Saturn Eulogy Redux: Some Plastic Is Not Recyclable [Carpocalypse]
The first significant new product came in the form of the 2000 L Series mid-size. It was based on the Opel Vectra, a car so horrendously bland Jeremy Clarkson was famously banned (we’re told) from reviewing GM products after he said, “One of my least favorite cars in the world. I’ve always hated it because I’ve always felt it was designed in a coffee break by people who couldn’t care less about cars. One of the worst chassis I’ve ever come across.” Since Americans, at the time, had neither Top Gear nor an honest source for car reviews, some actually made the mistake of buying an L Series, encouraging GM to base future Saturn models on equally horrendous Opels. We now have the re-badged Antera (Vue), a re-badged Opel GT (Sky), a re-badged Opel Astra (Astra) and a version of the new Vectra (Aura). There’s also a crossover called the Outlook, but since it’s shared by almost every other brand under the GM banner, I’m not going to write anything more about it.
