This video is meant to be a brief overview of each of the brands' histories, much more went on behind the scenes which I highly recommend reading up on... with that being said, which one do you miss the most? (for those of you old enough to remember their existences)
I am someone who isn't from the U.S., but, I gotta say, I miss both Geo and Saturn. Geo, for one, had relatively reliable machines for the price, while Saturn was more of a brand which thought outside of the box, which I find rather cool. (Sadly none of those brands ever made it to South America... Geo, for the price, would've sold like Hotcakes...)
Glad to see someone got to this before me. Further fun knowledge the pontiac design team originally specced the kappa chassis to have a v8 and v6 offering but daddy gm didnt want competition for the corvette at a 5-8k price drop so they slammed the ecotec 2.4 in it. After gm figured out the kappa chassis took to the track really well they begrudgingly allowed the 2.0 turbo setup and pontiac immediately offered the aftermarket retune package getting you to a comfy 300ish hp. Had and was modding an 06 to use the cobalt supercharger manifolds before an inattentive driver pulled out in front of me and got the car totalled last year.
Yep, I own 2 beautiful Sky roadsters, one Base manual and Redline automatic. Love them both. I drive an Aura XR daily and have an Outlook to transport the family when needed. We still love our Saturns. As the children get older the Outlook will be the first to go. It will be hard as they all still look and drive like new.
A little clarification of the word Merkur in german. The planet Mercury is named Merkur in german. The metallic liquid element mercury is named Quecksilber.
Back in the day, I tried to convince my parents to buy a Merkur Scorpio. I loved it. They didn't go for it. To be clear, I grew up in New York, and I think I might have been the only person who knew what a Scorpio was. Even the salesman weren't interested
I bought hugely into the new craze all during the 90s and had a Geo Storm GSi, Geo Prism, Saturn SL2, and an Eagle Talon ESi... Honestly, besides the Storm, they were all amazing little cars for super affordable prices. Good on gas, reliable (except the Storm which snapped the timing belt at 78k miles and totaled the car), quite powerful for their size (Talon and SL2 were quick with the manual trans), and innovative too (the Saturn had awesome dent free doors and great visibility)... I honestly liked these cars more than any other car I've had...they were amazing little pieces of engineering.
My mother bought a 1989 Eagle premiere, which was a made in Canada Renault 25. She did it when I was away at university. Anyway, it was an interesting car. It had a lot of features that even more expensive cars didn't at the time. Including factory keyless entry which Mercedes and the Germans did not have. Things like climate control, power front seats, cruise control, stuff that standard today but was considered pretty out there back then
And don't forget the 90 - 92 Dodge Monaco, which was just a rebadged Premier. It only had 210 horsepower, but considering that my car before that was a Plymouth Reliant with only 90 horsepower, I felt like Mario Andretti driving it.😂
I agree with you there. I used to work for a saturn retailer, and every customer loved the cars. Contrary to other who called them POS, they liked how they were treated from sales service and so on.
i own a 96 saturn sc2 5spd manual and the thing has held up extremely well over the years. extremely reliable, very lightweight, and 0 dents after all these years and 2 previous owners due to the plastic panels. there's no better car you can get as a teenager with how cheap and reliable they are (picked mine up for $1800).
Great video! Minor correction and lot of rambling: The Saturn Sky is NOT a rebadged Opel. This misconception is understandable, as several US market GM models ARE rebadged versions of Opel models. This includes the Saturn Aura and Saturn Astra, which are rebadges of the facelift Opel Vectra C and Opel Astra H, respectively. In reality, the European market 2007-2010 Opel GT and South Korean market Daewoo G2X are rebadged versions of the Saturn Sky. But, it gets deeper: the Sky is essentially a rebadge of the 2006-2010 Pontiac Solstice with reworked visual styling greatly inspired by the 2003 Vauxhall VX Lightning roadster concept (which had underpinnings near-identical to the 2002 Pontiac Solstice roadster concept) with additional influences from the Lotus Elise-based 2001-2006 Opel Speedster (aka Vauxhall VX220). While the VX Lightning concept did not result in a Vauxhall-branded roadster, it was chosen by Saturn over the related, but ill-fated, Saab-designed 2004 Saturn Curve roadster concept. As it's well-known that Vauxhalls have often been carbon-copy rebadges of Opel models since the 80's, it's ironic that the VX Lightning became a Saturn, then subsequently rebadged as an Opel, yet never a Vauxhall. All four variants of these roadsters (Solstice, Sky, GT, G2X) are based on the Kappa platform, which is heavily informed by the Corvette Y-body platform. They were manufactured exclusively at GM's factory in Wilmington, Delaware, which shuttered in 2009 with the demise of Pontiac and Saturn. This facility did not have tooling for RHD vehicles, which is why the Kappa platform vehicles were LHD only and were never originally sold in RHD markets such as the UK - perhaps why there was never a production Vauxhall Kappa roadster.
