Saturn Corporation

About Saturn Corporation

The Saturn Corporation, also known as Saturn LLC, was an American automobile manufacturer, a registered trademark established on January 7, 1985, as a subsidiary of General Motors. The company was an attempt by GM to compete directly with Japanese imports and transplants, initially in the American compact car market. The company was known for its "no-haggle" sales technique. Saturn marketed itself as a "different kind of car company" and operated quasi-independently from its parent company,—comprehensively introducing a new car, dealer network, pricing structure, workforce and independently managed manufacturing plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee. The first cars themselves launched five years after the company's inception, and they advanced GM's spaceframe construction—manifesting Saturn's market proposition with their dent-resistant polymer exterior panels. Over time, as Saturn drained resources from GM's extensive brand network, the brand would be gradually re-integrated into the GM corporate hierarchy, losing its semi-independent nature and beginning to work on models that increasingly compromised the independence of the brand, first with mild use of shared GM products and platforms