In the eighties, Ford and General Motors reluctantly ceded the minivan crown to the revived Chrysler corporation. To their credit, the Aerostar and Astro, Ford and GM’s body-on-frame, rear-drive variations on the minivan formula, could tow more. But the vast majority of families never, ever hook up a trailer of any kind to their minivans, and Chrysler was simply running away with the category. With the popularity of the car-based Dodge Caravan taking a big bite out GM’s bottom line, The General finally decided to finally strike back with a new and dramatic front-drive design.
GM’s would-be Caravan-killer arrived in 1990 as Pontiac, Chevrolet, and Oldsmobile dealers took delivery of minivans that looked like nothing else on the market. Styling details varied to suit each brand, but all featured the same sleek profile, a futuristic shape that would look just as appropriate delivering James T. Kirk and his crew to the Enterprise in the 23rd century as it would delivering Jane Kirk and her family to an amusement park in the 20th. Or so GM hoped; it turned out the Van Of Tomorrow resonated more as the Handheld Vacuum Of Today, and GM’s great hope was quickly saddled with the nickname Dustbuster. Because it looked like a Dustbuster.
Recently, reader CalLook67 asked what it might be like if a “Different Kind of Car Company” had sold this van instead; could Saturn have had more success with a “different kind of buyer”?
A Van-Detta On The Voyager
I was told that when one of my creative director bosses saw his first Pontiac Trans Sport van parked outside of our office window, his immediate response was, “Well, there’s a battle that the design department won.” He was sort of right, but not entirely.
The first manifestation of GM’s minivan vision was the 1986 Pontiac Trans Sport show vehicle. With a gullwing rear side door and wraparound glass and an interior loaded with state-of-the-art technology (for the time) including a digital rear view mirror, heads-up display, and a primitive version of what would eventually become OnStar. There was even a Nintendo game system for the rear seats.
The Trans Sport show car was reportedly based on the A-Body Pontiac 6000 chassis, yet the long wheelbase and short overhangs were nothing like that car; indeed, they were closer to the proportions of the later, famously mid-engined Toyota Previa. Had the Trans Sport reached showrooms, it would have immediately made all the other minivans on the market look at least a decade old.
Four years later, the production Pontiac Trans Sport was traffic-stopping; you didn’t need a wind tunnel to tell you that it was the most aerodynamic minivan available at the time.
Despite the slick looks, a Trans Sport was a highly practical, spacious minivan with reconfigurable seating inside for up to seven.
This radical van was joined with the more basic Chevrolet Lumina Van variant and the luxury-oriented Oldsmobile Silhouette version.
A few years later, the Olds version was the first minivan with an electric sliding door, a feature memorably immortalized on film in Get Shorty.
Why didn’t the production van have quite the same feel as that concept? Well, we all know what happens with concept cars; once they reach production, a drastic number of things change for the sake of cost, complexity, and practicality, and often for the worse. Like the Trans Sport show car, the production edition was based on that Pontiac 6000 wagon platform, but the proportions were far, far closer to the donor car than what was displayed years before at the Chicago Auto Show.
Front and rear overhangs were longer, and the driver and front passenger sat almost in the same location as the normal 6000. That car obviously sported a rather normal windshield and traditional hood, so to replicate the show car’s styling, the production Trans Sport had deeply raked front glass, necessitating an incredibly deep dashboard. The extra dash area came at the expense of the hood, and the short lid that remained left far less space for engine access than the 6000’s “regular” proportions. And then there’s the view from behind the wheel; if you can imagine driving a normal sedan or wagon with two-by-fours going from the top of the windshield sides down to the ends of the front fenders, that’s essentially what you saw from the Trans Sport’s driver’s seat.
Note also the deeply raked shut line at the back of the front doors. It created a dangerously sharp point at the back top corner, so concerning that a warning label urged you not to spike yourself on it – which you probably read only after discovering on your own why GM put a sticker on there, as you rubbed a hot welt on your forehead.
Despite these idiosyncrasies, the Trans Sport’s futuristic “Dustbuster” wedge did manage to break out of the typical minivan mold; it was deserving of a brand that did that same thing.
