Given that GM terminated the HUMMER brand not long after its dealers spent millions constructing Quonset hut-style shoppertainment centers, a Saturn showroom makeover may not be welcome news for fans of the ailing "import fighter." But there it is, via The Detroit News' John McCormick. Needless to say, Motown's Big Mac is down with the design re-think. Which, upon careful reading, is no biggie (unless you're looking for an excuse for a junket to Connecticut). "All this research has translated into careful adjustments to the way a Saturn showroom is laid out; how chairs and desks are positioned, how computer monitors are presented, how accessories are presented and so on. For example, the sales desks have no drawers, two chairs on both sides and a computer monitor that is angled so the customer can see it easily. Shoppers are encouraged to surf the internet for competitive deals right in front of the sales person… Overall, the showroom design puts more emphasis on people than cars, which are arrayed to the outside, leaving the center area for seating and displays." Meanwhile… Despite Saturn's latest ad campaign and refreshed Euro-style product line-up, Roger Smith's baby racked-up just 17,603 sales in July. That's down 13.6 percent for the month, -17.9 percent for the year.
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A brand engineered dealership.
Great! Now if only they could get the product right.
John
Ah, I remember Saturn. Isn’t that the car for people unconcerned with the stigma of paying full price?
the showroom design puts more emphasis on people than cars
Maybe that’s why they are in trouble they forgot what they are in business to sell. When does the 2-mode Vue come out, I figure they will kill Saturn 2 months after that, it seams to be the way they work.
“Shoppers are encouraged to surf the internet for competitive deals right in front of the sales person… ”
Only the salespeople will have the T-O-Y-A-H-N-D keys removed from the keyboards to prevent the loss of sales to their two main Japanese competitors.
If you ask me, I think this is GM realizing that they fucked up when they decided to shift Saturn’s focus away from customer service.
The new showroom should include easy to remove signs. You know,so when Chery or Great Wall or Brilliance purchases the network that they will be able to replace them easily.
Saturn used to have absolutely stellar demographics (customers were right through the mid/low-30s, ideal for growth) and customer satisfaction ratings second only to Lexus.
Instead of using those plus-points as leverage to build a Honda killer, GM management apparently decided that they didn’t need good product with ratings like that. And then the ratings dropped because the product got less and less appealing. Young buyers coming out of SL/SC/SWs were coming back and finding some pretty miserable cars. The Ion was barely better than the S, the L-Series was “meh” even in uppermost trims and Vue was okay, but late to the party by years. There was no minivan, except for the Relay (again, years late and such a “why bother” product that Saturnisti just walked away.
Think about the opportunity GM had: S-Series owners loved their cars and loved Saturn as a brand. They were young, urban, up-and-coming and literate: a demographic that Toyota is trying and failing to reach with Scion. All GM had to do was make something, anything, that would keep their interest and the sales were pretty much guaranteed to grow.
And GM pissed it away, either from a sense of entitlement (“people will buy Saturns no matter what’s in the showroom”), neglect (“Saturn? They still around?”) or malice (“we’ll show that Roger Smith that we were right and he was wrong!”).
Does GM realize that these days, people have high speed internet at home, and even on their cell phones? Even libraries have it, and Starbucks, and Mcdonalds offer WiFi. They obviously aren’t selling many cars, so I don’t see why they think people are going to walk into a Saturn dealership to use their internet. Unless you can look at porn without a problem at a Saturn dealership. Maybe they should market it from that angle. “Free porn! (and buy a Saturn if you really feel like it)”
Unfortunately, we’re not still in 1995, when very few people even had dialup access. Although don’t tell the GM executives that. Our modern world of 2008 with endless non-GM new vehicle choices frightens and confuses them.
Here’s the autoextremist’s take on it. His kool aid tank is overflowing today.
“I had the opportunity to experience Saturn’s new retail direction at their store in Danbury, CT, last week and came away impressed. Starting with the smart, beautifully-designed showroom that is bright, airy, efficient and customer friendly, the new look and feel of the Saturn retail experience is contemporary and engaging, and it’s a decidedly dramatic step forward for the brand. It’s also clear that GM is bound and determined to keep Saturn on an upward trajectory with new, market-right products even in the face of the company’s dire financial straits. – PMD”
If Saturn had stuck to the original “practical person’s sporty car” and stuck to the original styling, and concentrated on improving quality, including durability, driving dynamics, and efficiency, I’d still be driving one. But Saturn today has nothing to do with its original mandate.
