GM Says It Will Expand Saturn’s Orbit

General Motors Corp., in a move to give loyal buyers a vehicle their families can grow into, said Tuesday that it will make a bigger version of its popular Saturn cars.

It will be the first Saturn built outside the company’s innovative assembly line at Spring Hill, Tenn., which cultivated an image of down-home workers who crafted a car as a team.

The new Saturn, code-named Innovate, is to hit showrooms in 1999, and analysts said they doubt consumers will care where it is built.

The company said the new Saturn, to be built at Wilmington, Del., will be based on the Opel Vectra that GM makes and sells in Europe.

The new car, which had been rumored and written about for months, was formally approved Monday by GM’s board during a meeting in Detroit. The company did not say how much it plans to invest in the project.

“The new product has been developed in response to numerous Saturn owner requests for a larger vehicle,” said Don Hudler, president of Saturn Corp. GM wants to expand the success of its Saturn line, said Hudler and Skip LeFauve, vice president of GM’s small-car group.

GM shares rose 12.5 cents to $51 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Saturn was introduced in late 1990 as a rival to small, relatively inexpensive Japanese cars, and it has been a success in drawing new buyers into GM showrooms. There are now 1.2 million Saturns on the road.

Saturn executives have said they want to offer a larger car for their customers as the buyers age and expand their families. The Innovate is designed to compete with popular Japanese mid-size sedans, such as the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry.

Like the smaller Saturn sedan, coupe and wagon, the Innovate will feature Saturn’s trademark plastic body panels.

GM’s small-car subsidiary has made much of its Spring Hill plant, where assembly workers are deeply involved in the decision-making process. In its folksy advertising, Saturn has assembly workers talk about how they stop the line if they find a defect.

In 1994, Saturn held a highly publicized “family reunion” in Spring Hill for car owners. Thousands showed up.

The plant operates under a unique, non-expiring United Auto Workers contract separate from GM’s national pact. The Delaware plant will continue to operate under the national agreement, but UAW spokesman Reg McGhee said that like all local versions of the contract, it will have “some variance.”

Farmer said the Saturn process will not change.

“We will instill the same type of partnership at the new plant as we do at Spring Hill. I don’t think you need a contract to do creative things with your partners.”

The Spring Hill plant is running at near full production and could not accommodate a larger model without expansion, a move GM has declined to finance.

Analysts said they doubt the fact that a new Saturn is built elsewhere will make much difference to consumers.

“The fact is that most of Saturn’s success is in sales and marketing,” industry consultant James Harbour said. “I’m not so sure it makes a difference where it’s built.”

But there are worries within GM about whether the new Saturn will take away buyers from other GM mid-size cars, such as those offered by Oldsmobile. Olds, which has been suffering from weak sales, had been positioning itself to be the step-up brand for Saturn owners.

The mid-size Saturn will feature a new, lightweight 2.2-liter, 4-cylinder, double-overhead cam engine that will be produced at GM’s Tonawanda, N.Y., engine plant, with the block and head castings from its Massena, N.Y., foundry.