The Saturn Homecoming, once big part of the Saturn culture, is now a thing of the past. This year should have marked Saturn's third homecoming celebration at the company's Spring Hill plant. Saturn had previously hosted the event every four years in 1994 and 1999. Each of the festivals drew large crowds. Tennessean newspaper reports that the "two Homecomings drew 30,000 and 44,000 people to Spring Hill."

This year the company hopes retailers will set up smaller, regional owner gatherings.

"We've had owners tell us Spring Hill is too far to come to, they'd like to see us do more things locally," Jill Lajdziak, Saturn vice president of sales and marketing told the Tennessean in February. "So, a few months ago, we had an event in Columbus, Ohio, where they went to the zoo, and we had another in Los Angeles, where they went to Universal Studios." These local events are "within the reach of far more owners," she said. New Saturn vehicles built outside of the Spring Hill, TN area also reportedly contributed to the decision.

But for the Saturn enthusiasts looking forward to this year's pilgrimage to Spring Hill, that's not an announcement they wanted to hear. As an alternative, some groups have already started planning their own trips to Tennessee later this year.

Owners generally see the change as a result of Saturn's loss of independence as its brought closer in to the General Motors fold. Gale Moore of Columbia, TN attended both Homecomings with her family. She told the Tennessean that the cancellation was "no great loss, especially since now it's not a different kind of car company anymore."

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Source: Tennessean