I had a ’93 SL2 5-speed which I bought new. I now have an Accord.
So they’re doing the same thing Carmax has been doing for 15 years or so.
“I had the opportunity to experience Saturn’s new retail direction at their store in Danbury, CT, last week and came away impressed. Starting with the smart, beautifully-designed showroom that is bright, airy, efficient and customer friendly, the new look and feel of the Saturn retail experience is contemporary and engaging, and it’s a decidedly dramatic step forward for the brand. It’s also clear that GM is bound and determined to keep Saturn on an upward trajectory with new, market-right products even in the face of the company’s dire financial straits. – PMD”
Saturn showrooms have always been nice. Maybe not contemporary, but nice. They were consistently nice, too. You could go into a dealer in a different part of the continent and get the same excellent service.
Of course, all the windowdressing in the world doesn’t help when people aren’t buying your cars. The cars are pretty good now, but they’re also about five years too late. Saturn. the brand with spot-on youth demographics, was the last to get a small SUV, the last to get a minivan (one might say they never really did get one), and didn’t see a competitive product released from the time of the original S-Series’ release, to the Aura. And even the Aura isn’t really that good. Neither is the Astra.
I’m sort of resigned to the fate of GM’s other divisions, but Saturn pisses me off. They did something brilliant with Saturn and then proceeded to make every mistake possible, short of poisoning customers with arsenic-laden donuts, in order to drive customers away.
I still see a lot of the first and second-gen Saturns on the road. That’s pretty convincing evidence of their quality and reliability. And everyone I know who bought an early Saturn loved it and always spoke highly of the dealership experience. The dead-brand-walking that is today’s Saturn is just another tragic consequence of GM’s notorious ADD.
That is true there, and I got some friends who have early Saturns and never said a bad thing about it.
The thing with Saturn now, is that its trying to become a premium compact brand. And that is not an easy thing to do when your better known for affordable cars. Although for Saturn, I would suggest that it could become the more affordable Saab. In that it would use Euro cars brought over like the Astra, but place it below Saab and something like that should work. Although it will be harder with all the details.
Everyone I know with a Saturn (my wife included) bought one because of two things:
1. Good dealership experience
2. Positive word-of-mouth on reliability and quality from other family and friends.
One lemon in the mix and the number of Saturns owned by this group has been halved in the past 5 years. In other words, there isn’t much compelling people to buy them and it’s easy to sway people away. It doesn’t help that the whole lineup has been revamped to ignore so much of their original, quirky, plastic car image.
So even if you were a hardcore Saturn fan 5 or 10 years ago, when you walk into a dealership you won’t recognize much…even most of the names are all-new. Saturn has the weakest “brand continuity” of any marque, period.
David Holzman:
If Saturn had stuck to the original “practical person’s sporty car” and stuck to the original styling, and concentrated on improving quality, including durability, driving dynamics, and efficiency, I’d still be driving one. But Saturn today has nothing to do with its original mandate.
I had a ‘93 SL2 5-speed which I bought new. I now have an Accord.
Ditto ditto ditto… ’99 SL 5-speed… ditto ditto… Civic.
So even if you were a hardcore Saturn fan 5 or 10 years ago, when you walk into a dealership you won’t recognize much…even most of the names are all-new. Saturn has the weakest “brand continuity” of any marque, period.
Saturn didn’t used to have brands. Sure, there were the SL/SC/SW designations, but when you got down to it, the name of the model was simply “the Saturn.”
Then came the LS L-Series, VUE, Relay, Sky, Aura, Outlook, Astra… To be fair, not having nameplates makes it kinda hard to establish yourself as a purveyor of more than one segment of offerings.
Axel
Even more than specific model continuity, I mean for the whole Saturn brand itself.
Even when the L-series came out, you could walk into a dealership and automatically know it would be a pretty simple, straightforward, plastic-paneled, reasonably safe and reliable transportation appliance…just like the SL/SC were.
But when the Opel/Vauxhall invasion started, that 15 years of brand equity has to start from scratch.
“What is this $30k Aura thing? Kind of expensive for a Saturn, isn’t it?”
“I saw an Astra last summer on vacation. Are they just selling British cars as Saturns now? British cars are unreliable! I’m leaving!”
