My thinking was, 'My goodness gracious, GM's going to try to build a car that's as good as Honda, Toyota or Nissan? Give me a break.'
There were things to learn from Saturn that GM didn't absorb
The investment [to buy the franchise] was minimal ... It turned out to be the best decision I ever made.
One company I worked with closely as they tried to emulate Saturn was Caterpillar
I think there was some ground lost right there
after-sales service business ... is a wake-up call; its approach should serve as a model for any industry trying to forge the critical link between after-sales service and customer loyalty.
The story of Saturn is not so much the boldness of the ideas, but that GM was unable to follow through. It just never figured out how to take the lessons that could be learned at Saturn and apply them elsewhere.
Saturn started out on the right foot -- as an autonomous division with market focus and an emphasis on quality
The concepts that are embodied in the Saturn strategy have been widely adopted
It ended up on the wrong foot -- with internal squabbles, and production- and cost-driven focus.
Really, the car was never that great