anything they needed to be worried about. The build quality of Saturn products was low, with lousy motor mounts causing engine noise and vibration to travel throughout the car, cheap and not very well designed interior elements, and of course, the poor fit of the plastic body panels. There was another thing that was working against Saturn in its infancy, too. In the 1990’s, American car buyers went through an SUV craze, so GM had actually picked just about the worst possible time to launch a car company consisting of only two compact cars and no SUV offering. Had the Saturn Vue crossover that GM allowed Saturn to offer nearly a decade later been part of the initial lineup, things may have been quite different.
As though it didn't have enough problems, Saturn also found itself the black sheep of the GM family. Other divisions did the typical older sibling shtick where they resented the baby of the family for supposedly having it so much easier and being able to get away with so much more. Other divisions of GM (like Chevy and Pontiac) thought the Saturn folks were getting it too good without having to pay their dues first, and wouldn't share technology or advice with Saturn product developers and workers in spite of the fact that when all was said and done, everybody was on GM‘s team. Later, a new Union head moved in and restructured Saturn’s contract, ultimately causing the whole works to go to hell. Before long, the Spring Hill plant was no longer operational, and Saturns were being built all over the place; some in Kansas, some in Michigan, and some outside of the US in Mexico.
After Roger Smith retired (which was actually right before Saturn products hit sales floors), nobody at GM really wanted to invest in the brand. Saturn was left to languish without much in the way of product development dollars, so they never could learn from their initial shortcomings and grow to really give their Japanese competitors a run for their money. Eventually, the entire brand devolved from a stand alone subsidiary with its own product line up to a bunch of badge engineered GM products, at which point Saturn as a brand became redundant. Naturally, when the auto bail out crisis arose and it came time to trim the fat, Saturn’s head was on the chopping block. Thanks to a long simmering resentment among employees at GM and the fact that Saturn had been left to sit on the shelf untouched and uninvested in for so long, nobody at GM really felt bad about it when Saturn went down the tubes along with Hummer, Saab, and then Pontiac.
Even the slick Saturn Sky roaster was little more than a rebadged Pontiac Solstice with slightly different front and rear fascia.
....But what did people expect when they named their car company Saturn? It doesn’t matter if they claim that as a car company, Saturn was named after the Saturn rocket that launched Americans to the moon. That rocket was named after the planet Saturn, which makes up part of the constellation, Leo. The planet is named for the mythological god Saturn which is the Roman name for the Greek titan known as Cronos, or Cronus, or Kronos and whatever other spelling variants exist. So, when you get right down to it then, the cars are named after the god… and that’s not a good thing.
Lets start from the beginning with Saturn’s folks. Meet Saturn’s mom, Gaia, the earth goddess, and his dad, Uranus, the god of the heavens. Gaia is a nice enough lady, but her husband Uranus is a real piece of work. This guy is so fearful that one of his offspring will usurp his power and take over his throne that he casts his kids into the bowels of the earth. Of course, Saturn and his siblings were the original Titans, so dad may not have been too far off on his theory about their ability to overthrow him one day. Saturn’s (Cronos’) most significant siblings were Oceanus (the ocean), Hyperion (light and father of the dawn), Iapetus (who went on to spawn Prometheus, and thus is one step removed from providing the world with fire), Thea (goddess of sight), Themis (justice), and Rhea (who was not only Saturn’s sister, but also his wife)… I’ve found that it sometimes helps to envision Mount Olympus as a giant trailer park occupied by colony of very powerful backwoods, inbred hillbillies who are desperately cloying to be at the top of the heap. On that same note, it’s true that Saturn’s other siblings, Thea and Hyperion got hitched to each other, thus making this clan’s divine family tree bear an even closer resemblance to a wreath.
Back to our tied-for-last-place finisher in the father of the year contest; Uranus, who as you’ll recall, was in the habit of casting his children into the bowels of the earth, was not gaining fans with his parenting skills. His wife, Gaia was pretty upset about this whole business, after all, those were her kids, too, and she actually liked them. Who she didn’t like was her hubby, Uranus. She was sick and tired of that guy with all his paranoia, and was absolutely fed up with being pregnant and having babies only to have them ripped from her and cast away. She couldn’t stand the thought of having another rug rat, and despised the thought of having sex with Uranus even more than that, so she came up with a plan. She needed help to pull it off, and as it turns out, Saturn was the only one of her kids who had the balls to take on dear old dad. Gaia’s scheme was such that it would solve all her woes. If everything worked out as planned, she would free her kids so they could prosper: she would spare herself from ever again having to deal with Uranus and his man parts -which she had grown to despise: and she would place her own son in a position of power over everybody else. To aid in the achievement of this goal, she had a special weapon made up for Saturn; an adamantine sickle, which would become a symbolic attribute of the god. In fact, if you look at the Saturn car company emblem, it appears we’re looking at a simplified and zoomed in view of the planet Saturn with a ring around it, but note also how both those arcs across the emblem also bear a resemblance to a sickle blade… coincidence or not? I’m just sayin’.
