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A whole new approach

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By Norm Cukras | Highlands Today

Published: June 13, 2009

Last year heavy-duty engine manufacturer Detroit Diesel Corporation celebrated the production of the millionth Series-60 diesel engine.

Somewhere back around 1984 or so I was assigned to a team charged with developing a modern manufacturing technique for a new line of Detroit Diesel Allison (DDA) engines that we called as a working title the Series-60. At that time DDA, which manufactured diesel engines in Detroit and transmissions in Indianapolis, was a division of General Motors. In 1988 Roger Penske entered into a joint venture with GM to take over the engine half of the division.

Because our manufacturing approach was cutting-edge, we as a team made presentations to various other GM division manufacturing engineers and managers. Included in our presentation sites was a key one given at the GM Tech Center in Warren, Mich. – the focal center of GM's research and development.

At the conclusion of our presentation the attending engineers and managers made a few sound suggestions and recommendations. They also asked if we would like to review one of their internal presentations. They then rolled out vue-graphs (a sort of primitive Power Point visual aid) of this new automobile they were working on. It was to be a whole new car manufactured a whole new way. It was a rather impressive concept. When we asked what this new car was going to be called we were told that the working name was "Saturn."

The reason behind the selection of both working names total escapes me. But I do remember us holding a sort of contest to arrive at a production name for our engine; it just didn't work out. As time went by the name Series-60 became so ingrained in our program that it followed the workhorse engine through over a million engines.

Little did we know
There was no way that any of us in that meeting that day could imagine the Series-60 would be marketed under the Penske flag. After all, he was a racecar driver wasn't he? And if anyone would have hazard a guess as to the future of the Saturn line of cars as well as the fate of General Motors, they would have been accused of smoking something stronger than Marlboros.

On Jan. 7, 1985, less then a year after our tech center meeting, the GM division of Saturn was established. GM launched it in response to the success of Japanese and German small-car imports in the United States. As a "different kind of car company" Saturn operated outside the GM superstructure for a time. It had its own assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., unique models, and a separate dealership network.

While the first production Series-60 engine was made in 1987, the first Saturn wasn't produced until 1991. And now less then 20 years later Roger Penske is poised to take another nibble out of the GM Empire. An empire greatly reduced by the very element that makes our country what it is - competition.

A time before Toyota
I went to work for GM back in 1961. Up until last year my only regret with going with the corporation was that I didn't go with them sooner. The one thing that stands out the most about my initial interview was that the fellow I interviewed with spent as much time telling me about the benefits of working with GM as I spent telling him about the benefits he would gain by hiring me. But then the division I joined was staffing up to work on a major military contract so they were a little less choosy than normal.
GM reminded me a lot of the U.S. military - they took care of their own. You could always rely on getting help from a fellow employee.

I once was interested in purchasing a rather large piece of used manufacturing equipment - flatbed truck large - from a firm out in California. I didn't have the time to fly out to see it so I contacted my counterpart at a nearby GM plant and he drove over and looked at it. He called me back and said it was a good buy. So I had it shipped to Detroit. Neither one of us gave it a second thought. We were part of the GM family.

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