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MM Retro Write-Up: 1999 Saturn SL-2
With the coronavirus keeping us indoors most of the time and away from new-vehicle dealerships for reviews and test-drives, I thought I'd do a write-up, instead, on a former ownership experience of mine with one of my all-time favorite line of compact cars, the Saturn S-series. I really liked these cars, and was quite soured when GM abandoned them, first for aberrations like the Ion and L-series, which (mostly) retained the plastic bodies but were otherwise conventional underneath (and the Ion had a ridiculous center-stack dash), and then for conventional steel-bodied vehicles that were rebadges from Europe and other GM divisions. The rest, of course, and Saturn's gradual demise and end, is history.
When GM first announced Saturn, it was after producing decades of poorly-made, unreliable, and sometimes dangerous compact and subcompact cars that started falling apart as soon as you got them home from the dealership (sometimes before). I myself had had some experience with the X-Body Citation, which was so bad I don't even want to discuss it here. While a few of GM's small cars were pretty good, like the late-60s/70s RWD Nova/Skylark/Omega/Ventura, most of them were clearly subpar. So, naturally, I (and the public) was a little skeptical that Saturn was going to be any different.
We were wrong.
When the S-class was introduced in 1990, the first surprise, especially for a first-year GM product, was a Much-Better-Than-Average reliability-rating from Consumer Reports....in the same class as Toyota Corollas and Honda Civics. The second surprise was stellar customer satisfaction with their treatment at Saturn (retailer) dealerships..up in the level of Lexus And Infiniti, which, at that time, were also brand-new, and unheard of for a low-priced subcompact. The third surprise was that GM (and Saturn) actually meant what they said when they promised no-dicker deals, everyone paying the same price for the same car, no dealer mark-ups or discounts, and making good on the 30-day money-back guarantee if, for any reason, buyer's remorse, even if one decided they simply didn't like the color. Just bring it back with a clear title and no significant damage...money refunded, check issued, no questions asked. The fourth surprise was the service department not only treating you with respect, but washing your car for you after every service, which was unheard of in those days on something in the Saturn's price-range. The fifth surprise was that the sales-personnel (Saturn didn't actually call them that.....I forgot what the term used was) didn't wear the usual boring buisness suits/ties. Even the sales managers, instead, wore bright-colored polo-shirts, usually red or white, with the company-logo sewn into it. The sixth surprise was, although there was an average 14% mark-up on the car and options (money for those perks didn't grow on trees, and obviously had to come from somewhere), the prices Saturn was asking were still quite competitive with their Japanese, American, and European competitors, although Hyundai (which was still making junk back then) still undercut them. But you got what you paid for. The seventh surprise was that Saturn dealerships were something that even some luxury makes today, like Lincoln and Genesis, lack....single-franchises that did not share their facilities with any other make. Indeed, it was in the official contract.....if you, as a businessperson, wanted to open a Saturn franchise, you had to limit it to that franchise, and nothing else, for exclusivity.
And, not only did I like the way the company was organized and run, but, with some exceptions, for the most part, I liked the vehicles themselves, with their space-frames, Thermoplastic side-panels, waterborne paint jobs that had the gloss of a mirror, and conventional steel hoods, roof, and trunk-lid. Their styling reminded one of a small, scaled-down Olds Cutlass. The plastic side-panels had excellent resistance to dings, dents, corrosion, and the usual look that so many conventional side-body panels accumulated with age. Another superb feature, IMO, was the spin-off transmission filter, under the engine near the front drive-shaft. This made transmission service MUCH easier and simpler for the techs...just drain the transmission, unscrew the filter, take out the magnets and clean them, place the magnets in the new filter, screw the new filter back on, and refill the transmission, allowing for the filter-capacity itself. At the D.C. Auto Show, the Saturn people there would show off the plastic side panels by taking a baseball bat (I'm not kidding), letting the panels have it full force, and demonstrate the dent-resistance. Then, they would hand the bat to showgoers there, who would have a turn at it themselves. I whacked it myself a few times myself (I was much younger and stronger in those days)...but never could get it to dent, although in some cases, particularly if there was some grit on the bat, it could leave some tiny marks in the paint itself, though the waterborne paint was designed to flex with the panels themselves without cracking. If the side-panels were damaged in an accident (and it took a pretty good impact to do that), they could be repaired in a jiffy....one reason for the low insurance rates on plastic-body Saturns. Just unclip the wiring for the lights/markers, unclip the panel itself off the space-frame, clip the new one back on the space-frame, and hook the wiring back up. Sometimes you could order the panels from the factory already pre-primed/painted, which made the job even simpler.