My first new car was an Eagle Talon this car was the best in it’s class in 1990. It’s long history as the Mitsubishi Eclipse is legendary. It was all about the engine, turbo charger, and four wheel drive. It was the most fun you could have at on 4 wheels in it’s price point.
As one of several thousand Saturn team members who felt they had a clear mission, I was crushed when GM killed off the brand. I still see a few surviving Saturns in my neighborhood (southeast Michigan) but know that eventually they will disappear from lack of service parts and interest. Sad…
I think it's hilarious that not only did Ford create "Merkur" after already having Mercury, but that the Merkur logo kinda looks like the current Lincoln logo turned on its side!
Fun Fact: Despite being built at chrysler's branpton ontario plant, neither the eagle premier or its corporate sibling the dodge monaco were ever sold in canada. A fact that was celebrated by legendary canadian automotive reporter/author phil edmonston in his early/mid 90's used car guides (Lemon Aid Used Car Guide) where he absolutely tore them to shreds for being poorly built and unreliable.
I think that was the problem; They realized they were spending money and making quality products. Obviously went against their culture so they had to sabotage it.
GM should have launched a car company secretly. Meaning nobody but the top executives knew it was a GM brand. Then maybe the new car company would have had a chance
My dad is the one responsible for Turquoise Blue Metallic (the color of the Talon in the thumbnail) being offered on the Talon. It was previously only offered on the Eclipse, but he wanted the Eagle badge and the black roof. He got into contact with some big whigs at Chrysler and talked them into offering that color on the Talon. He got the second one built in turquoise blue metallic. He was offered the first, but it was used as a showcar and had bumps and scrapes and a damaged dash from show-goers, so he took the second. It was the final Talon built with the 6 bolt 4g63. The very next one in the production sequence was the 7 bolt. It carried me home from the hospital, my dad refused to sell it to get another car that would more easily fit a car seat. It was an extra in the original Fast and Furious. You can see it briefly stopping to avoid hitting the Supra during the chase scene with Johnny Tran. My dad knew the Archer brothers who raced them in the SCCA World Challenge cup, so after they no longer raced them, they gave him the performance parts off of the race car. It currently makes ~500hp running 21 lbs of boost. He gave it to me a couple years ago. It looks like it just rolled off the showroom floor, but it has 304k miles, original everything.
American here, yes I remember that. I remember thinking how many kinds of stupid would somebody have to be to buy that car when they could buy the Acura legend, which is a flagship of Honda built in Japan.
My other post was getting long but my Trans Am wife’s sister had a Geo Storm. And a pair of sisters that lived down the street that were in high school with me and are also now my wife’s friends (this gets complicated and weird but one of those sisters dated a mutual friend who is close friends with and sometimes band mates with the the one who dated my now-wife back in high school). So after I graduated college they needed to replace the late 80s-90-91 or whatever Grand Am (before the redesign). I went with them to a dealership or two and one of them wanted to ☠️ shall we say the salesman. Saturn to the rescue! I said how about a fair deal, not the best hard bargain deal, but something honest and consistent and won’t make you feel 👹and you can rest at night. So a ‘94 SL1 it was! Only thing was no tape deck only AM/FM head unit but for a few $ the Saturn dealer would swap it with another used car in the lot. Wow! That makes sense! So quick and easy. I miss those cars and the experience.
The most disappointing of all of these was the failure of Saturn---at first, they really were unlike other GM offerings, and they had great potential. If GM had stayed the course and continued to let them be their own unique brand, they'd still be around today. But of course, GM mismanagement stepped in, and turned them into clone cars. I still see earlier Saturns on the road today
I still remember writing a letter back then (email was just in it's infancy and not really mainstream) when Eagle was introduced. I told them in MY opinion it was a mistake, and PLYMOUTH should receive a lot more models (for instance a version of the Dodge Daytona). Plymouth was originally the budget minded division, and they could have had a budget-model of EACH of Chrysler/Dodge as they did in the 50's 60's and 70's, but they spent a PHENOMENAL amount of money on "EAGLE" and it of course completely failed. To make up for this unbelievable failure, they cancelled Plymouth to consolidate their operations!!!🤪
The geometro was based on the Suzuki swift and the GO prism was a rebach Toyota Corolla. The geo tracker was a re badged Suzuki sidewhich preceded the guitar. Also both models built by izuzu were based on the same as zuzu I mark platform. The Suzuki built geometro geometro can still be seen zipping through traffic down here in Miami Beach especially in convertible form. The problem was that cars like the prism competed Much too heavily with the shitty Chevrolet cavalier. Saturns were very good and very quirky little cars the problem was that the first generation was already a dinosaurby its launch and didn't compete well up against far more refined models from overseas like the Toyota corollacomma Honda Civic, and Subaru Impressa. The real reason why brands like Geo for GM were created and cars like the Dodge/Plymouth cult and cult vistafor Chrysler was basically to bring up the cafe standards as a way to trick the government. Some of these schemes proved to be successful but none of them were really intended on bringing in the big money especially when you consider how much more it costs to build a Toyota corollaslash GOP RIZM compared to one of the J body piles of junk like the cavalier or Sunfire. They killed off the Suzuki built metro because because it cost too much to manufacturer when compared to its replacement the ghastly and well forgotten Chevrolet aveo which was built by Dewey in Korea.
