Saturn Falls

A venture that started as one of the boldest and most ambitious experiments in the American automobile industry came to a crashing end this week as Saturn burned out. Roger Penske, who had hoped to buy the brand and its dealer network from General Motors, abandoned his effort after failing to find another manufacturer to supply cars to replace the GM-built models upon their discontinuation.

Penske had been in negotiations with a foreign automaker - possibly Renault or its Nissan subsidiary - to sell cars currently unavailable in North America and also build them in North American plants, which Nissan has. He thought he had a deal with this unidentified company, but it all unraveled just before his acquisition of Saturn seemed to be in the bag.

Of course, Saturn had long since lost its edge in its brief history. The project had been started by GM chairman Roger Smith as an effort to build a solid small car that could compete with imported cars in the U.S. market, using innovative ideas and fresh thinking that would break with the conventional Detroit way of doing things. To preserve the bold, fresh mindset Smith wanted, the project would not produce cars for existing brands but be a new subsidiary company altogether. Smith named it not after the sixth planet from the sun but after a NASA rocket project in the sixties.

After numerous delays, the Saturn Corporation was finally launched in 1990 with a single model line, built in Spring Hill, Tennessee, by workers with a special contract with General Motors. Although many observers thought that the project was too overambitious, trying to start too much from scratch, Saturn's S-Series proved to be a popular car, and the company's approach to marketing and service was refreshing. The no-haggle pricing appealed to customers, and dealership events that treated customers like family - memorably satirized in an episode of Ellen DeGeneres's mid-nineties sitcom - became commonplace. Saturn's dent-resistant polymer body panels, easily accessible fluid reservoirs, and distinctive styling gave the brand an edge over the competition, and it featured the most sophisticated overhead-camshaft engine a GM brand had ever produced. By the end of the decade, a larger midsize model - the L-Series - had been added, and a three-door coupe, with a small rear side door, was available.

Several weaknesses had already become obvious by then, though, as Saturn tended to take sales from other GM brands more than from the imports they were supposed to compete with. Quality was better than other GM cars but still not as good as the Japanese competition. Then, in its second decade, Saturn managed to water down its advantages with a succession of bland models and a muddled identity as it became more integrated with its parent company, ruining everything that made it a breath of fresh air in the first place.

Saturn's biggest mistake was the Ion, which replaced the S-Series. Its design and ergonomics were so bland and uninspiring that it turned off potential customers while disappointing the brand's early admirers. Later models like the midsize Aura and the Sky sport coupe were obvious variations of product available from other GM brands. The final insult came when the Ion was replaced by the Opel-built Astra. Saturn had been founded to prove that Americans could build a good small car. Now its small volume car would be outsourced from a plant in . . . Belgium. The car was an unqualified failure, being overpriced due to currency rates and underappointed for American tastes.

Oh, and what happened to the Spring Hill plant? The special contract was terminated in 2004, and the factory was retooled to make other GM vehicles . . . only to scheduled to be closed later this year.

This is the ultimate humiliation for a once proud industry, not to mention an embarrassment for a country that once made the best consumer products in the world. To give you a perspective of how short a time Saturn will have lasted - twenty years - Hyundai, which competes in the small and midsize car market with Saturn, began selling cars in the U.S. in 1986 and continues to expand.

It's getting to the point where we can't even make any consumer products, never mind making the best. It seems ironic that Saturn should have been named for a a project from the glory days of the space program. If NASA in the 1960s were anything like GM is now, the Soviets would have reached the moon first.

A different kind of company became the same old song and dance from a dying, disrespected auto industry.

What caused the Penske deal with another car company to fall through? Who knows? Maybe someone who could have swung the deal in Penske's favor, at a critical moment, had JujyFruits stuffed in his mouth. ("Seinfeld" fans will get that joke.)