Cybertruck Fans Don’t Even Get Hootie
Enthusiast cults exist around scores of cars, from two-cylinder air-cooled French sedans that look like ducks, all the way up to stainless steel-clad electric pickup trucks. While virtually all of these cults spring up from admirers who can spend hours boring you with the unique traits of the product they connect over, the cult of GM’s Saturn was very different. In many cases, these Saturn faithfuls were there for the purchase and ownership experience, and they didn’t really care nearly as much about their car itself.
As Thomas has written about before, the clean-sheet-of-paper manufacturing process of developed for early Saturns resulted in a happy workforce that created much higher quality cars than GM had been known for at the time of the brand’s launch in 1990. It was almost a standalone product where the lineup of sedans, coupes, and wagons didn’t play the typical GM game of sharing ninety percent of the car’s parts with other nameplates.
Certainly, these Saturns were much better built than a Cavalier of the same vintage, but they were still somewhat lacking when compared to concurrent offerings from Japan. When revved, the engines (particularly the twin-cam version) didn’t create the symphonic sounds of a refined Civic. The chassis couldn’t match the BMW 2002-like Nissan Sentra, and the build quality was well behind a Corolla like the ’91 model that drove past me on the road today (the windows were up in 95-degree heat, so the 34-year-old air conditioning was likely still working).
Sure, but could Toyota give you a pioneering purchase experience? No pushy salespeople, plus there was zero haggling, so everyone got ripped off equally. Here’s a commercial I’ve shown before that really sums up the whole gestalt of Saturness:
I bet Julie was going to airports and handing out Saturn leaflets with other cult members in a week or two. It’s almost certain that she would have attended the Saturn Homecoming event to hear Winona Judd perform to 22,000 other owners.
Such different thinking of the assembly and sales process didn’t really extend to the brand’s vehicles, though. Other than the dent-resistant Fiero-style plastic body panels, initial Saturn cars were painfully conventional in design and appearance. With such an unorthodox brand identity, it’s a shame that GM didn’t take advantage of using it to launch one of their equally game-changing, cutting-edge products. Let’s follow CalLook67’s suggestion that they actually did.
Bustin’ The Dustusbter
What’s to hate about a wedge? Nothing, if you ask me. However, slap a bunch of late eighties Pontiac wings and bumpy side trim, and anything is gonna look like, well, you in those parachute pants back in the day (we have photos, so don’t deny it). If we remove much of this cladding from the Pontiac or the standard black striping of the Silhouette and keep the purity of the GM “Dustbuster” shape, I bet it wouldn’t be an object of quite as much derision.
Here’s another thing: when we overlay the sharply raked nose design of the early Saturn models onto the front of the GM WedgeVan, the look is rather appealing. Honestly, it makes the front-end options of the other brands with Pontiac nostrils or the rather upright wraparound headlamps seem out of place.
Here you can see what we’d call the Saturn SV2 animated between the standard Pontiac Trans Sport. Note that I’ve also added taillights (or at least reflectors) that continue the taillights down to the bumper in a style later done by Volvo and current Cadillac SUVs:
How about we push it a bit more? Like, make a van that you’d buy because you want it, not because you’re forced to? Let’s make an open van to let the sun in. Fabric sunroofs are always a disaster, and sliding multi-panel affairs as on some later Pontiacs aren’t much better, so I propose that American Sunroof Corporation (ASC) could have offered retractable roof panels for an SV2 Sky. There would be one over the front seats and a second over the center row.
The signature “basket handle” of the Trans Sport would stay to keep rigidity. Mechanical arms would lift the panels, fold them over on themselves, and angle the collapsed roof to act as a big rear spoiler of sorts. The rear side windows can roll down as well.
We’ll take advantage of these years before the final round of safety regulations to put seatbelts onto the center row captains’ chairs, allowing them to rotate around 180 degrees as on our famous Autopian Rodius. Now you’ve got a nice conversation area, or can tend to kids strapped in the third row; I am hesitant to put a motorhome-style table in between the seats for safety but we could offer a fold-down table to go between the captains chairs that might be able to also act as a central third seat to give eight passenger capacity.
Also, between the front seats could be a drinks cooler that takes in air from a floor-mounted A/C vent. You could also carry it Aztek-style or put it onto a wheeled base with a telescopic handle. What a great way to enjoy the Saturn Reunion! Think about it; retract the roof panels, face the rear seats at each other, and chill out with cold beverages in the parking area with other Saturn lovers.