all the brand you mentionned they have all the same in common: their lack of identity not different enough from the original plateform or badly commercialised quite ironic the japanese cars are critisized for their lack of personality and yet they sell extremely well
I have a collection of car brand badges on my wall and Eagle has bar far proved to be one of the badges to find at a salvage yard. I found an Eagle vision ONCE and I literally yelled out loud with joy! But someone had already snagged the badge.
American carmakers found their sweet spots with pickup trucks. They don't require a lot of design savvy and nobody expects them to have any performance or engineering finesse. They just need to be huge and comfy with plenty of room inside for your food and drink.
I wouldn't say they "found" it, more like the fought for it. It has been exploited since the oil embargo eras, where non-truck vehicles that failed to get 25mpg were fined, and trucks were exempted because, in theory, it would place a strain on businesses that relied on them, those poor helpless businesses. Unfortunately, most people didn't use trucks as religiously as they do now, since they had bouncy, floaty truck suspension, heavy truck braking and acceleration, and clumsy truck handling, not to mention only two doors and dismal fuel economy. It wasn't until the Ford Explorer, the first successful body on frame SUV, based on the Ranger, where trucks were slowly starting to become more popular as the technology became parts bin equipment. Once they got four doors and had firmer car suspension and easy car handling, coupled by adverts romanticizing blue collar life, they started taking off.
Very nostalgic. A lot of this covers my high school and college years. Someone had a used XR4Ti in our senior year in high school. A nicer hand me down than an another’s Tempo. Another friend had a ‘79 Camaro that I learned to drive in 😈 but ultimately I had a Plymouth Sundance. The 5-door. Yeah I’m cool like that. When my dad traded in our ‘76 G10 van for an ‘86 Astro I did grab a brochure for the Camaro but that’s as far as I got with that. I will say this, another friend’s girlfriend had a Trans Am but she went to another high school an he dumped her for the wife he has now. So years later I married that Trans Am girl. ❤
I had Chevy Metro as a rental car. It was the worst car I ever drove. The doors felt like light weight plastic. It couldn’t do a 0-60 mph time because the speedometer went to 55 mph. It was so slow I couldn’t drive it on the highway and went 0-30 mph in a mind blowing 10 seconds.
Wow..what a load of crap u just spewed out. There was no Metro that the speedometer only went to 55mph. The 0 to 60 time was 13 seconds so i don't know where u rented this obviously damaged car.
Pontiac’s Fiero pioneered the plastic body panel over space frame technology used on the original Saturns. The P-car platform was also not shared with any other GM division.
Saturn died because some of the departments of GM got jealous of their initial success and killed them off. Which says a lot about GM since I still see 1st gen Saturns on the road while most 90's GM products are in junkyards.
I drive a 2001 Saturn SL1 with a 5-Speed Manual. Bought it four years ago for $1900 with only 79k miles on it. It's been a damn good reliable ecobox car for me. Manual door locks, manual windows. Yeah, the AC doesn't work but GM A/C Compressors back then were shit. There's plenty of the S-Series Saturns still out there for a reason. Then GM saw that they were building more reliable cars and got pissy.
I used to get over 40m/gal on my 1997 SL2 Saturn, with out it being a hybrid. I loved that car, and maintenance was super low. But if you have a good car, GM can't make money on fixing it, so why not kill it and say not enough people wanted it.
10:35 "Why would I buy a Geo when I could get a Toyota?" Because driving a Japanese car, and getting your parts and service from an American dealership is the best of both worlds. I used to own a Dodge Colt, which was a Captive Import made for Chrysler by Mitsubishi.
I own a 06 saturn Ion Quadcoupe and this car is basically a chevy cobalt coupe but with the suicide doors. Mechanically, they share the same parts but the interior and body is built different. Its crazy easy to find parts tho, and theyre cheap too! Great little car! I also got a sunroof on a cheap gm car, how nice!😂
My first car was a teal 1992 Saturn Sc2 manual.I learned how to drive manual on that car and abused it,i broke the gearbox,replaced the clutch,brakes and radiator within 12k miles.It got totaled while parked on the street by a drunk firefighter driving a Mazda Miata
In 1996 my mom was given the choice between a loaded caravan or a vision tsi loaded and she chose the eagle vision tsi it was a great car in my recollection....