I really feel sorry for Saturn. By all accounts they have decent vehicles and above-average customer service. They are hamstrung by a tiny advertizing budget and the fixed-price sales. Why would I buy an Aura at MSRP when I can get a Malibu for less, a lot less. Other than getting treated better at the dealership why would one buy a Saturn?
In Canada back in the 90’s Saturns were sold through Saab, Saturn, Izuzu dealers (SSI). This seemed to work well a quirky vehicle central. I wonder if it could be made to work again?
I have a 1997 Saturn SL that just turned 255,000 miles. Never been towed. Heck, never even changed the timing belt.
My mom is still driving her 93 SL2 with AT every day. No significant breakdowns in 140k of punishing stop n go commuter driving. The service from all the dealers has been top notch.
She would gladly purchase another if they had a similar product on offer at $14-17k.
Her next car will likely be a Subaru.
In Canada back in the 90’s Saturns were sold through Saab, Saturn, Izuzu dealers (SSI). This seemed to work well a quirky vehicle central. I wonder if it could be made to work again?
They still are, mostly. Isuzu departed the market, though, and Saab is on life-support. Saab and Saturn are always twinned in Canada; some Saturn/Saab dealerships will pick up Hummer as well. Walking through such a space is an exercise in applied cognitive dissonance.
Does it work? Who knows, both brands have been so grossly mismanaged it’s hard to say if they’d have been better or worse if packaged differently.
During the 1990s, GM encouraged Oldsmobile dealers to remodel their showrooms to better showcase the hipper, more stylish vehicles that the division would be selling to younger, more upscale customers. We all know how that one turned out…
Why? I mean , seriously, why? At 150000 cars a year, does it really matter? I mean, Toyota sells more Camrys each color that that. Just kill Saturn already. Isnt this just taking much needed resources from other projects?
Look, it is easy to make fun of GM and Saturn. Flawed execution, and all that.
But the important thing is did Saturn ever make money? If memory serves, they did for a year or two at the start. But given that it takes $500 million to develop a new car model, did they ever have a chance after the S series? how much did the redevelopment of the S series cost in the late 90s? The L series was a pretty mediocre car. Giving saturn a SUV or mini-van in the late 90s and early 2000s would have been smart, but at that point even Buick was able to sell SUVs, so why spend the extra money?
seanx37- Saturn sells above 200K units per year. That’s 200K cars sold by GM to people that WILL NOT buy Chevy or Pontiac.
I bought a Saturn exactly because I was treated better at the dealership. I could have bought a Focus but the Ford dealer was horrible.
The new cars are good, they need better advertising and more dealers.
The Saturn price is usually equal to the common “deal” price on an equivalent car. You don’t pay full MSRP
I owned an LS 300 for a few years. It was a nice big car, and pretty reliable. Dealer service was, however, dreadful. I would always get the car back with something broken that hadn’t been broken when I brought it back. So that part of the Saturn myth is just that.
That said, Saturn was one of GM’s few brilliant marketing ideas. They made it seem as though Saturn was not a GM brand, but some crazy new car company. With their own plants, their own everything. It drew people who would never walk into any GM dealership.
GM, of course, killed that dead when ten years ago (or so) is decided to “reintegrate” Saturn back into GM proper. At that point, Saturn just became another GM showroom.
What good is this change going to do if no one knows what you sell or comes in? Saturn already has a very limited marketing budget. Instead of investing the likely millions into the research of this change, not to mention what the dealers will have to pay to make the changes, they should have spent it on marketing their cars.
But the important thing is did Saturn ever make money? If memory serves, they did for a year or two at the start. But given that it takes $500 million to develop a new car model, did they ever have a chance after the S series? how much did the redevelopment of the S series cost in the late 90s? The L series was a pretty mediocre car. Giving saturn a SUV or mini-van in the late 90s and early 2000s would have been smart, but at that point even Buick was able to sell SUVs, so why spend the extra money?
Saturn didn’t make money because you cannot sell the same class of car to more and more people year after year unless you’re Porsche or Ferrari. If you want to grow the brand, you need to have avenues for people to move to. If you buy a Honda, the path is clear Fit/Civic–>Civic/Accord/CRV/CSX/TSX–>Accord/Odyssey/Pilot/TL–>TL/RL/MDX. With Toyota, it’s similar, though the step from Toyota to Lexus is a lot steeper than that from Honda to Acura.