Then, when the Hootie and the Blowfish concert is about to start (they performed at the 1999 Saturn Homecoming event), just pull the drinks cooler along, and even let your youngest kid ride on top. That’s some family fun there!
A Different Kind Of Van
But wait! Saturn did propose a sort-of-minivan concept in 2000. The CV-1 was a crossover-looking subcompact people mover with twin sunroofs and rear-facing “center row” jump seats.
The bizarre bi-fold doors on the side allowed access to either the jump seat second row or the rearmost third row, but not at the same time.
There’s definitely some unique thinking there, but the tiny size seems more suited to countries where they don’t sell Big Gulps and Baconaters. I certainly think that our Saturn SV2 “Dustbuster” concept might be far better suited for Saturn and people who knew they needed a van but wanted something cool.
General Motors eventually gave up on its futuristic vans after the 1996 model year, replacing them with far more traditional-looking boxy models. Even stranger is that when minivans started to fall out of favor, GM took this second-generation model and added a long nose in an attempt to pass as a sort-of SUV. When Saturn finally got a minivan, it was sadly a strange concoction named the Relay. Talk about a case of too little, too late to save the General’s attempt at a popular minivan and the Saturn brand itself from its untimely demise in 2010.
This “Different Kind of Car Company” just didn’t offer products that were different enough in the right kinds of ways, but maybe they could have been the right home for the Dustbuster: a truly unique and underappreciated vision of a family hauler.
Saturn owners of the time probably would have accepted almost anything that the brand released; why couldn’t GM have rewarded such loyalty and acceptance of new automotive ideas with a product many buyers missed out on because they were too closed-minded? At the same time, it might have brought some new people to the Saturn family who just liked the van and then discovered how a car ownership experience could be something far better than they ever imagined.
We’ll never know. Thanks for the suggestion, CalLook67!
If you’ve ever successfully changed the rear spark plugs on one of these, raise your teeny-tiny, triple-jointed hand!
Hell yeah! Saturn all the things! I’m a bit disappointed you didn’t use pop-up headlights like the first gen SC.
Yes! I had considered that. Maybe there would have been an SV1 and an SV2, that latter with the pop ups.
I have doubts it would have looked good with the pop ups, so this is for the best. They work on the SCs because it has a low roof and is sporty. On the SV they would look very out of place. I just kinda wanted to see it, anyway.
What a nostalgia trip. Parents had two of these – a black ’91 I think, and then later a two tone green and silver ’95 with the refreshed bumper/headlights. The refresh was simple, but was pretty good lipstick on a pig.
I remember seeing the Trans Sport when they first came out, and man I thought it was the coolest thing ever (I had the Lumina for a bit and I actually really liked it). I still think they look pretty darn good for being completely out of place these days.
Still, that Saturn treatment does nothing for me. As simple and unimaginative as the Pontiac’s front clip is, I still much prefer that one. It may be nostalgia.
A glass roof (assuming either electronic or physical shading) could be cool but I’d seriously question the rigidity if it opened like that, basket handle or not. That thing would float like a boat.
Rotating seats would have been great for the Euro market, where the Trans Sport had a bit of a following. They did offer a drop ins between those modular seats in later vans over the years – Montana touted an 12v electric cooler, the CSVs a toy box storage unit. (A floor mount vent would smell crazy after inevitably getting clogged by debris.)
A small van was part of the early Saturn proposals, but seems like it would have been more like a Prairie/Colt Vista type rather than Caravan. A Dustbuster variant seems logical, but also would have gone against the Saturn ethos of the time. The cars may have been ordinary but it was the brand model as you mentioned that was really key to it. Saturn operated as a separate subsidiary within GM at the start, not subject to the same directives.
Are we talking about the Dustbusters? This is going to be cynical and I do love the vans, but they really did not do much to move the needle in the minivan segment. It’s not just that they looked weird, they were up against a juggernaut in the segment (Chrysler) and trying something weird to stand out against them.
Beyond the plastic bodies, the modular seating was innovative, but lost points for comfort. They were bigger outside than a LWB Chrysler yet smaller inside than the SWB versions. Standard V6…but the 3100 was less powerful than the Mitsu V6 at Chrysler, and Chrysler was putting the 3.3 in the Grands at the time anyway. GM was always a couple years behind on different safety additions like an airbag against Chrysler or Toyota even.
