Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - Bob Lutz [23]
Initially, sales were brisk, but not everyone wants a compact, and it became clear that Saturn needed a broader product line with, perhaps, a midsize car and a small sport-utility vehicle. But management let Saturn wither on what had been a relatively promising vine; its pleas for the R&D budget to create more products were met with “Well, you guys wanted your own car company and your own budget, and you got it. If you don’t have the money, earn it!” It’s no secret that the other divisions—especially Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Chevrolet—were resentful of Saturn and its early “favorite child” status. On a less emotional plane, there was the powerful feeling that the $5 billion the corporation had spent on Saturn would have enabled many badly needed new-product programs for GM’s existing car divisions. But telling Saturn to “get profitable” with just one car was analogous to telling your ten-year-old son that you’ll continue feeding him only if he gets a good job and starts paying rent.
Saturn finally did get a second car, a midsize unit wisely derived from the highly successful GM Europe Opel Vectra. Unfortunately, the Vectra was designed around conventional, all-steel construction. Saturn, for reasons of “brand character,” insisted on a total reengineering to create another plastic-paneled “space frame” car. So, $900 million was spent (can you say wasted?) in converting the Opel Vectra from conventional construction to the Saturn brand model. Still, the Saturn L Series looked like the Opel Vectra, except for a truly unfortunate increase in front overhang (due to the severity of U.S. crash regulations), giving the car a “Snoopyface” look.
Plastic panels couldn’t help the fact that customers didn’t like the car. It was a resounding flop. Rick Wagoner once told me that the decision to redo the Vectra as a plastic-paneled Saturn had been hugely controversial, but that in the end the company had no choice but to go along with Saturn. And that’s where I say, “What? Had to go along? Says who?” This additional billion down the drain would never have happened if there had been a single senior person at the corporation with any sort of instinct for the product. Such a person, long-derided as “unnecessary to the scientific-management structure of GM,” would have said, “Folks, the car is terminally ugly. It will not sell at a hundred thousand units a year. And there is no need for a ‘conversion to plastic.’ Save the money, duplicate the tooling of the Vectra, minimize investment, and accept lower volumes.”
Saturn’s need for a small sport-utility vehicle was finally answered with the Vue, a plastic-on-space-frame again, with the attendant ugly body gaps.The usual customer-visible thrifting had taken place as well: there was not a piece of brightwork on the vehicle. In fact, even the Saturn name was simply de-bossed into the plastic bumper to save the cost of a badge. One might well wonder about a brand that values its own symbol so little that it considers branding the name into plastic ample and appropriate identification. But there was more good stuff under the hood: not sharing GM’s excellent and reliable automatic transmissions, the vehicle was blessed (cursed) with GM’s very own continuously variable transmission (CVT). These are great in theory and do save fuel. But they must be adequately dimensioned for the size and weight of the vehicle. Due to chassis space limitations, the Vue’s wasn’t. The CVTs failed regularly and repeatedly, and the company had to sell only manual transmissions until a conventional automatic could be installed. Add to this the buzzy character of the engine, the cheap soundproofing, the spartan plastic interior, and it becomes testimony to the Saturn retailers that GM sold as many as we did.
Still, it was another blow to the credibility of America’s Different Kind of Car Company. It turned out to be different, alright, but not in a good way. True, the years post-2005 finally saw a flood of outstanding