I remember all of these brands well, but the only one I actually liked was Merkur. I thought the Scorpio was a pretty sweet sedan, although I can count the number of Merkurs I have seen in my whole life on one hand.
Eagle did leave a mark, your wrong there. The amc eagle awd's were well known vehicles and the Talon tsi awd's left a very noticeable mark on the performance market, they were known as the underdogs that hit far above their weight class. When the Talon's came out most dealership's couldn't keep up with demand until the 1997 model year, in 1998 there was less then 2500 eagle talons built and few were the 4g63T awd variant and are rather collectable today.
And when that didn't work, lobby congress to pass laws favoring your larger vehicles and manufacturer fear porn about how unsafe these tiny foreign cars are and how safe your massive American (built in Canada/Mexico) vehicles are.
Saturn : Lost it's identity in later years........GM seems really never understand that one of the main reason why many of it's brand's sale are dropping , was due to models offered by those brands had became more and more just identical twins , therefore lost their own personalty. Geo : Beside the 1st gen Prizm was offered in 5dr liftback model (that toyota isn't sold in USDM for that gen corolla) , I never really see a reason for why shouldn't I just go for a regular Corolla , sidekick , swift...etc? eagle : Not memorable enough....as for "I didn't really know where on the chart of grades it fit in / don''t have a strong enough standing out selling point in my opinion" merkur : totally point less , should just sold them as a ford.....Maybe just Mercury as arm for the higher end market. (At least they didn't pull the same trick again when they launched Contour/Mondeo and focus in the USDM......)
there's always been failed Automotive brands Oakland became Pontiac in the late 1920s for example or Cadillac had a Jr brand called LaSalle. or later you had smaller makers subsumed into the big 3 like Chrysler Corp buying AMC to get Jeep in the late 1980s or spinning Ram off from Dodge in 2011 or from 89 to 97 GM's lowest cost brand was Geo for ex the last few years of the Geo Prism were a rebadged E-110 gen Toyota Corolla
This video is meant to be a brief overview of each of the brands' histories, much more went on behind the scenes which I highly recommend reading up on... with that being said, which one do you miss the most? (for those of you old enough to remember their existences)
I am someone who isn't from the U.S., but, I gotta say, I miss both Geo and Saturn.
Geo, for one, had relatively reliable machines for the price, while Saturn was more of a brand which thought outside of the box, which I find rather cool.
(Sadly none of those brands ever made it to South America... Geo, for the price, would've sold like Hotcakes...)
You did an amazing job, this video is going to go big!!
Saturn Sky was not an Opel GT rebadge, the Opel GT was a Saturn Sky rebadge. The Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice ere developed from the ground up.
Glad to see someone got to this before me. Further fun knowledge the pontiac design team originally specced the kappa chassis to have a v8 and v6 offering but daddy gm didnt want competition for the corvette at a 5-8k price drop so they slammed the ecotec 2.4 in it. After gm figured out the kappa chassis took to the track really well they begrudgingly allowed the 2.0 turbo setup and pontiac immediately offered the aftermarket retune package getting you to a comfy 300ish hp.
Had and was modding an 06 to use the cobalt supercharger manifolds before an inattentive driver pulled out in front of me and got the car totalled last year.
Yep, I own 2 beautiful Sky roadsters, one Base manual and Redline automatic. Love them both. I drive an Aura XR daily and have an Outlook to transport the family when needed. We still love our Saturns. As the children get older the Outlook will be the first to go. It will be hard as they all still look and drive like new.
A little clarification of the word Merkur in german. The planet Mercury is named Merkur in german. The metallic liquid element mercury is named Quecksilber.
Back in the day, I tried to convince my parents to buy a Merkur Scorpio. I loved it. They didn't go for it. To be clear, I grew up in New York, and I think I might have been the only person who knew what a Scorpio was. Even the salesman weren't interested
I bought hugely into the new craze all during the 90s and had a Geo Storm GSi, Geo Prism, Saturn SL2, and an Eagle Talon ESi...
Honestly, besides the Storm, they were all amazing little cars for super affordable prices. Good on gas, reliable (except the Storm which snapped the timing belt at 78k miles and totaled the car), quite powerful for their size (Talon and SL2 were quick with the manual trans), and innovative too (the Saturn had awesome dent free doors and great visibility)...
I honestly liked these cars more than any other car I've had...they were amazing little pieces of engineering.
