SPS

Day 3 – Friday, July 17

Much of Friday morning was spent cleaning cars in preparation for the big show later that afternoon.

By 12:30 that afternoon, we had all converged upon the Saturn Welcome Center where we received special badges that allowed us to drive directly onto the plant grounds. We parked in the parking lot just outside of General Assembly and created two large lines of vehicles that would soon serve as the "display zone" for a modified Saturn car show which would be judged by the popular vote of Saturn team members. During part of the car-show, some of our pilgrimage attendees took the VIP plant tour and later joined us back at the car show.

A long line of modified Saturns leaves the Welcome Center on the way to General Assembly.

Two lines of modified Saturns were created in the lot outside of General Assembly.

The weather was warm, sunny, and perfect!

Rami Golden’s ‘Saturn Missile’ is slammed to the ground and rolls on huge 18-inch rims. It’s hard to see in the photo, but the headlight covers say, ‘SPS Racing.’

Hmmm…is that a little blue bottle of laughing gas peaking from the trunk of Golden’s Saturn Missile?

Mike Kramer and the Thundersport Racing racecar. Mike joined us for most of the weekend’s events and had the car on display during the entire General Assembly show.

Who says that Saturn Corp. doesn’t appreciate the performance appeal? Several sporty paint jobs conceived and created by the Saturn manufacturing team prove otherwise. This orange SC2 was also joined by a bright yellow SC2 and an aquamarine SL1 at the show. And tucked away discreetly in a corner of the Saturn plant, we saw our favorite – a ‘GT-Blue’ SC2 with oversize chromed Enkeis!

Saturn displayed GM’s radical EV1 electric car at the show – and offered many of us exclusive test drives! And don’t laugh about any perceived irony of an electric car at a performance show! This thing enjoys a linear torque curve which makes it fast – faster to 60 mph than most DOHC Saturns!

It didn’t take long for the General Assembly parking lot to fill with Saturn team members who were anxious to check out the modified Saturns and cast their vote for an overall winner.

Here, Saturn team members pour through the latest SPS catalogue and gawk at Kevin Svarda’s 1998 SC2 – the lastest SPS project car.

Saturn execs Bob Gasper and Dan McDonald present Kevin Svarda from SPS with the overall winner award from the car show. Kevin’s SC2 received the most votes from Saturn team members.

Results of the Saturn car-show as judged by popular vote of Saturn team members:

We tried to end the show before the change of shifts so that we did not get caught in traffic as hundreds of Saturn employees exited the plant to head home for the day. But that still did not leave us with much time before we had to rush to the 1/8 mile dragstrip for an evening of test and tune racing.

Unfortunately, the dragstrip experienced technical problems for several hours. We eventually gave up, received a refund for our entry fees, and returned to Spring Hill to scrounge for food. Ironically, the racing finally started as we were leaving the parking lot!

Tim and Molly Moore from Virginia talk to Kevin and John from SPS while waiting for the drag races to start. Tim’s blue SL1 looks great with its polished American Racing rims! Unfortunately, we never saw any racing!

The track tried to test their timing lights by using Honda ATVs. This was as close as we ever came to drag-racing action – so we jokingly called it the ‘Quad-Runner Nationals.’