Sky Will Be Saturn's Role Player

TRAVERSE CITY, MI – Don't look for Saturn Corp. to announce earth-shattering volume expectations for its new Sky roadster, which debuts early next year off the rear-wheel-drive Kappa platform that also is spawning the Pontiac Solstice.

“It is a small market,” Saturn General Manager Jill Lajdziak says during a question and answer session at the Management Briefing Seminars here. “We're not going into this to have a volume entry.”

She insists the vehicle will not compete against the Solstice because of the different customers that tend to shop Saturn.

General Motors Corp. has not revealed production volumes for the Sky or pricing information but says the entire roadster market is capped at about 100,000 units.

Lajdziak says the Sky derivative is a good example of how GM is leveraging platforms to build volume at a brand that long has suffered from a product famine. The vehicle was taken from the drawing board to concept in 14 weeks and shares no sheet metal with the Solstice, she says.

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