My mother bought a 1989 Eagle premiere, which was a made in Canada Renault 25. She did it when I was away at university. Anyway, it was an interesting car. It had a lot of features that even more expensive cars didn't at the time. Including factory keyless entry which Mercedes and the Germans did not have. Things like climate control, power front seats, cruise control, stuff that standard today but was considered pretty out there back then
And don't forget the 90 - 92 Dodge Monaco, which was just a rebadged Premier. It only had 210 horsepower, but considering that my car before that was a Plymouth Reliant with only 90 horsepower, I felt like Mario Andretti driving it.😂
And now GM has a f1 team 😭
What are their cars based on? The Tahoe?
@@vadim6385gotta be the Chevy Cruze
@@burakug3385nah probs powered by a Vauxhall engine 😂
@@vadim6385lmao. A lineup of “F1” 2000’s tahoes.
All leaking oil at the start line
Blown water pumps galore
tldr; GM sucks
Or more specifically, everything GM touches goes to shit. Rip SAAB.
@@karoltakisobie6638 Also Rip Isuzu cars and Holden. Isuzu make trucks only now and Holden is dead with just a whimper
Come on Ned move this thing!
I CAN'T IT'S A GEO!!!
This was the first thing i thought of too i’m crying🤣🤣🤣
I know it's a joke, but my old Storm did 60 in 7 seconds on a good launch. :)
GM screwed up with Saturn by switching to standard GM parts bin platforms.
I think it would have stayed if they had stuck to what made it work.
I agree with you there. I used to work for a saturn retailer, and every customer loved the cars. Contrary to other who called them POS, they liked how they were treated from sales service and so on.
i own a 96 saturn sc2 5spd manual and the thing has held up extremely well over the years. extremely reliable, very lightweight, and 0 dents after all these years and 2 previous owners due to the plastic panels. there's no better car you can get as a teenager with how cheap and reliable they are (picked mine up for $1800).
The market was already moving towards trucks SUVs and crossovers when they went bankrupt, it wouldn't have made the cull regardless
Same for SAAB
@@My_Old_YT_Account that one particularly hurts, Saab was genuinely a different kind of car company
Great video!
Minor correction and lot of rambling: The Saturn Sky is NOT a rebadged Opel. This misconception is understandable, as several US market GM models ARE rebadged versions of Opel models. This includes the Saturn Aura and Saturn Astra, which are rebadges of the facelift Opel Vectra C and Opel Astra H, respectively. In reality, the European market 2007-2010 Opel GT and South Korean market Daewoo G2X are rebadged versions of the Saturn Sky.
But, it gets deeper: the Sky is essentially a rebadge of the 2006-2010 Pontiac Solstice with reworked visual styling greatly inspired by the 2003 Vauxhall VX Lightning roadster concept (which had underpinnings near-identical to the 2002 Pontiac Solstice roadster concept) with additional influences from the Lotus Elise-based 2001-2006 Opel Speedster (aka Vauxhall VX220). While the VX Lightning concept did not result in a Vauxhall-branded roadster, it was chosen by Saturn over the related, but ill-fated, Saab-designed 2004 Saturn Curve roadster concept. As it's well-known that Vauxhalls have often been carbon-copy rebadges of Opel models since the 80's, it's ironic that the VX Lightning became a Saturn, then subsequently rebadged as an Opel, yet never a Vauxhall.
All four variants of these roadsters (Solstice, Sky, GT, G2X) are based on the Kappa platform, which is heavily informed by the Corvette Y-body platform. They were manufactured exclusively at GM's factory in Wilmington, Delaware, which shuttered in 2009 with the demise of Pontiac and Saturn. This facility did not have tooling for RHD vehicles, which is why the Kappa platform vehicles were LHD only and were never originally sold in RHD markets such as the UK - perhaps why there was never a production Vauxhall Kappa roadster.
My first new car was an Eagle Talon this car was the best in it’s class in 1990. It’s long history as the Mitsubishi Eclipse is legendary. It was all about the engine, turbo charger, and four wheel drive. It was the most fun you could have at on 4 wheels in it’s price point.
As one of several thousand Saturn team members who felt they had a clear mission, I was crushed when GM killed off the brand. I still see a few surviving Saturns in my neighborhood (southeast Michigan) but know that eventually they will disappear from lack of service parts and interest. Sad…
4:44 Penske is pronounced "Pens-kee"
I think it's hilarious that not only did Ford create "Merkur" after already having Mercury, but that the Merkur logo kinda looks like the current Lincoln logo turned on its side!
Fun Fact:
Despite being built at chrysler's branpton ontario plant, neither the eagle premier or its corporate sibling the dodge monaco were ever sold in canada.
A fact that was celebrated by legendary canadian automotive reporter/author phil edmonston in his early/mid 90's used car guides (Lemon Aid Used Car Guide) where he absolutely tore them to shreds for being poorly built and unreliable.
It’s well known that Canadian manufacturing is very poor. I would never trust a vehicle built there.
Saturn was the ONLY good thing from GM. Because GM actually spent money on it.