Saturn didn’t have anything, and there’s only so many people who will buy a S-Series car. And the S was all Saturn had for a long, long time. A returning Saturn buyer who needed space for kids or had more money was sure as hell not going to go Chevrolet or Oldsmobile, but if they wanted a larger or nicer car, they certainly would consider a RAV4, Accord or Sienna.
And this is supposed to be an import fighter? WTF!? Saturn was a stepping stone on the way to Toyota or Honda ownership, which is deeply stupid.
What made matters worse is that GM didn’t even capitalize on the S-Series: they just let it rot, then replaced it with Ion. So now Saturn doesn’t just have a problem with no upgrade path, is has no reason for buyers to even look at the brand in the first place.
Again, WTF!?
This worse than what GM did with Olds, because at least Olds buyers were probably going to go to Chevy, Buick, Pontiac or Cadillac anyway. Saturn buyers, without Saturn, are going to Honda, Toyota and Hyundai. If there was one division that GM needed to support, it was Saturn, because unlike Chev/Caddy/Pontiac/Buick, it’s customers were–and this is important–not traditional GM buyers. GM could knife any of those four other brands and not lose much (really, would a Pontiac buyer go to Ford, Honda or VW instead of Chevy?). They could kill GMC and no one would notice (would a GMC buyer go to Ford, much less to Toyota?). But Saturn? Starve them and all those sales go right to GM’s competitors.
They even did the same by Saab: instead of giving people more reasons to consider Saab, they killed off the reasons people went to Saab in the first place by turning it into a weak BMW competitor. So now you’ve alienated your existing customers and utterly failed to get new ones. Sheer genius!
If Saturn had gotten the resources that were pumped into Pontiac, Olds and GMC, they’d have had a real chance at swiping a chunk out of Toyota or Honda. Again, it’s not like Pontiac, Olds or GMC really bring new customers to GM. and it’s not like killing them would have done much harm since the only people that buy those cars would probably have bought a Chevy, Buick or Cadillac anyway.
What astounding brilliance there is in GM Marketing and Product Planning. It takes real effort to screw up this badly.
I have a 1997 Saturn SL that just turned 255,000 miles. Never been towed. Heck, never even changed the timing belt.
And you probably never will since they use timing chains.
psarhjinian :
While I agree with you conclusion, I don’t believe you can tie a brand’s success to Alfred P. Sloan’s concept of inter-brand ascension. I believe that financial model is dead.
These days, there is far less class-consciousness attributed to a given car brand. Which means the key to a brand’s strength is long-term loyalty to one specific brand.
In other words, keeping the current customer satisfied with the current product is even more important than before– in those primitive days when Mercedes and BMWs were unattainable. Then as now, a refreshed version of an existing car is always a customer’s easiest (and therefore most popular) replacement for an existing car. Why anyone would ditch a nameplate is completely beyond me.
To be sure, there should be (i.e. is) some movement WITHIN a car brand. Staying within a comfort zone, aspiring inside the familiar, has allowed the aforementioned luxury brands to prosper, at least in the short term. But it’s no less powerful at the Camry, Accord or Malibu level.
Personally speaking, once my kids are grown, the Honda minivan is gone. I will certainly consider buying the sprogs a used Honda sedan or new compact as and when they reach “and where the Hell were YOU all night” age (although I will be tracking them via GPS, as previously reported).
At the risk of contradicting myself (gasp), I’d also consider an Acura RL as a second car.
In that sense, I think having a mainstream and a luxury brand within the same “family” is a nice fit. Toyota – Lexus. Honda – Acura (get a clue from Lexus guys). Chevy – Cadillac. But anything else just adds unnecessary complication and the possibility of brand dilution (e.g. badge engineering, product overlap, marketing ADD, etc.).
As for Saturn, it was never really a member of the GM family. Even today, less than half the car buying population even knows Saturn’s a GM company. Their biggest problem is that they let their cars die on the vine, killed the nameplates (see: above) and then introduced a raft of new models. Too many, in fact.
In any case, Saturn is a basket case; another victim of GM’s bureaucracy and abject inability to protect a brand. Creating a new sales environment is simply throwing good money after bad.
“Saturn sells above 200K units per year. That’s 200K cars sold by GM to people that WILL NOT buy Chevy or Pontiac.”