But, at first at least, there were also some things I didn't like about these cars....the cheap dime-store-plastic plastic interiors, odd half-moon-shaped primary-gauges, wide gaps between the panels that were not a sign of poor workmanship (as some people thought) but were necessary to allow for the expansion/contraction of the plastic itself in the sun without the doors binding. Those wide gaps contributed to wind noise, and allowed water to get in underneath. And, of course, what these cars (at first) were famous for.....the loud, agricultural nature of GM's in-line fours that had the sound and refinement of a farm-tractor.
So, for several reasons (besides the fact that I liked the Mazdas I was driving that the time), I held off on the first-generation of the S-Series, and didn't spring for one. After 1996, though, on the second-generation, when the awkward-looking instrument panel was totally redesigned and, IMO, superb, further noise-reducing measures were taken, and the non-turbo 1.9L engine given more refinement, I began to have even more interest, and, in 1999, the last year they made the 2Gen S-series before the 3Gen (which I didn't like quite as much) came out in 2000, I decided now was the time. So, I custom-ordered a new SL-2 from the Spring Hill, TN plant, in Blackberry (dark reddish-purple) and a black cloth interior. I had wanted the lighter Silver Plum color (a purplish-silver), but the marketers at Saturn dropped the color two weeks before I ordered it...Blackberry was my second-choice.
It was delivered several weeks later, but with an error in the order...I had ordered manual-crank windows (power windows were a separate option), but it was delivered with power windows anyway. They offered to re-order it at the retailer (dealership), but I said the heck with it, just paid a little more, and took the car the way it was. Saturns, in those days, were ordered as the separate basic car, and then every single option you wanted (or didn't want) added on separately...not with package or bundle-options the way most vehicles are today. That was another thing customers liked about those cars..if factory-ordered, they could fine-tune each one to their tastes, assuming the factory didn't screw up on the order-list like it did with my car.
I didn't have the car really that long (only a few years) but that few years was one of the best ownership experiences I ever had. Saturn's service department really bent over backwards to treat their customers well....I was on a first-name basis with Gary, the Service manager, and I could call him up from work, ask for an oil change or other service that same afternoon (after work), and he'd usually say fine, just bring it right over. Instead of the complimentary car-wash, I'd ask to do it myself, there with the hose, in the dealer's wash-bay, and he'd say sure, go right ahead (that water-borne paint job on the sides of the car, particularly in dark colors, was like a mirror but was also sensitive to scratches if you didn't wash it carefully, so I did it myself). The Lexus dealership, later when I had my IS300, wouldn't allow a customer to touch a hose. I got into more than one confrontation with the dealership's General Manager himself over that, and made it clear in no uncertain terms that I was not pleased with that policy. When Gary, the Service Manager I liked, moved to an adjacent Saturn retailer, I shifted my service-buisness over with him.