I think that was the problem; They realized they were spending money and making quality products. Obviously went against their culture so they had to sabotage it.
@@ElectricSwordfish That is a big fat fact.
You should have talked about Plymouth, Hummer, Oldsmobile,Mercury,SAAAB and when Ford bought JAGUAR, VOLVO AND WHEN THEY SOLD THEM
GM should have launched a car company secretly. Meaning nobody but the top executives knew it was a GM brand. Then maybe the new car company would have had a chance
My dad is the one responsible for Turquoise Blue Metallic (the color of the Talon in the thumbnail) being offered on the Talon. It was previously only offered on the Eclipse, but he wanted the Eagle badge and the black roof. He got into contact with some big whigs at Chrysler and talked them into offering that color on the Talon.
He got the second one built in turquoise blue metallic. He was offered the first, but it was used as a showcar and had bumps and scrapes and a damaged dash from show-goers, so he took the second. It was the final Talon built with the 6 bolt 4g63. The very next one in the production sequence was the 7 bolt. It carried me home from the hospital, my dad refused to sell it to get another car that would more easily fit a car seat. It was an extra in the original Fast and Furious. You can see it briefly stopping to avoid hitting the Supra during the chase scene with Johnny Tran. My dad knew the Archer brothers who raced them in the SCCA World Challenge cup, so after they no longer raced them, they gave him the performance parts off of the race car. It currently makes ~500hp running 21 lbs of boost. He gave it to me a couple years ago. It looks like it just rolled off the showroom floor, but it has 304k miles, original everything.
The Eclipse itself was unusual, an Import-like car designed for and built in America.
Rip Saturn. Those were the last American cars I really wanted.
I remember Geo Storm being fantastic little car. My friend had one for many years.
I still can't comprehend the fact that Jackoh is still so underrated
Thank you so much!
There was also an effort to sell Rovers in the US under the Sterling brand.
American here, yes I remember that. I remember thinking how many kinds of stupid would somebody have to be to buy that car when they could buy the Acura legend, which is a flagship of Honda built in Japan.
The Isuzu Piazza was called the Isuzu Impulse in the US and Canada.
My other post was getting long but my Trans Am wife’s sister had a Geo Storm. And a pair of sisters that lived down the street that were in high school with me and are also now my wife’s friends (this gets complicated and weird but one of those sisters dated a mutual friend who is close friends with and sometimes band mates with the the one who dated my now-wife back in high school). So after I graduated college they needed to replace the late 80s-90-91 or whatever Grand Am (before the redesign). I went with them to a dealership or two and one of them wanted to ☠️ shall we say the salesman. Saturn to the rescue! I said how about a fair deal, not the best hard bargain deal, but something honest and consistent and won’t make you feel 👹and you can rest at night. So a ‘94 SL1 it was! Only thing was no tape deck only AM/FM head unit but for a few $ the Saturn dealer would swap it with another used car in the lot. Wow! That makes sense! So quick and easy. I miss those cars and the experience.
My profile pic is the odometer from my Geo Prizm when I rolled 200,000 trouble free miles.
The most disappointing of all of these was the failure of Saturn---at first, they really were unlike other GM offerings, and they had great potential. If GM had stayed the course and continued to let them be their own unique brand, they'd still be around today. But of course, GM mismanagement stepped in, and turned them into clone cars. I still see earlier Saturns on the road today
I used to think Geo's were crap until I ended up owning a Gen 2 Metro . That was a tough go anywhere gas saver. It had the little 3 cylinder. & 5 SPD.
I still remember writing a letter back then (email was just in it's infancy and not really mainstream) when Eagle was introduced. I told them in MY opinion it was a mistake, and PLYMOUTH should receive a lot more models (for instance a version of the Dodge Daytona). Plymouth was originally the budget minded division, and they could have had a budget-model of EACH of Chrysler/Dodge as they did in the 50's 60's and 70's, but they spent a PHENOMENAL amount of money on "EAGLE" and it of course completely failed. To make up for this unbelievable failure, they cancelled Plymouth to consolidate their operations!!!🤪
The geometro was based on the Suzuki swift and the GO prism was a rebach Toyota Corolla. The geo tracker was a re badged Suzuki sidewhich preceded the guitar. Also both models built by izuzu were based on the same as zuzu I mark platform. The Suzuki built geometro geometro can still be seen zipping through traffic down here in Miami Beach especially in convertible form. The problem was that cars like the prism competed Much too heavily with the shitty Chevrolet cavalier. Saturns were very good and very quirky little cars the problem was that the first generation was already a dinosaurby its launch and didn't compete well up against far more refined models from overseas like the Toyota corollacomma Honda Civic, and Subaru Impressa. The real reason why brands like Geo for GM were created and cars like the Dodge/Plymouth cult and cult vistafor Chrysler was basically to bring up the cafe standards as a way to trick the government. Some of these schemes proved to be successful but none of them were really intended on bringing in the big money especially when you consider how much more it costs to build a Toyota corollaslash GOP RIZM compared to one of the J body piles of junk like the cavalier or Sunfire. They killed off the Suzuki built metro because because it cost too much to manufacturer when compared to its replacement the ghastly and well forgotten Chevrolet aveo which was built by Dewey in Korea.
