Saturn

What a beautiful job Saturn has done creating a distinctive, compelling, fully-realized Brand for themselves over the last several years. What a shame that the Brand is a sham.

Even before they started rolling off the line, the seeds of the Saturn Brand had been firmly planted. When I first started reading about this new General Motors project, I thought “Oh-oh, Vega Vu all over again.” That skepticism quickly gave way to cautious, curious optimism. Maybe they really were starting from scratch, not just with the design of the car, but of the company as well. Non-union? That sounded like they were serious about doing it differently.

As a disenchanted former American car owner, who had years ago switched to little Japanese cars, with the avowed intention never to return to my homeland’s crappy cars, I was exactly the car owner Saturn was aimed at.
Reviews of the new company were mostly enthusiastic. For instance, when a flaw was discovered, rather than continuing to crank out cars with that flaw while engineers tried to solve it, at Saturn they actually stopped production until it was fixed. This was very un-American. And very cool.

Reviews of the car were mixed. It looked pretty good, but it was noisy. I was impressed with things like moving the radio up above the climate control stuff, making it more accessible, because their ergonomic studies showed that people futz with their music way more than their heat.

So I made the 45-minute trip from Rogers Park to Schaumburg to check out the Saturn. The guy who took me for a test ride was very pleasant. I told him my only barrier to buying the Saturn was that I didn’t relish having to make this trip every time the car needed servicing. He assured me there would be a Saturn of Skokie within six months, and one close to downtown as well. On the basis of that news, I brought my wife to check out the Saturn experience. She liked it. We bought one.

We loved the car and the company for the first couple of years. Their touted emphasis on customer service held true. Every time we brought the car in, even for a warranty inspection or an oil change, we would get a call from the dealer the next day, and, later, a post card, both asking how it went. Even the corporate office would send us a questionaire. We so appreciated the attention that we were very forgiving about the little mistakes the service department would make. It was an extended honeymoon.

Then Saturn of Schaumburg moved to some suburb even farther west. I called Saturn of America and learned there were no plans for a Saturn of Skokie or a Saturn of Downtown. The closest dealerships were Saturn of Glenview and Saturn of Chicago, located way west. They were both about a half hour from my home. Still not very close, but better than the trek I had been making. Over the next couple of years, the Saturn was in need of several repairs -- brakes, clutch, that kind of thing. I went to Saturn of Glenview, found the service less than satisfactory. So I switched to Saturn of Chicago, which was worse. They just couldn’t ever seem to actually fix my car. They had to replace my brakes three times in less than a year. They never did explain why.

That pattern became a rule to which there were no exceptions. Needless to say, as their service rapidly disintergrated, I made phone calls and wrote letters expressing my frustration with their almost unbelievable ineptitude. The service guys stopped being sorry they screwed up. Then the customer service people seemed to lose interest. Suddenly, I couldn’t get any response from either the dealerships (both of which are owned by the same guy) or corporate Saturn. Apparently this squeaky wheel got greased right out of their consciousness. I was flabbergasted. Rather than sitting down and talking to me about what the problem was, which is what even moderately enlightened companies do with disgruntled customers, I simply ceased to exist in their eyes.

Betrayed by the Brand. That’s how I feel to this day. So what happened? Perhaps, when General Motors pulled in the reigns a few years back, eliminating the relative autonomy Saturn had enjoyed, that ended their commitment to customer service. Perhaps as they got bigger, it was just too expensive to pay attention to all their customers. Whatever the reason, the grand experiment blew up in this customer’s face. They promised to be respectful of me as a customer. They showed me they could keep their promise -- which made violating that promise particularly heinous. Saturn went to a lot of trouble to nurture a relationship with me. Then they ceased to go to a lot of trouble, thus flushing all that bonding down the toilet, in trade for a sedan-load of bad will. A Sad-turn of events.
Last fall we jetisoned the Saturn. My new little Mazda Protege and I are getting along just fine.