Quote:
Originally Posted by AWM
Flourishing.....with an uninspiring product line that never changed. The intense attraction some had to Saturn always seemed to have less to do with product and more to do with the dealer experience and vibe of the company. The cars were pretty stale from day one and never were improved on. They may have been good for GM cars but couldn't really compete with what was coming out of Japan at the time. After a few years the cars were just hideous and the fans moved on.
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It's really the "never improved on" part that's the problem. Hence Quag's "other divisions got jealous" bit, which is one of the few GM-related Quag quotes I'll totally agree with. GM should have told the other divisions to STFU and either come out with something to match Saturn's early success or lose their funding. If GM would have axed all those
other brands first, and kept pouring money into building Saturn, I think they'd be in a very different position today. When you have a hit, you run with it, but they didn't. They had an early success, but completely blew it, because various execs wanted attention for their crappy pet divisions instead of wanting what was best for the company. There is no doubt in my mind that Saturn could be up there with Toyota and Honda now, if GM hadn't fumbled the ball and tried in vain to save Oldsmobile, et al.
GM always viewed Saturn in a ridiculously outmoded way. They created Saturn as a niche "import-fighting" division, oblivious to the fact that
all of their product would need to fight imports. (It was like having a niche "competitive" division within GM - huh?) The solution to that impasse, of course, would be to have Saturn make all of their product, or at least all of their product that had import competition (at the time, this largely excluded trucks) but that was too risky for GM, who decided to spread amongst nine brands what should have been poured into just two, weakening their advertising. Saturn was perpetually underfunded, and their early success was all but forgotten.
GM's problem is that they were - still are - in love with themselves. They thought that people really
wanted to have Buick and Cadillac and GMC and Pontiac and Hummer and Chevrolet and Saturn and Oldsmobile around. GM was convinced that each of these brands would reach customers none of their other brands could, that they were all necessary by virtue of their history and, presumably, a loyal owner base. Some people love(d) those brands, true, but not as much as GM loves them. The problem was that nobody really
wanted an Oldsmobile, yet GM still wasted a good bit of their resources (most notably advertising) trying to
make Oldsmobile somehow necessary.
The entire dealer model is archaic, IMO, but especially GM's "we're slaves to our dealers" arrangement. Your Pontiac/Buick/GMC dealers are telling you they want a more affordable product? You tell them to STFU because they aren't low-end dealers, they chose not to be -- do Lexus dealers demand econoboxes to move? Unfortunately, GM told them "Sure!" and build the Pontiac G3, a clone of the Aveo that exactly zero people asked for. And then they spent money trying to
make people ask for it.
Marques should complement each other, not compete for the exact same dollars. It's amazing how long it took GM to learn this, and I think in some ways (Buick/GMC) they still haven't. GM's problem wasn't that they could
never make good cars, just that they couldn't make
enough good cars to keep nine brands afloat, and thus developed a bad reputation. If they had focused on just keeping their essentials competitive, I think they'd be in a different position.