Saturn Mainstreamed into GM Portfolio
The Relay also represents the possibility that Saturn will lose its tradition of having specially dedicated assembly plants, such as Spring Hill, Tenn., as General Motors Corp. introduces new products in the future, acknowledged Robert A. Lutz, Product Development and Chairman, GM North America.
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| The Relay features a highly refined interior appearance, with the jeweled look of bright accents on the instrument clusters. The mid-size van also boasts well-placed control knobs and a new driver information center. (Photo: General Motors of Canada) |
Production of the Relay and its Buick, Pontiac and Chevy counterparts will begin in the fourth quarter of 2004 at the GM Doraville Assembly Plant near Atlanta, Georgia. The plant has a maximum capacity of 250,000 units, which will be divided among the four models.
"As we move away from this expensive luxury of having Saturn as a completely autonomous auto company, which frankly the customer couldn't care less about, we will move forward to integrating (Saturn) into the broader General Motors system," said Lutz.
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| Production of the Relay and its Buick, Pontiac and Chevy counterparts will begin in the fourth quarter of 2004. (Photo: General Motors of Canada) |
As new products are introduced, there is an opportunity for future non-Saturn products to be built at Spring Hill, Lutz said, but added there are no such plans yet.
When Saturn was first conceived in the early 1980s by former GM Chairman Roger Smith as the company's Japanese import car fighter, it was set up as a nearly independent car company with its own new plant in Spring Hill, even as GM closed other facilities, vehicle platforms, chairman and president, special contract with the UAW, and dedicated sales and public relations departments. Unlike many other grand experiments that were tried and failed under Smith, which accelerated GM's slide from about 40 percent of the United States market in 1980 to its low ebb of less than 29 percent today, Saturn has survived in a quasi-independent state.