Saturn: what could have been…

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It’s always fun to see these unbuilt designs from various manufacturers. And today, we get to see very early proposals for the Saturn brand, dating back to 1985. Which is a full 5 years before their first models came out.

I always liked the design of the coupe. And I think it still looks quite modern today. The design proposal in the first photo looks a bit too much like a Chevrolet to me…

The sedan proposal looks a bit too weird. While the production version ended up look very similar to the Oldsmobile Cutlass from that same year, 1990.

The Minivan proposal is quite a surprise. Since Saturn never had their own minivan design (The Relay in 2004 was just a rebadged version of the Chevy/Pontiac Minivans.)

What I would really like to see are photos of unborn Oldsmobile and Pontiac designs. I am sure they were still working on new stuff by the time the ax dropped…

 

Conversation 5 comments

  1. Vince, you're the first person I've read that also noticed how the Saturn sedan looked EXACTLY like the same-era Cutlass. Put them side-by-side and you can see the window pillars and lights (especially the rear) are copies, just in 7/8 scale.

  2. I too noticed the Cutlass Supreme similarities! The coupe concept looks like what a 2nd generation Beretta would have been. Luckily they differentiated it more. Didn't the early coupes have the same front end as the sedan (or was it vice versa to get rid of the popup lights?).

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