Saturn exemplifies everything that was both good and bad about GM. By the mid-90's, it was the best selling small car in the country and beat the comparable Toyotas and Hondas on reliability, price, and customer rating. Then GM essentially walked away from the brand, because ultimately the blob wasn't interested in small cars. It was as if the attitude was, "ok, we've proved we can do it, now the stepchild should get lost." GM had a success in the showrooms and on the road, and it walked away.
Bob Lutz finally tried to reinvigorate the brand toward the end. The Aura and Outlook were back to back North American cars of the year. But GM's response to another success was to immediately give slightly upgraded clones to the other divisions and leave Saturn as the stepchild.
GM had problems beyond the UAW. That said, I would have stayed with GM through a legitimate bankruptcy. But when zero dumped $40 billion of taxpayer money to bail out the UAW while everyone else got drilled, never again. I just wish people would stop referring the a "GM bailout." There was no GM bailout; GM went bankrupt. There was a UAW bailout. The parasite killed the host, and Obama spent $40 billion to save the parasite.
On the contrary, the Saturns never actually equalled the imports until the very end, when they started importing Opels as Saturns. Even when it first appeared, it was a generation behind in all respects. The engines were buzzier and the cars were noisier than the competition. The interiors looked like alien excrescences. Build quality was *close* to on par with the imports, but that was it; contemporary reviews prove that out. They were all hoping that a more refined and revised model would come out soon and it didn’t. The only Saturns that actually rivalled the Corollas and Civics and the like were the Astras and the Sky, which are actually Opels/Vauxhalls from the much more competitve European compact car market. Those were on par and better than their competition in many ways, but by then it was too late and nobody bought them.
The dealership experience was something else; unlike GM’s other brands, it was uniformly good there.