Who in the hell cares whether they sell one car or one million when the division has lost money for 17 of the past 18 years.
Saturn, who cares. They may have marketed themselves as an import fighter but they never made it to the starting line. Does anyone think that Subaru/Honda/Toyota R&D guys and gals ever look into what Saturn is doing? Hell no, they rightfully could care less.
Flarn :
I have a 1997 Saturn SL that just turned 255,000 miles. Never been towed. Heck, never even changed the timing belt (er, chain).
Shoot, and here there I was, feeling all self-satisfied that my 2000 SL had 241,000 trouble-free miles on it (Every year or so, I ask the service folks at the dealership “Are you SURE I don’t need a new timing chain?”)
And what with the plastic panels, the damn thing still looks new. Gets 38 – 40 mpg highway, and not a lot less tooling around town. When it finally gives up the ghost, I mihgt look for a used low-mileage (say, 175,000 miles)SL as a replacement. Wouldn’t dream of buying any of the current Saturns, though.
Whatever their thought processes or logic, letting the brand languish was a profoundly bozo move on the part of the GM leadership.
psarhjinian:
You saw my point, but missed my intent.
Yes, you have to grow new vehicles to move your customers into. Absolutely. And GM failed to do with Saturn.
But my point is that a new GM vehicle will cost somewhere between 500 to 1 billion in development. Saturn wasn’t doing the volume to justify that investment. Yes, they lost 50% of Saturn owners to Toy-Honda. But the other 50% upgraded to GM SUVs, which pull in a LOT of profit. Better than spending 2 billion on building two new Saturn models.
A better plan would have been to take Olds or Buick and position it as Saturn+ when moving those customers upscale, but both Brands are so damaged it probably would not have worked.
I’ve always suspected that the Saab purchase was also intended to help migrate those customers. But the new 9-3 is a pretty crappy car (outside the convertible) and great GM insight gave us a Chevy Saablazer instead of a CUV, which might have sold.
“Starting with the smart, beautifully-designed showroom that is bright, airy, efficient and customer friendly, the new look and feel of the Saturn retail experience is contemporary and engaging, and it’s a decidedly dramatic step forward for the brand.”
Reminds me of the new Hummer dealer. Looks real nice. Kinda like how you want to make something look real good before you sell it.
Make new Hummer dealerships then sell the brand.
Make new Saturn dealerships then..
GM didn’t put anything upscale in the Saturn showrooms, but me thinks the plan might have been for Saturn buyers to move up to Oldsmobile as a next step. Check out the 90’s Cutlass, it is the spitting image of the smaller Saturns.
http://awesomecarauctions.com/uploaded_images/1995%20oldsmobile%20cutlass%20s%20sedan-731224.jpg
And I probably could try to make the case the Aurora’s styling was a sporty version of the same theme, and the same for the Alero.
Not a very bright idea, as the point was Saturn buyers would never touch a GM car, but they tried it, and looks like that plan doomed both brands.
edit: I searched around cause I thought I had read of the Olds-Saturn thing, and saw this article:
http://www.autoobserver.com/2007/11/general-motors-cowboy-rides-off-into-the-sunset.html
and pretty much, it says thats what John Rock was doing with Olds.
P.S.- I currently have a 2000 SL1 for a driver. Its a great car, burns a little oil, but its a perfect commuter. I have a friend that picked up one of the last new Ions for about 13k new. At that price, it was a great car, and I was considering trying to get one myself. I have a lot of friends who swear by their old Saturns, too bad they don’t have any plastic fenders in their showrooms anymore that would bring these people in to at least look when they need a replacement.
I find it interesting that Saturn started out with simple, logical alpha numeric names like SL1, SW2 and then slowly discarded them for silly names like Ion (is it an air purifier?) at the same time Cadillac was discarding its storied nameplates like Eldorado (a City of Gold) for ETC (did they really think etcetera was cool emblem on a caddy? and Deville (Of the Town) for DTS (what’s that silly nonsense) but they keep Escalade which means “the act of scaling a fortified wall or rampart”. Is that supposed to give you an idea of the gracefulness of the act of entering your new Cadillac SUV?
Keep up the good work GM.
GM needs to consolidate their Hummer and Saturn dealerships, and then set them on fire for the insurance money.
Do people really not know that the DTS is a DeVille and that the ETC was an Eldorado?