Huh..
all the brand you mentionned they have all the same in common: their lack of identity
not different enough from the original plateform or badly commercialised
quite ironic the japanese cars are critisized for their lack of personality and yet they sell extremely well
Ive got so many odd gm dead brand cars, ive got a right hand drive Saturn SWP wagon, an Isuzu impulse rs, and a geo storm GSI
I have a collection of car brand badges on my wall and Eagle has bar far proved to be one of the badges to find at a salvage yard. I found an Eagle vision ONCE and I literally yelled out loud with joy! But someone had already snagged the badge.
American carmakers found their sweet spots with pickup trucks. They don't require a lot of design savvy and nobody expects them to have any performance or engineering finesse. They just need to be huge and comfy with plenty of room inside for your food and drink.
I wouldn't say they "found" it, more like the fought for it. It has been exploited since the oil embargo eras, where non-truck vehicles that failed to get 25mpg were fined, and trucks were exempted because, in theory, it would place a strain on businesses that relied on them, those poor helpless businesses. Unfortunately, most people didn't use trucks as religiously as they do now, since they had bouncy, floaty truck suspension, heavy truck braking and acceleration, and clumsy truck handling, not to mention only two doors and dismal fuel economy. It wasn't until the Ford Explorer, the first successful body on frame SUV, based on the Ranger, where trucks were slowly starting to become more popular as the technology became parts bin equipment. Once they got four doors and had firmer car suspension and easy car handling, coupled by adverts romanticizing blue collar life, they started taking off.
My dad had a white Saturn L300 and then a turquoise Saturn Outlook. Man I loved those cars!
Eagle should've stayed as a 4x4 Brand
Very nostalgic. A lot of this covers my high school and college years. Someone had a used XR4Ti in our senior year in high school. A nicer hand me down than an another’s Tempo. Another friend had a ‘79 Camaro that I learned to drive in 😈 but ultimately I had a Plymouth Sundance. The 5-door. Yeah I’m cool like that. When my dad traded in our ‘76 G10 van for an ‘86 Astro I did grab a brochure for the Camaro but that’s as far as I got with that. I will say this, another friend’s girlfriend had a Trans Am but she went to another high school an he dumped her for the wife he has now. So years later I married that Trans Am girl. ❤
I had Chevy Metro as a rental car. It was the worst car I ever drove. The doors felt like light weight plastic. It couldn’t do a 0-60 mph time because the speedometer went to 55 mph. It was so slow I couldn’t drive it on the highway and went 0-30 mph in a mind blowing 10 seconds.
Wow..what a load of crap u just spewed out. There was no Metro that the speedometer only went to 55mph. The 0 to 60 time was 13 seconds so i don't know where u rented this obviously damaged car.
Pontiac’s Fiero pioneered the plastic body panel over space frame technology used on the original Saturns. The P-car platform was also not shared with any other GM division.
So much rebadging!! It was so strange in EU to do that beforeee
Props for using Bat's music and crediting him
I believe the Saturn design sketch shown at 4:00 was done by designer John Manoogian (fyi)
Saturn died because some of the departments of GM got jealous of their initial success and killed them off.
Which says a lot about GM since I still see 1st gen Saturns on the road while most 90's GM products are in junkyards.
I drive a 2001 Saturn SL1 with a 5-Speed Manual. Bought it four years ago for $1900 with only 79k miles on it. It's been a damn good reliable ecobox car for me. Manual door locks, manual windows. Yeah, the AC doesn't work but GM A/C Compressors back then were shit. There's plenty of the S-Series Saturns still out there for a reason. Then GM saw that they were building more reliable cars and got pissy.
Eagle also served another purpose in Canada, because Mitsubishi was not sold there back then and it was now their cars were sold in Canada
I used to get over 40m/gal on my 1997 SL2 Saturn, with out it being a hybrid. I loved that car, and maintenance was super low. But if you have a good car, GM can't make money on fixing it, so why not kill it and say not enough people wanted it.
10:35 "Why would I buy a Geo when I could get a Toyota?" Because driving a Japanese car, and getting your parts and service from an American dealership is the best of both worlds. I used to own a Dodge Colt, which was a Captive Import made for Chrysler by Mitsubishi.
What's wrong with getting your parts and service from a Japanese brand dealership?
