11/13/2022 0 Comments Saturn sped painnt![]() There were just 3800 jobs but more than 16,000 applicants, all evidently intrigued by the Saturn experiment and wanting to be part of it. The first employees were recruited from other GM operations. As LeFauve noted: "People are going to make the difference for Saturn." The real innovation came in labor/management relations. Spring Hill would use robots for welding, applying adhesives and painting the cars, but the plant wasn't nearly as futuristic as Smith envisioned. But like so many GM leaders before him, Smith was a financial manager, not an engineer or manufacturing expert, and he didn't really understand "high tech" or its limits. Smith envisioned the Saturn plant as the last word in automated manufacturing, with computer-guided vehicles delivering parts to robots that did most assembly chores. Yearly volume was first set at a half-million units, then reduced to a more manageable 240,000, and GM's total investment was trimmed to about $3.5 billion. The job was monumental, and ensuing months witnessed delays, cost overruns, and difficulties in signing up dealers that forced pushing back the production start date to summer 1990, shortly before GM Chairman Roger Smith's scheduled retirement. That was a tall order for an established car company, but Saturn was starting from scratch. Saturn's self-proclaimed mission was to "market vehicles developed and manufactured in the United States that are world leaders in quality, cost, and customer enthusiasm through the integration of people, technology, and business systems and to exchange knowledge, technology, and experience throughout General Motors." Pontiac general manager Bill Hogland was named to replace him. Oldsmobile general manager Joseph Sanchez was tapped as Saturn president, but died of a heart attack less than three weeks later. Smith hoped production would start by fall 1987, and vowed to drive the first car off the line himself. Initial funding was $150 million, and up to $5 billion was earmarked for future expenditures, including some $3.5 billion for a "greenfield" factory in Spring Hill, Tennessee. In fact, he declared Saturn nothing less than "the key to GM's long-term competitiveness, survival, and success."Īs announced in January 1985, Saturn Corporation would have its own plant, its own employees, its own contract with the United Auto Workers union, and a separate dealer network. The resultant savings, Smith said, would finally make GM a small-car power in the U.S. A major goal for this experiment was finding ways to close the cost gap with "Japan, Inc.," then estimated at more than $2000 per car. Saturn sped painnt free#Other components need not come from corporate bins, and Saturn was free to devise its own engineering and manufacturing methods. Astonishing EPA-rated fuel economy was promised: 45 mpg city, 60 mpg highway. Oil passages would be designed in instead of drilled in after casting to save both time and material. The engine would be a brand-new, fuel-injected four-cylinder with an aluminum block and cylinder heads formed by a precision "lost foam" technique. In presenting the prototype, GM served notice that Saturns would be different: Body panels would be made of either metal or plastic and attached to a steel "spaceframe" as on Pontiac's then-new Fiero sporty car. Saturn was supposed to make money, of course, preferably by stealing sales from the competition, not other GM makes. The most successful innovations would then spread throughout GM itself, or so it was presumed. The projected price was $5000-$7000 and its introduction was vaguely described as sometime in "the late '80s." A two-door coupe and a sport-utility vehicle (SUV) were to follow later.īy the time Saturn opened for business, however, it was Saturn Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary charged with pioneering new ideas in everything from styling to service. Originally, Saturn vehicles were to be sold by Chevrolet, starting with a front-drive four-door sedan somewhat smaller than a contemporary Chevy Cavalier. It's the clean-sheet approach to producing small cars that in time will prove to have historic implications." In Saturn we have GM's answer - the American answer - to the Japanese challenge. For example, at the November 1983 unveiling of a full-scale sedan prototype (later dubbed "the little red car"), Smith promised Saturn would be a "a quantum leap ahead of the Japanese, including what they have coming in the future. Heady pronouncements along the way didn't help. For some, that long gestation reinforced doubts that GM could field a competitive, profitable, all-American small car - especially given recent efforts like the problem-plagued X-body front-drive compacts. More than eight years passed before the first Saturns were sold. ![]()
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