Saturn Makes Last S Series - The Model That Started Company

September 3, 2002

SPRING HILL, Tenn. The AP is reporting that Saturn has produced its last S-Series car, the model that gave the innovative auto manufacturer its start 12 years ago.

The last car, No. 2,702,695, was honored during a ceremony Thursday when it was parked next to No. 1 in the company's in-house museum.

The plant employing 7,100 is shutting down for a week before it begins Thursday to manufacture the Ion, the compact sedan replacing the S-series.

"It's a new beginning," said Dora Mack-Talley, one of the first Saturn team members who rode in the last S-series car as it was parked in its place of honor.

Mack-Talley was one of the "Group of 99," a task force of employees ranging from United Auto Workers members to GM managers, who helped create the Saturn concept.

A division of GM, Saturn was developed to compete against Japanese automakers. It uses a "no price haggling" concept in its showrooms and has a unique partnership with the UAW at its plants. Saturn has been producing cars at Spring Hill since 1990.

"The mission is the same today," said Guy Briggs, GM's vice president and general manager of vehicle manufacturing and Saturn's first vice president of operations.

Briggs, who watched the first car come off the assembly line, said he had mixed feelings about the end of the S-series line. But he's optimistic that the Ion will build on what the S-series started.

"That one has some heritage behind it," he said, nodding toward the Ion.

GM is counting on the Ion and the Vue, an SUV that went on the market last year, to revitalize the brand. The S-series was popular initially, but sales peaked in 1996 at 314,000 cars before decline to 162,100 last year.

The company redesigned the S-series only once in its 12 years, in 1999.

"That's a long product life," Jim Hossack, an analyst with AutoPacific, a California consulting firm, told The Tennessean.

"Saturn's a great experiment," he said. "It had high potential but became a starved child."

Don Doane, a member of the Group of 99 and a skilled trades technician at the plant, said the company will continue to grow.

"The Group of 99 looked at Saturn as being a hundred-year car company," said Doane, who drove the last S-series car yesterday.

Mack-Talley remembered seeing people cry as that first car rolled off the assembly line on July 30, 1990.

"I noticed a lot of tears today," she said. "The spirit