Anywho… Gaia would have been the Greek goddess version of Lorena Bobbitt if not for the fact that she didn’t want to get her own hands dirty. That said, you can probably guess what Saturn did with that fancy sickle his mom gave him. In a surprise attack, Saturn castrated his father, Uranus. The blood that spilled from Uranus’s severed sex organs fell to the earth and birthed the furies, giants, and some nymphs. Not wanting Uranus to just reattach his junk, Saturn tossed it into the sea, where it got all foamy (I know, perhaps too much information, right?) and created the goddess Aphrodite -at least we can say that Saturn believed in recycling, so he can’t be all bad.
Apparently, a god just can’t do his job without a penis, so Uranus was done for, and Saturn took over the throne and became the god of time. Much of his rule was considered a golden age for human beings, during which there was peace and harmony. Much like how the Spring Hill Tennessee Saturn plant’s span of operation was a golden age for the area’s local economy and the plant’s employees before their company and their contracts got all messed with.
But all was not well with Saturn (the god). As previously mentioned, Saturn married his sister, Rhea and had some kids of his own. He was plagued with the same paranoia that had made his own father such a bastard, and was convinced that his kids would rise up and overthrow him. He may have had a good point, given that the acorn never falls too far from the tree, but one might think he’d yield a bit to the karma he himself set into motion. -Anyway- Saturn had his own way of handling the situation; by incorporating cannibalism into his parenting techniques. He made a habit of eating his kids shortly after their birth. In fact, here’s a shot of a famous work by Spanish romantic painter Francisco Goya depicting just such a scene.
It just goes to show you that no matter how dysfunctional you think your family might be; compared to Saturn and his kin, it can’t possibly be so bad, eh?
Much in the way that Gaia was none too pleased with Uranus’ handling of their children, Rhea was getting pretty fed up with Saturn eating their offspring, and decided to take the route of treachery and deceit. After giving birth to her youngest son, Zeus, Rhea swaddled up a rock and passed it off to Saturn as the baby. Saturn gulped it down, figuring that was one less kid who could take his throne, and assumed all was well… aside from the whole cannibalizing his own kids thing, that is. In the meanwhile, Rhea sent Zeus off to be raised by a goat (hey, I told you this would get all hillbilly). In Rhea’s defense, she did select a divine goat named Amaltheia for the job, so it wasn’t like she just plucked some random critter out of a herd of cattle to raise her child.
Eventually, Zeus grew up and was in a position to overthrow Saturn. He got his hands on some kind of potion that must have been the Greek god version of ipecac, and tricked Saturn into consuming it. The potion worked its wonders, resulting in the massive upchucking of several prominent gods like Demeter, Hestia, Hera (break out the banjos again for a divine walk down the aisle, because this one is Zeus’s sister and soon to be wife), Hades, and Poseidon. With his siblings now released from the pit of Saturn’s stomach, Zeus overthrew his father, Saturn as well as Saturn’s siblings, the titans, and claimed the throne for himself.
You may have gathered that Saturn is probably not the best guy to go naming a car after. None-the-less, somebody did it, and there are some parallels to be drawn. Much in the way that, as gods, Uranus and Saturn were undone, so was Saturn the car company. Only, the parallels aren’t exactly parallel; they‘re skewed by a generation in name, and are polar opposites in outcome.
Saturn, the car company, is more like Zeus in this story… in a parallel mythological universe where Zeus had ultimately failed, that is. Saturn’s father company, General Motors (GM) would more closely align with the role of Saturn in our story; first begetting the fledgling company only to try to devour it later. If Zeus’s siblings had failed to back him, refused to cooperate, instead choosing to betray and undermine his mission to succeed, they would have fit the role of the other GM brands. If Zeus had been unable to get a fancy new potion like the divine ipecac he used to purge his siblings from his father's stomach, he would have been very much like the starved-out Saturn car brand, left struggling for the good part of a decade without new product offerings to bring to market. If Zeus had failed and been devoured by his father, Saturn, it would have been very much like GM taking Saturn from its sovereign state as a stand alone subsidiary and cannibalizing it, then spitting it back out as rebadged GM products to watch it flail and sink. If Saturn the god had castrated Zeus the way he had done to his own father, Uranus, it would have been very much like what GM did to Saturn, making the brand impotent, useless, and redundant.
This is what happens when a successor fails to pick up where a mission has left off. When Roger Smith left GM, he had already done some damage to the car industry and America’s work force by many people’s estimation, but Saturn had the potential to reverse some of that. Smith's successors didn't pick up the ball where it had been dropped, instead choosing to leave it to rot on the ground. Add to that, poor timing that is anything but befitting of a company that is named after the god of time, and contemporaries who act out of spite and jealously rather than solidarity and a motivation to see better things for all, and it’s a recipe for betrayal and disaster. Saturn as a brand had potential to make good change in the American auto industry, but it was hampered by the wrong products at the wrong time, and a myriad of other issues that all added up to doom. It’s a shame really, but he original union contract and work model had the potential to do so much good for workers, the industry, and the national economy. It’s just too bad that so many factors came together to ruin it.
But here again, I say, with a name like Saturn, what did they expect would happen?
No comments:
Post a Comment