Really the thing they have most in common is that GM spent a lot of money on the vans and Saturn and still missed the mark in the end. For the vans, they didn’t just abandon the futuristic styling for no reason after ’96, it just had added no real advantage for them so they just copied the Chrysler format and then stopped investing in the product. The 2005 CSVs were at best a stopgap to tide the brands over until new 3-row offerings arrived (and Saturn had no 3-row option) which is why most had brief production runs. A new minivan was part of the original Lambda program alongside the crossovers, but abandoned at some point.
And don’t forget the idea behind the Saturn Relay and its dopplegangers: “People want SUVs! So if we make the front of a van look like an SUV, it’ll be like printing our own money!”
Money printer: Brr…cough cough….ugh.
So I’m wary today of anyone trying to make a van look like an SUV — the Carnival is the biggest offender in dodging the word “minivan” as much as possible. I see through you, KIN.
Those final North American U-bodies were:
All that is to say that while you’re right to poke fun at them, I don’t think that a single person at GM thought the Crossover Sport Vans would “print money.” I rather think GM was just trying to sate its own dealership networks, who would still have a three-row minivan to sell at a time when those still did significant volume.
The two hardest working groups involved in the CSVs had to have been those responsible for improving the safety ratings, and the PR team that had to pitch it as a compelling product (with that standard DVD player!). Everyone else was just doing an HGTV makeover on the existing bits.
The Freestar/Monterey being similarly warmed over versions of the predecessor weren’t any better, but on paper presented a lot better than the CSVs as Ford went to a lot more trouble to engineer in key segment features, like fold-in-floor 3rd row, power liftgate, and curtain airbags.
A bunch of years ago I knew a guy in Florida who modified the snot out of a 3.8 powered Trans Sport. Turned out that a lot of W-body suspension and brake bits could be adapted to a U-body. With a warmed up engine and beefed up transmission, that van was definitely the sportiest Trans Sport ever.
Meh.
They should have given it to 2 of their brands only and then that’s it. Use the money they would have spent on giving it to nearly all their brands and make it a better vehicle with different styling for each. And if it doesn’t sell, rush through a redesign.
GM’s problem had always been that even when the market proved they were wrong on a new model, they would still let that model languish on dealer lots and not update it for literally 5, 6 or even 7 years. Contrast that with the clock-work-like update schedule that Honda and Toyota used to be famous for. Even if sales were still strong, an updated or newly redesign Camry or Accord was 3 or 6 years away.
That’s not the case anymore, but unfortunately too many people out there are still stuck in 1992.
GM is a prime example of of the dangers of making a long range plan and sticking to it.
I’m told that it has something to do with corporations that multiple levels of of management and make public predictions to their stockholders.
Apparently managers are less likely to to be fired for bad luck and market forces than for not executing the plan they committed to.
The people who design and make the products of course get fired.
It’s corporate culture. I do AV for a lot of different integrators and clients. I have talked about this a lot lately. Sometimes, regardless of who rotates in and out, the culture doesn’t change much. My best example is my small town Hall. It’s all different people these days, but the problems are all still the same from when I moved in 25 years ago
ooo yeah that sunroof would’ve been awesome 😀
Too bad the Renault Espace never made it over here. AMC was *this* close to bringing it here, but then, you know 🙁
Also too bad the domestic GM minivans never got the 4-cylinder options the export versions got (originally a Quad 4 Silhouette badged as a Trans Sport, then later the Opel Sintra).
One of the greatest things about the sliding van door is that I don’t have to worry about the kids hitting another car when opening up the door.
I will stan sliding doors all day long, but will also add that they have a lot more problems than non-sliders (especially the powered ones). This is both good and bad — their failure is usually due to some safety mechanism like a pinch sensor. Better safe than sorry, but they’re definitely not without flaws.
OTOH, the rear doors on vehicles like the Flex and R-class are comically large.
Can you imagine what a mess motorized conventionally hinged doors would be? It would a lawyer’s paradise.
Taxi drivers like the power doors because when a pissed off passenger leaves the right hand door open, the driver can close it without getting out of the cab which can be the first step in various bad scenarios .
Other than that taxi use case they suck. Doors that won’t open or close with a dead battery suck even more., and ought to be illegal.