As for the SL-2 itself, actually driving it was nothing really special...it was simply a run-of-the-mill compact sedan with a plastic body. The engine, however, was decently smooth and quiet, lacking the raucous of the earlier 1.9L, and I loved the instrument panel despite the rest of the cheap plastic interior. The transmission, though a standard GM 4-speed FWD automatic, felt and shifted more like a CVT than a typical torque-converter...most of the time, the RPM and noise-level just fluctuated without you actually feeling a shift. Ride quality was about as expected for a vehicle of this type, as was handling. I had no major mechanical problems during my ownership period, though the upper-dash panel (a large piece of sheet-plastic), never was really attached solidly, and I stiffened it up myself some with some space-shims (no use bothering the guys in service for something simple like that....they were nice and accommodating enough as it is). I did depend on the guys in service, though, for oil changes (which, on other cars, I had previously done myself), because the oil filer was in a very tough position to get to, next to the transmission filter underneath, and you had to raise the car on a lift. After a couple of years, I did get some very small runout and shimmy in the front-brake rotors (a common problem back then with GM)...but again, not enough, IMO, to warrant taking them off and resurfacing them, which actually shaves some of the metal off the rotors themselves. My amount of shimmy was less than average because, of course, I was not an aggressive driver. And I didn't like the super-flimsy horn-buttons on the fat spokes of the oddly-shaped steering wheel....that was back before GM, like Toyota, had integrated the horn-control with the wheel's air-bag pad.
Like the big Buick I had when I was in college, I look back on that SL-2 (and Saturn itself) with a lot of fond memories...although the SL-2 was in far better condition. I still remember Saturn sending me two free tickets in the mail to the D.C Auto show each year (another one of their customer-perks), although, of course, I could also, if desired, pick up even more of them at the retailer. IMO, Saturn was one of the few American success-stories of the 90s decade, and it was a real shame what the bozo managers at GM did to it in the 2000s.
Here is the official photo taken at the retailer on the delivery day (I still have it)...Saturn, back then, took an official photo of each new customer, the staff, and the vehicle.
That's me, on the left, in red. (I told you all I was a big boy LOL)
. Kimberly, the lady who was the sales-rep and who ordered the car for me, is at the right, and the Sales Manager in the middle. When I ordered the car, she was engaged, and got married shortly after
.
(That's an old photo, taken with conventional film, so it doesn't have the crispness and clarity of a digital-camera)
And, as Always....Happy Car-Memories
MM
__________________
With the coronavirus keeping us indoors most of the time and away from new-vehicle dealerships for reviews and test-drives, I thought I'd do a write-up, instead, on a former ownership experience of mine with one of my all-time favorite line of compact cars, the Saturn S-series. I really liked these cars, and was quite soured when GM abandoned them, first for aberrations like the Ion and L-series, which (mostly) retained the plastic bodies but were otherwise conventional underneath (and the Ion had a ridiculous center-stack dash), and then for conventional steel-bodied vehicles that were rebadges from Europe and other GM divisions. The rest, of course, and Saturn's gradual demise and end, is history.
When GM first announced Saturn, it was after producing decades of poorly-made, unreliable, and sometimes dangerous compact and subcompact cars that started falling apart as soon as you got them home from the dealership (sometimes before). I myself had had some experience with the X-Body Citation, which was so bad I don't even want to discuss it here. While a few of GM's small cars were pretty good, like the late-60s/70s RWD Nova/Skylark/Omega/Ventura, most of them were clearly subpar. So, naturally, I (and the public) was a little skeptical that Saturn was going to be any different.
We were wrong.
