In the Rings of Saturn

This is the only account of how General Motors built a new plant to manufacture an entirely new car - the Saturn (a family car in the same market sector as the Ford Escort, Honda Civic, or Toyota Corolla). The Saturn project became America's biggest and most publicized industrial success of the last decade: the car has proved popular with consumers and has successfully challenged Japanese firms in this market. As such, its story will provide European business-people with inspiring reading and important lessons. Joe Sherman gives a colourful account of the entire history of the project, unveiling Saturn's mysterious beginnings in 1982; the site hunt that involved 38 states and ended in Spring Hill Tennessee; the plant's construction and the transfer of 5,000 workers to this Southern backwater; and the car's triumph in the market-place. He also reveals that there was a down-side to the project: how it did not help General Motors find ways of expanding as a company and how it failed to provide model for positive redevelopment in rural America.