My 05 Sienna had a power slider on the passenger side. It was pretty nice feature. The left door eventually broke its mechanism, which I fixed, but was a pita to fix
We had a transport with the 3.8 and the electric doors. Was a great family hauler for me, wife and 2 kids. We would removed the center seats and keep an 12v cooler plus a small 12v tv/vcr combo for road trips. Kids took the 2 back seats. I even wired up a Nintendo for the kiddies. Put plenty of vacation road trips miles on the van, but, being GM, within about 5years the interior went to crap. Warped dash, plastic junk. Kids wound up wearing it out as a beater for first car/high school duty. I do wasn’t bad to drive and got very good MPG. Oh, and replacing the started was a nightmare due to the impossibility of accessing one of the bolts!
Adding a second stripe draws your eye away from the basket-handle 7/10
Saturn van, but with
riceToyota, 9/10The dustbuster vans, with their plastic outer panels and overall shape always seemed like a perfect match for the Saturn nameplate. It always seemed a bit odd to me that there wasn’t a Saturn-badged variant.
On the other hand, seeing the Saturn front-end grafted on to one, and the location of the bottom-breathing grille intake, it only screams “dustbuster” louder than ever.
I love that Saturn nose design. I look at it now and think about the “pedestrian kneecapper” quality of it, but in the ’90s? I could have seen it.
These put the “van” in vanish because you never see them anymore.
Gotta admit, that actually looks…good? Definitely better?
Glad you like it! I was pretty shocked at the cohesiveness of the results.
Back in highschool, most of my friends and I were driving our parents’ minivans when we got our licenses, and most of those were Caravans/Voyagers/T&Cs. The notable exceptions were an Odyssey and a Transport.
The Odyssey stand out in my mind for a lot of reasons – it was fast, it was new at the time and had a lot of cool features, and it seemed well built (they actually just got rid of that Odyssey last year, 20 years and 200k miles later).
The only memory of the Transport was this:
The heater core shit the bed while we were driving somewhere and dripped some hot coolant on to my buddy’s feet (which was pretty funny). Then the windows started fogging up when we turned the defrosters off and the slope of the windshield and depth of the dash made it impossible to wipe the fog off of the inside while we were driving. We had to stop every few minutes to do it. It was really dumb.
Good lord that CV1 bifold door screams finger crush hazard so much I’m wincing just looking at it!
Another huge point of synergy I’m surprised you didn’t mention was the fact that these minivans had composite panels, just like the Saturns of the day.
I also have a soft spot for the styling of these, especially that the Pontiac in all white. Another case of GM cutting just enough corners to fatally compromise a design. If they had figured out how to package that nose a little tighter and move the driver close to the front, it would have been perfect.
Finger crush hazard!?! It’d have to really exist for that, and I can’t get past how much it looks like an AI hallucination.
Also, you can’t get into the second and third rows without flipping the doors (though it’s a stretch to say “second row”)
Toyota’s Previa was closer to the show car.
The Previa was an awesome MPV – unless you needed power.
Toyota could bring that design back an an EV and they’d have a winner.
These were so awkward to drive, or to even be inside. The Mopars were light-years ahead, and both Honda and Toyota were soon better than that. And they still are.
I always loved the Trans Sport. I never found one at the right price, because Chrysler minivans were always discounted so well, and easy to find in good condition used, too. But a friend had both a Trans Sport and a Silhouette.
The first year vans were seriously underpowered, with a small 3.1 V6 and a three speed transmission. Once you could get the GM 3.8 V6 and a 4 speed auto, they were great vehicles for the era, but they were always more than a little bit overpriced relative to the competition, even as used vehicles.
That pushes my buttons.
All 41 of them on the steering wheel?
Knowing what GM build quality was like on the dustbuster vans, seeing the folding doors of the concept, and the folding roof in the sketch gives me anxiety.
The change from the Transport concept to the eventual production model has to rank as one of the worst, most disappointing executions in automotive history. It went from a concept that was 100% about a capsule form factor to a generic box with a door stop grafted to the front.
9 year old me thought these were the absolute coolest vehicles. 44 year old me still thinks they’re pretty rad.
Solidly Radwood, especially with the Pontiac ground effects/cladding package. Get it in white with the teal and purple coffee cup graphics and some kickass rims and take home all the trophies.
They’re amazing looking. If I had the means I would park a mint red over silver Trans Sport and a Countach in my garage and just sit with my feet up in an Eames Chair and stare at them both.
I would commit low-level, casual bank fraud for a van like the title image.