Saturn's first attempt to get out of the small-car rut, the L series, was a huge disappointment. And Saturn said it has had only one profitable year since it started selling cars in 1990.

Saturn was more than just a car. It was an attempt to radically reinvent General Motors, the world’s largest and wealthiest automaker. "Maybe we were led to expect too much." Even on the first ...

Saturn, General Motors' experiment at matching the wizardry of Japan's car manufacturers, took nearly a decade to expand beyond small cars with the midsize L-series. It debuted on March 31, 1999 ...

Still, the Astra is quite easilly the best small car to ever wear the Saturn badge. The 5-door XE model will start at $15,995. Expect the 5-door XR to come in at $17,545, and the XR coupe at $18,495.

Part of a company-wide reorganization is folding Saturn into GM's Small Car Group. Saturn sales peak at 286,003 units. 1995The one-millionth Saturn is produced.

From Day One in 1985, Saturn proclaimed itself a “different kind of car company” — and it truly was. Management and labor worked together — a phenomenon almost unheard of in the heavily ...

It restyled its slow-selling mid-sized sedan, the L car. And it ended production of its 12-year-old S-series small car and replaced it with a larger car called the Ion. Saturn wants to be more ...

In 1990, after the car already had some notoriety thanks to the leakage, the first Saturn car was rolled off the assembly lines. It was called 1991 Saturn SL Series and was a four door sedan.

For years, we'd been told Saturn would be a wondercar built in a factory of the future, something that would show the world Detroit could build a better small car than the Japanese for less money.

Climbing into the Saturn Astra, which replaces the miserable Ion sedan, I close the door. Thunk. It closes with a solidity I rarely have experienced in a GM product. And the seats! They’re ...

Saturn small-car product manager Steve Mertes says styling is the No. 1 reason for purchase of a convertible. That overarching fact is perhaps why GM sacrificed common sense in a few places.