Is nobody mourning the loss of the L300?

I read that the car is being discontinued at the end of this month? Tis
sad since the L300-1 seemed like a bargain fully equipped and will ALL
the safety items standard.

I don't even see anybody in this group even commenting on this. Was the
car that bad? Saturn said that it was a car with no buyers.

Dave

 

IMHO, Saturn REALLY Goofed up on this one. I hope the future upcoming models
make up for the loss of the L Series. It is a great car that rivaled the top
line imports (Acura, Lexus, Infinity etc.) for half the price. I guess
Saturn just doesn't like to "toot thier own horn" when they have something
good and for that they lost many sales. That's why they discontinued the
L300, what a shame.

The '04 models were the last ones to have leather interiors, the '05's are
the last of the batch and will be cloth and V6 only.

marx404

 

The first couple production years had numerous quality/recall issues, but
they had been ironed out. They are an excellent bargain, but they were never
really marketed properly, so no one bought them. I love mine!

Dana
2002 LW300

 

The last of "Tooting your own horn" may have a bit to do with it. I
can't recall a single tv, radio or print advertisement in the past few
years.

 

Don't know if I would buy one new but the '01 lw300 I bought this past
January with 40k miles on it is great (for the most part at least). I got a
really good vehicle with a lot of extras for not a lot of $$.
Who knows, it might not really be going away. The way things are going, the
same design may just be re-introduced with a new nameplate on it from a
different GM division.

Oppie

 

The nameplate was already changed from an Opel IIRC. Hopefully whatever
Saturn has coming next will have a "manual transmission" option.

 

amen to that.
we opted for a manual transmission and had to take the LW200 to do so.
Mind we love it and don't regret the decision at all. The money saved
went towards leather interior and some other options.

and the 4 cyclinder 5-speed has plenty of power.... enough for me to get
nailed at a pretty good clip above the double nickel. <g>

To be totally honest, we REALLY loved the SW2 we had previously. The
additional room and easier entry/exit of the LW200 is nice - but the
smaller wagon was pretty perfect.

Worst part of them discontinuing,
1) resale values are plummeting
2) harder to get good service (recently had air in the clutch line and
took several techs to properly diagnose and do the 5 minute bleed).

 

It always bugged me (irrationally so) because it was not made at Springhill
and it seemed to be thrown together from the GM world parts bins of Opel,
etc. I thought it was Springhill or nothing...

 

Thats a bummer. Are all L-series going out or just the 1. Am debating
between the L300 3 and the 2005 Nissan Altima 3.5 for my next car.

 

All L series are being discontinued. In fact they made just a few 2005
models (V6/cloth seats only) and then shut down the assembly line last week.

 

Jonnie Santos

Remember "SaturnGuru " and the guy who worked at the Delaware plant arguing how
they were "real" Saturns ?

I remember when the very first L's arrived. I remeber them hiding them in the
back behind a few wrecked cars so noone would see them. I remember the big
unveiling party the dealer had ...turn out was extremely disappointing ,
especially for a car they hyped so much. Then came all the recalls. I
personally remember the extremely poor quality of assembly when we would do the
predelivery inspections. Reminded me of GM when we would see parts missing from
cars, Firebirds with 1 Camaro seat in them, Sunbirds with Cavalier wheel covers
on one side etc...

Its sad the L never caught on. Was actually a pretty nice car.

 

....I'm trying to remember what they built at the Delaware before the L - I
started searching in Google and found NG posts back to 1995 (cool)... Wow
the years go by fast.