Originally Posted by Iceman

Remember that this is J.D. Power's glorified popularity contest. All a vehicle has to do to score well here is be REALLY well liked by its owners. That explains poor sellers like the Honda Ridgeline and (sorry, but it's true) the Lexus IS300 coming out on top of their respective segments. It's not that they are the best cars in those segments in terms of styling, initial quality, or any other single factor but simply that people who but them are absolutely, blindly devoted to them.

That being said, Saturn should still worry. They used to have the most rabidly loyal fan base on the planet. I should know--I was one of them.

Originally Posted by Iceman

That being said, Saturn should still worry. They used to have the most rabidly loyal fan base on the planet. I should know--I was one of them.

Originally Posted by mmarshall

My opinion, Mike?
A 100% no-brainer for me....nothing else even comes CLOSE. Saturn HAS to leave GM. Yes, I know some of you guys like the Sky roadster. It is an interesting car, but that is only one bright spot in a sea of woes. Saturn is being ruined by GM's corporate mismanagement and is losing all of the unique features that made it such a great success in the 1990's. Saturn introduced MANY great features when the company first opened up....easy-to-service spin-off transmission filters, thermoplastic body panels that ward off corrosion, dents, and dings, no-haggle pricing on a new or Certified used car, 30-day money back guarantee with an undamaged low-mileage car and a clear title, courteous customer service, hand-washing all cars in the service bay, and quality to match the best Japanese cars of the time. Consumer Reports gave the 1990-92 Saturns as good a reliability record as Toyota and Honda. The only negative thing was a noisy engine and flimsy-feeling interior plastic, but the engine noise was OK of you did not drive at high RPM, and that cheap-feeling plastic DID hold up. I was a Saturn customer myself for a few years and had a very high opinion of the company. They would even send you free tickets to any major auto shows in your area.
So....what has happened since the late 1990's, when GM stopped letting Saturn be Saturn and started sticking their nose in more and more? Well, it started with Cynthia Trudell taking the reins. She was a classic yes-woman who did nothing but give pep talks to the troops while bending over to the GM bosses who were starting to ruin the company.
The first mistake was the mid-sized L-Bodies when they were introduced in July of 1999. Previous Saturns were all compacts that were TOTALLY unlike anything else in the GM lineup....in ways that I described above. The L-bodies were essentially plastic-bodied space-frame versions of the common-platform German Opel Omega, Cadillac Catera, and Saab 9-5...and they all more or less shared the same powertrains...especially the V6, rated at 182 HP in the L-Body. The L-bodies were not only poorly made, unlike previous Saturns (brand-new ones I test-drove were full of defects and rattles and squeaks) but they did away with the clever spin-off tranny filter and the plastic rear-fenders....they were sheet metal instead of plastic because Saturn said they couldn't pass the rear-impact tests with plastic. However, the L-Bodies did keep plastic for the rest of the side panels. Well, reliability improved slightly the second year but still well-below average, and worse yet, the cars sold poorly, even though the L-body wagons at the time were the only domestic alternative to the Taurus-Sable mid-sized wagons.
Well, the second mistake was then redesigning the interior for the 2000 model year in the good and unique small S-series cars. The 1996-1999's had gotten a major improvement inside in interior quality for 1996 but for 2000 was cheapened considerably inside with much plainer-looking and feeling plastic and less attention to detail....obviously the GM bean-counters at work.
People noticed this, and the S-series sales began to slide. So then......instead of just putting the former nice S-series interior back like it should have done, what does Saturn THEN do? They do the third mistake......replacing the whole S-series outright with the awful Ion. I don't enjoy discussing that car.....it made me want to throw up, even more than the Chris Bangle BMW's. Like the L-bodies, it completely did away with the spin-off tranny filter and used just another GM Ecotec in-line four instead of the Saturn-designed DOHC 4 in the S-series. The center-mount gauge speedo pod, like on the Toyota Echo, was a joke. Even Car and Driver mentioned in its initial test ..... "We waited all these years for an S-series replacement.....and Saturn gives us THIS? " They couldn't believe it.
OK...let's move on. Mistake number four was introducing the VUE small sport-utility with many of the same unproven and unreliable components used in the L-bodies. The VUE's AWD system in particular was unreliable and prone to many fluid leaks.
Mistake number five was the Relay minivan just introduced last winter. Not that there was anything wrong per se with a Saturn minivan, but for the first time in Saturn's history here was a vehicle not only without the Saturn engine and transmission spin-off filter, but WITHOUT ANY PLASTIC BODY PANELS AT ALL. And the Relay in truth is just a rebadged Chevy Uplander and Buick Terraza...they are essentially triplets...and the basic platform is some 9 years old.
Saturn reps say that plastic panels will soon be history. Conventional sheet steel is the wave of Saturn's future, if GM has its way. The 30-day money-back guarantee and the no-haggle buying policies are even in some question now.
If this sounds like a lot of negativity, keep in mind that this all happened in the last 5-6 years. Saturn was a marvelous company up to about the turn of the century. But.....what caused all of this? GM senior management.....and the fact that the people running Saturn starting with Trudell simply didn't have the guts to veto bad managemant decisions passed down from GM. If they were real managers they would have said......" No, Saturn was not meant to be this way, we are not going to allow it to deteriorate into another Chevrolet division) "

But.....sadly....they did.

So...my answer.......break Saturn off from GM once and for all and let them again be the marvelous company they once were.

Originally Posted by Iceman

Remember that this is J.D. Power's glorified popularity contest. All a vehicle has to do to score well here is be REALLY well liked by its owners. That explains poor sellers like the Honda Ridgeline and (sorry, but it's true) the Lexus IS300 coming out on top of their respective segments. It's not that they are the best cars in those segments in terms of styling, initial quality, or any other single factor but simply that people who but them are absolutely, blindly devoted to them.

That being said, Saturn should still worry. They used to have the most rabidly loyal fan base on the planet. I should know--I was one of them.