5 Things You Don’t Know About The Saturn Car Company


One of the more unique automobile makers to come along in recent history was the Saturn Corporation. Although it was fully owned by General Motors, Saturn was built to be a different kind of car company. In fact, one of their early slogans was “A Different Kind Of Company, A Different Kind Of Car”. Saturns were manufactured using many lessons learned from Japanese automakers, including giving workers more control in the plant that they worked in and having a higher emphasis put on quality control. The most notable thing about Saturn cars from the buyer’s perspective was the “no-haggle” and low pressure sales strategy. It was truly something the public hadn’t seen from a car manufacturer before.

Saturn Convertible

Here are five things you may not know about the Saturn Car Company:

  1. Though the logo of the company depicts the rings of Saturn, the company was actually named after the Saturn rocket which was responsible for transporting American astronauts to the moon during the 1960s and 1970s.
  2. The search for the site that would become the primary manufacturing facility for Saturn vehicles was highly public and gained quite a bit of national attention. The facility ended up being built in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Saturns were manufactured in Spring Hill until March of 2007 when production moved to Mexico.
  3. Though Saturn was a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors, it didn’t use the same company structure, manufacturing process, or distribution network as every other division of GM. It was started and remains to this day with the goal of having it be relatively independent from the rest of the company.
  4. The reason General Motors organized Saturn differently from its other divisions, was so that it could try to copy the quality control and product reliability successes that Japanese automakers were accomplishing at the time.
  5. The Saturn Corporation began in 1982 with the assembling of the personnel behind it, was officially established in 1985, manufactured its first automobile in 1990, and reported its first profitable year in 1993.

Saturn came onto the scene fast and proved that they indeed were a different kind of car company. Many buyers embraced their no-haggle sales strategy and loved the fact that they could go to a car dealership and not experience the stress of a high pressured sales force and wondering if they got the best deal possible. Very quickly Saturn developed a good relationship between the company, it’s employees, and it’s customers. Many lessons learned from the implementation of the Saturn Corporation have been used since by other American car manufacturers.

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