Sales aside, I thought it was more because Saturns getting a Epsilon patform version for a mid sized car. Also the L series has no name, which the rest Satun has moved to.

Thats funny---Cadillac had names and now almost all letters.
Saturn was alphanumeric and has moved towards names.

 

The L-series was a late and half-hearted attempt to expand the Saturn range. Using a mediocre Opel as the starting point was a bad idea from the start. It didn't help that the interior was right up to '96 Taurus levels of material quality.

Compare a VW Passat with a L-series and it's easy to see why the VeeDub was success. Passat sales have increased every year since the Audi-based model debuted, and might just touch 100,000 in the U.S. alone this year.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by guionM
[B]The 1st Saturn sedan test mule was built in November 1986 by General Motors' Saturn Chassis Team team up in Detroit.

The 1st Saturn coupe test mule was built in October 1987 by the same group at the same place.

The 1st Saturn 4 door prototype was made in June 1988 and the coupe was made in September 1988. It wasn't made at the Fiero plant. Try GM Tech Center.

The pre-production sedan was made at the Saturn plant in March 1989 with the 1st coupe made in November. It was made at Spring Hill, not at the Fiero plant.

Fiero was assembled by a massive single purpose machine (biggest single assembly machine at the time if I remember correctly) that precisely put all the stamped steel subframe in position & welded it all together simultaneously, and an equally large machine precisely positioned the structure and simultaneously drilled all the mounting points for the plastic body panels.

You could not assemble anything but Fiero structures in this machine.
[QUOTE]

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My earlier post is CORRECT. You left off your saturn history:
Sept 15,1984-Saturn developed its first demonstration vehicle for evaluation. (source: media.gm.com) It was built in the fiero plant in pontiac.

You are also wrong on the flexibility of the mill-drill machines. They have been used to build fiero's, saturn's, lumina apv,olds silohette and pontiac transport. GM has 3 of these machines-one is used at spring hill, the second I would venture is at wilmington. Dont know if the 3rd machine is presently being used. The mill drill machine isnt shown on the spring hill tour. When I was there in 2002 the tour guides did say only one machine was used there.

I read on Pennocks fiero forum about hulki discussing the 1 hour time frame to switch production to a different vehicle on the same line. He was the featured speaker at the 20th anniversary fiero conference in detroit last summer. Everyone I know but you considers the fiero structure a spaceframe. It is very similar to the vette structure. In fact at the recent chicago auto show the vette spaceframe was shown and many people remarked how similar it looked to the fiero spaceframe.

I didnt state ALL spaceframes are the same. Tour guides at saturn mentioned the fact that the vue and s series used the same spaceframe.

Kappa was a wise move by GM due to its low cost, flexibility and excellent safety ratings. Ford and Chrysler may have to play catchup.