When the S-class was introduced in 1990, the first surprise, especially for a first-year GM product, was a Much-Better-Than-Average reliability-rating from Consumer Reports....in the same class as Toyota Corollas and Honda Civics. The second surprise was stellar customer satisfaction with their treatment at Saturn (retailer) dealerships..up in the level of Lexus And Infiniti, which, at that time, were also brand-new, and unheard of for a low-priced subcompact. The third surprise was that GM (and Saturn) actually meant what they said when they promised no-dicker deals, everyone paying the same price for the same car, no dealer mark-ups or discounts, and making good on the 30-day money-back guarantee if, for any reason, buyer's remorse, even if one decided they simply didn't like the color. Just bring it back with a clear title and no significant damage...money refunded, check issued, no questions asked. The fourth surprise was the service department not only treating you with respect, but washing your car for you after every service, which was unheard of in those days on something in the Saturn's price-range. The fifth surprise was that the sales-personnel (Saturn didn't actually call them that.....I forgot what the term used was) didn't wear the usual boring buisness suits/ties. Even the sales managers, instead, wore bright-colored polo-shirts, usually red or white, with the company-logo sewn into it. The sixth surprise was, although there was an average 14% mark-up on the car and options (money for those perks didn't grow on trees, and obviously had to come from somewhere), the prices Saturn was asking were still quite competitive with their Japanese, American, and European competitors, although Hyundai (which was still making junk back then) still undercut them. But you got what you paid for. The seventh surprise was that Saturn dealerships were something that even some luxury makes today, like Lincoln and Genesis, lack....single-franchises that did not share their facilities with any other make. Indeed, it was in the official contract.....if you, as a businessperson, wanted to open a Saturn franchise, you had to limit it to that franchise, and nothing else, for exclusivity.
And, not only did I like the way the company was organized and run, but, with some exceptions, for the most part, I liked the vehicles themselves, with their space-frames, Thermoplastic side-panels, waterborne paint jobs that had the gloss of a mirror, and conventional steel hoods, roof, and trunk-lid. Their styling reminded one of a small, scaled-down Olds Cutlass. The plastic side-panels had excellent resistance to dings, dents, corrosion, and the usual look that so many conventional side-body panels accumulated with age. Another superb feature, IMO, was the spin-off transmission filter, under the engine near the front drive-shaft. This made transmission service MUCH easier and simpler for the techs...just drain the transmission, unscrew the filter, take out the magnets and clean them, place the magnets in the new filter, screw the new filter back on, and refill the transmission, allowing for the filter-capacity itself. At the D.C. Auto Show, the Saturn people there would show off the plastic side panels by taking a baseball bat (I'm not kidding), letting the panels have it full force, and demonstrate the dent-resistance. Then, they would hand the bat to showgoers there, who would have a turn at it themselves. I whacked it myself a few times myself (I was much younger and stronger in those days)...but never could get it to dent, although in some cases, particularly if there was some grit on the bat, it could leave some tiny marks in the paint itself, though the waterborne paint was designed to flex with the panels themselves without cracking. If the side-panels were damaged in an accident (and it took a pretty good impact to do that), they could be repaired in a jiffy....one reason for the low insurance rates on plastic-body Saturns. Just unclip the wiring for the lights/markers, unclip the panel itself off the space-frame, clip the new one back on the space-frame, and hook the wiring back up. Sometimes you could order the panels from the factory already pre-primed/painted, which made the job even simpler.
But, at first at least, there were also some things I didn't like about these cars....the cheap dime-store-plastic plastic interiors, odd half-moon-shaped primary-gauges, wide gaps between the panels that were not a sign of poor workmanship (as some people thought) but were necessary to allow for the expansion/contraction of the plastic itself in the sun without the doors binding. Those wide gaps contributed to wind noise, and allowed water to get in underneath. And, of course, what these cars (at first) were famous for.....the loud, agricultural nature of GM's in-line fours that had the sound and refinement of a farm-tractor.
So, for several reasons (besides the fact that I liked the Mazdas I was driving that the time), I held off on the first-generation of the S-Series, and didn't spring for one. After 1996, though, on the second-generation, when the awkward-looking instrument panel was totally redesigned and, IMO, superb, further noise-reducing measures were taken, and the non-turbo 1.9L engine given more refinement, I began to have even more interest, and, in 1999, the last year they made the 2Gen S-series before the 3Gen (which I didn't like quite as much) came out in 2000, I decided now was the time. So, I custom-ordered a new SL-2 from the Spring Hill, TN plant, in Blackberry (dark reddish-purple) and a black cloth interior. I had wanted the lighter Silver Plum color (a purplish-silver), but the marketers at Saturn dropped the color two weeks before I ordered it...Blackberry was my second-choice.
