I thought a lot of the recent Saturn models were really starting to look good. It seemed to me that they were well on their way to being a real nice car, as I found myself doing a 'double take' when one drove past me.

 

Owned a 92 SC1, sold it to a neighbor, who in turned has given it to his daughter through out high school, now his son has it in 12th grade. Never any major mechanical/drive train issues. I was so impressed with the SC1 I bought a 04 Saturn Ion QC (traded this in on my HHR SS) with no major problems what so ever, we only bought a new car to have a warranty because we travel a lot. Only thing ever replaced on the Ion QC in 5 yrs I owned it was the ****ty GM rotors. The finance manager where we bought our HHR SS at bought the Ion QC and uses it for a 3 hour commute round trip every day and still has not had any issues with it to date.

So after 10 yrs of telling our in-laws (huge GMC Buick Pontiac owners) how good Saturn quality was and them seeing it by the Saturn vehicles we had bought, they bought a new Vue XR 2 years ago, thye have not had any major problems with it and now say its the best GM vehicle they have owned.

In my opinion the dropping of Pontiac and Saturn are huge mistakes, both those brands made very nice body styles. They needed to get rid of the GMC, since they are just hopped up models of Chevy any ways.

 

I agree on both counts - I honestly love the look of Pontiacs and still believe that Saturn should have worked. Will also re-state that I bet money we will see the Pontiac nameplate reappear in a few short years. To me, the grill(s) have always been killers and such a great trademark for sales.

 

There was never a possibility of that happening. Wilmington is shut down and the tooling was never moved to Bowling Green as was planned years ago. Done deal.

And I'll take the bet on Pontiac never coming back. They're gone for good. Just like Olds and Plymouth. I think the next two endangered nameplates are Hummer and Mercury.

 

GMC might be on that list too now that they have ceased all medium duty manufacturing. I think Buick and Chevy will end up together and Cadillac will stand on it's own. I am thinking 2-3 years from now.

 

the times they are a changin..

We bought a 97 Saturn for my OL brand new. That car never had any problems.. But we did sell it so the OL could get a BMW Z-3

 

Think you're right from that point. I noticed on the list of dealer that got letters. All of our local dealer lost the Caddy medallion, leaving the large dealer in Erie, PA and one or more in Buffalo, NY. It would seem they are going to make that a high-end limited group of dealers. Maybe, maybe not...

 

Same here. All the small city Caddy dealers seemed to have received the letters.

 

Saturn's problem is that they were trying to sell imported European GM products at a time when the Euro to Dollar ratio was horrible. Both the Astra and Aura were about $5000 too expensive for the market they were trying to compete in.

 

Reason they kept GMC is its profit Margin, which is huge. There is still a market for the GMC's and there high price point.

Hummer is already Done, Not sure if they sold it yet or still in talk's.
Pontiac has been dead since they GTO was canceled, nothing performance or about Pontiac since the early 90's.

Saturn really did peak at a crappy time in the market. Astra was still a pile, it was a mistake to bring over the bottom line model to America they did this due to the price point. It was the cheapest which would give them alittle profit that was untill the wheels feel off of the Auto industry.