Gustin and Dunham added that Buick’s brakes have been acknowledged as one of the best in the business (though some journalists who tested 1965 and 1966 Gran Sports had been essential of their all-drum brakes), and so they had been made even better for 1967: “Front energy discs had been elective on most fashions, aluminum brake drums have been prolonged to GS-400 and Sport-wagon, and on the bigger automobiles the system-was improved by the use of a larger energy booster, better linings and a doubling of the variety of fins within the brake drums.”
Different components need not come from corporate bins, and Saturn was free to devise its own engineering and manufacturing strategies. A major purpose for this experiment was finding ways to shut the price hole with “Japan, Inc.,” then estimated at greater than $2000 per automotive. The resultant financial savings, Smith said, would lastly make GM a small-automobile power within the U.S. market. Actually, he declared Saturn nothing less than “the key to GM’s long-time period competitiveness, survival, and success.”
The product of 10 years’ research and improvement, this engine was designed by Ed Cole, Jack Gordon, multimobil жукова and Harry Barr, who aimed for much less weight and higher compression (to reap the benefits of the upper-octane fuels promised for after the warfare). This dictated rearranged valves, a stroke shorter than bore, wedge-shape combustion chambers, and “slipper” pistons. The last, devised by Byron Ellis, traveled low between the crankshaft counterweights to permit for brief connecting rods and, thus, low reciprocating mass.