It was delivered several weeks later, but with an error in the order...I had ordered manual-crank windows (power windows were a separate option), but it was delivered with power windows anyway. They offered to re-order it at the retailer (dealership), but I said the heck with it, just paid a little more, and took the car the way it was. Saturns, in those days, were ordered as the separate basic car, and then every single option you wanted (or didn't want) added on separately...not with package or bundle-options the way most vehicles are today. That was another thing customers liked about those cars..if factory-ordered, they could fine-tune each one to their tastes, assuming the factory didn't screw up on the order-list like it did with my car.
I didn't have the car really that long (only a few years) but that few years was one of the best ownership experiences I ever had. Saturn's service department really bent over backwards to treat their customers well....I was on a first-name basis with Gary, the Service manager, and I could call him up from work, ask for an oil change or other service that same afternoon (after work), and he'd usually say fine, just bring it right over. Instead of the complimentary car-wash, I'd ask to do it myself, there with the hose, in the dealer's wash-bay, and he'd say sure, go right ahead (that water-borne paint job on the sides of the car, particularly in dark colors, was like a mirror but was also sensitive to scratches if you didn't wash it carefully, so I did it myself). The Lexus dealership, later when I had my IS300, wouldn't allow a customer to touch a hose. I got into more than one confrontation with the dealership's General Manager himself over that, and made it clear in no uncertain terms that I was not pleased with that policy. When Gary, the Service Manager I liked, moved to an adjacent Saturn retailer, I shifted my service-buisness over with him.
As for the SL-2 itself, actually driving it was nothing really special...it was simply a run-of-the-mill compact sedan with a plastic body. The engine, however, was decently smooth and quiet, lacking the raucous of the earlier 1.9L, and I loved the instrument panel despite the rest of the cheap plastic interior. The transmission, though a standard GM 4-speed FWD automatic, felt and shifted more like a CVT than a typical torque-converter...most of the time, the RPM and noise-level just fluctuated without you actually feeling a shift. Ride quality was about as expected for a vehicle of this type, as was handling. I had no major mechanical problems during my ownership period, though the upper-dash panel (a large piece of sheet-plastic), never was really attached solidly, and I stiffened it up myself some with some space-shims (no use bothering the guys in service for something simple like that....they were nice and accommodating enough as it is). I did depend on the guys in service, though, for oil changes (which, on other cars, I had previously done myself), because the oil filer was in a very tough position to get to, next to the transmission filter underneath, and you had to raise the car on a lift. After a couple of years, I did get some very small runout and shimmy in the front-brake rotors (a common problem back then with GM)...but again, not enough, IMO, to warrant taking them off and resurfacing them, which actually shaves some of the metal off the rotors themselves. My amount of shimmy was less than average because, of course, I was not an aggressive driver. And I didn't like the super-flimsy horn-buttons on the fat spokes of the oddly-shaped steering wheel....that was back before GM, like Toyota, had integrated the horn-control with the wheel's air-bag pad.
Like the big Buick I had when I was in college, I look back on that SL-2 (and Saturn itself) with a lot of fond memories...although the SL-2 was in far better condition. I still remember Saturn sending me two free tickets in the mail to the D.C Auto show each year (another one of their customer-perks), although, of course, I could also, if desired, pick up even more of them at the retailer. IMO, Saturn was one of the few American success-stories of the 90s decade, and it was a real shame what the bozo managers at GM did to it in the 2000s.
Here is the official photo taken at the retailer on the delivery day (I still have it)...Saturn, back then, took an official photo of each new customer, the staff, and the vehicle.
That's me, on the left, in red. (I told you all I was a big boy LOL)
(That's an old photo, taken with conventional film, so it doesn't have the crispness and clarity of a digital-camera)
And, as Always....Happy Car-Memories
MM
__________________
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