@@vadim6385 from what I know, it's that there weren't many Japanese brand dealerships in a lot of rural America in the first place.
I own a 06 saturn Ion Quadcoupe and this car is basically a chevy cobalt coupe but with the suicide doors. Mechanically, they share the same parts but the interior and body is built different. Its crazy easy to find parts tho, and theyre cheap too! Great little car! I also got a sunroof on a cheap gm car, how nice!😂
My first car was a teal 1992 Saturn Sc2 manual.I learned how to drive manual on that car and abused it,i broke the gearbox,replaced the clutch,brakes and radiator within 12k miles.It got totaled while parked on the street by a drunk firefighter driving a Mazda Miata
In 1996 my mom was given the choice between a loaded caravan or a vision tsi loaded and she chose the eagle vision tsi it was a great car in my recollection....
I remember all of these brands well, but the only one I actually liked was Merkur. I thought the Scorpio was a pretty sweet sedan, although I can count the number of Merkurs I have seen in my whole life on one hand.
Eagle did leave a mark, your wrong there. The amc eagle awd's were well known vehicles and the Talon tsi awd's left a very noticeable mark on the performance market, they were known as the underdogs that hit far above their weight class. When the Talon's came out most dealership's couldn't keep up with demand until the 1997 model year, in 1998 there was less then 2500 eagle talons built and few were the 4g63T awd variant and are rather collectable today.
Eagle Premiere was also a Dodge Monaco from 1990 to 1992. Same exact car with the only difference being the grill.😂
I really wish GM had a more hands-off approach with Saturn. I think they could have been very successful if they kept to what they were founded on.
And when that didn't work, lobby congress to pass laws favoring your larger vehicles and manufacturer fear porn about how unsafe these tiny foreign cars are and how safe your massive American (built in Canada/Mexico) vehicles are.
Drove so many Saturns sc2 coupe was a nice little car under powered by 1.9 litre but was still better than the sunfire and cavalier
Saturn : Lost it's identity in later years........GM seems really never understand that one of the main reason why many of it's brand's sale are dropping , was due to models offered by those brands had became more and more just identical twins , therefore lost their own personalty.
Geo : Beside the 1st gen Prizm was offered in 5dr liftback model (that toyota isn't sold in USDM for that gen corolla) , I never really see a reason for why shouldn't I just go for a regular Corolla , sidekick , swift...etc?
eagle : Not memorable enough....as for "I didn't really know where on the chart of grades it fit in / don''t have a strong enough standing out selling point in my opinion"
merkur : totally point less , should just sold them as a ford.....Maybe just Mercury as arm for the higher end market. (At least they didn't pull the same trick again when they launched Contour/Mondeo and focus in the USDM......)
Somehow, somewhere, I recall a Merkur model as an impressive German variation on the Mustang. (?)
who made the Sterling brand or car
It was a collaboration between Rover and Honda, which also spawned Rover 600 and Honda Legend.
I see a bunch of eagles near me on the regular, I was wondering what the hell that brand was.
there's always been failed Automotive brands Oakland became Pontiac in the late 1920s for example or Cadillac had a Jr brand called LaSalle. or later you had smaller makers subsumed into the big 3 like Chrysler Corp buying AMC to get Jeep in the late 1980s or spinning Ram off from Dodge in 2011 or from 89 to 97 GM's lowest cost brand was Geo for ex the last few years of the Geo Prism were a rebadged E-110 gen Toyota Corolla
When people ask why Scion existed, this is why. Because Americans have been making subbrands for decades.
I love my Geo Prizm :)
I had one for awhile. It wasn't a bad car but it was pretty gutless.
Eagle could have been such an opportunity
The accent reminds me of the Southport area...
Man, you really butchered the pronunciation of Penske. It’s two syllables: Pence and key.
Saturn had the most ruined potential.
poor American quality brands Do not buy
Please make the episode 3 and 4 of your own car company (for an exchange, I'll subscribe to your channel)
What is the problems with pronunciation?
Yo I own a 2002 saturn
They're nameplates, not real brands, they're just like New Coke.
I'm now seeing more and more of these videos now that Trump has been elected.
Tesla will end GM
GM is doing that on their own, God those new pickups are ugly. And it's their biggest sellers.
Until people find out what a real cockroach Elon Musk is.. then it’s all over as far as Tesla is concerned.
@@barley12girlnot that they have anything else left anyway
Please do a video essay on top fuel funny cars 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭🇺🇸🌋🔥⛩️⛩️🍱🍜😖🇯🇵♨️👹💯💯
Are you a real person?
Nope
@JackohMotors awesome 👍
@JackohMotors you don't have bodily functions then?
Saturn was a different company until it wasn’t.
Ford's European import brand identity was always "murky".
Are you Scottish?
Chinese cars manufacturers should expand into the USA market
Nah. We already have enough crap.