Founded in 1985 in the United States, Saturn was a subsidiary of General Motors. The company has been defunct since 2010. Saturn was created to help GM compete with the Japanese import market, but after the 2008 US financial crisis, the company became too large of a resource drain for GM to justify.

The first automobile that Saturn manufactured was the 1991 Saturn SL. The vehicle originally came with a 5-speed manual transmission, manual steering, and several design quirks. One noteworthy feature was that the car only had one mirror on the driver's side (an additional mirror was optional). While Saturn is no longer building vehicles, its model lineup included a variety of cars, SUVs, and minivans. These included the Astra, Aura, Ion, Outlook, Relay, Sky, Vue, S-Series, L-Series, and EV1. In Saturn's last full operating year, 2009, it sold 72,660 in the US, down from its best year of 2022, when it sold 280,248 units.

As Saturn continued to decline in sales, GM attempted to sell the brand several times in 2008 and 2009. In 2009, GM announced that the company was being sold to Penske Automotive Group. The deal would have required GM to continue manufacturing several Saturn models for the first two years, and Penske would not have to buy Saturn's factories. The deal fell through in September of 2009, with Penske stating it couldn't find a manufacturer to make Saturn models. GM officially ended Saturn production in October 2009, with its related franchises ending in October of the following year.