I think the big issue here is knowing what the price is. At a regular dealer, you have to go in knowing that the dealer is going to try to stick it to you and you are going to have to “jew” him down. End result is that you don’t know if the guy after you got a better price. At Saturn, most Honda and Toyota dealers, everyone pays the same.

Hint: If you’re dumb enough to pay full price, you can get the no-haggle experience at any dealership.

I sit corrected. Gotta get out more. Text amended.

Oh, and Lexus came out a year before Saturn — in late 1989 as ‘90 models.

Well they not only washed the car for free but they gave the car a checkup. And they decided that a new power steering pump was in order. This they replaced free of charge. We only paid for the oil change.

I know from a neighbour with a Vue and from other unhappy customers (who you meet while waiting for them to find your car) that our experience is not uncommon.

We’ve hung in only because other GM dealers are not allowed to do warranty repairs on Saturn vehicles (and we’ve needed lots of warranty repairs including a bad Honda automatic transmission).

Nope, Saturn has lost the plot and termination of this money losing outfit is the only reasonable conclusion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om9DXeycCco

The Saturn Dealer on Fulton Ave in Sacramento where my mom used to take her SL was awesome. $30 got you an oil change, trip through the car wash & a carnation left on the dash.

The Reno one is pretty good also.

It is too bad that they will be getting crammed down in the train-wreck that is GM today while many sleazeball Chevy owners will come out with their store intact.

Yes, the no haggle pricing model turned off a certain segment of the buying population. Of course many of use reading this belong to that minority that derives certain perverse pleasure from the car negotiation process.

For those who traditionally got pwned by stealerships with weak negotiating skills it was a good thing. There was always a “back door” around no-haggle where they could inflate the value of your trade-in.

Saturn’s niche back then was the “no-negotiation” model.

Perfect for introverts, dickless dads, etc.

Creating a dealer network like this was refreshingly out of character for GM. That being said, I’ve always thought the Saturn brand deserved better than General Motors. It’s a shame that they’ll probably never get it.

May I suggest to saturn fans, a Star-Trek fan approach: Have a bake sale and buy it off GM for a firesale price.

They started out with something that really did have a shot at being competitive against the ‘imports’.

The product wasn’t quite there, but it really was kind of close – close enough for many people.

The rest of the car buying experience was handled well enough that people actually LIKED going to the dealership. A dealership that was a division of GM, no less.

They had customers that were loyal. Loyal like people who buy Harleys loyal. Like Harley buyers, they really don’t care that they are not buying the best designed or built product. They’re buying an ‘experience’ or a ‘lifestyle’.

Even HD’s management is smart enough to exploit many people’s need to belong.

Saturn had the ability to get TENS of THOUSANDS of owners of (relatively speaking) boring transport appliances drive hundreds (or thousands) of miles. To Tennessee. To hang out in a field. By the factory.

Any Accord owners heading to a Honda Corp shindig in Marysville Ohio?

Squandered opportunity is the understatement of the decade when used in the Saturn context.