American Muscle Vs. German Ingenuity: The Saturn Sky Vs. The Porsche 911 Series

By Author: Peter Jones
Total Articles: 231
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While Saturn and Pontiac may be nothing but memories, they both shared technology that demonstrated the American muscle could go round for round and pound for pound with the best in German ingenuity at price points that left the European brand in the dust. While the term Pontiac engine has long-since been affiliated with raw horsepower, the same is not true of the average Saturn engine. That started to change in the early to mid-2000s as GM started to share technology and develop universal engines that could be rebadged as either a Pontiac engine or a Saturn engine.

While some of the larger V8 applications remained solely the venue of the venerable Pontiac engine label, the turbocharged 2.4L Pontiac engine that would later be rebadged as the 2.4L Saturn engine powering the Saturn Sky was identical to the fire-breathing monster that was under the hood of the sexy and svelte Pontiac Solstice. These engines could match the best 911 Porsche engine on a horsepower per displacement basis at a point where it barely seemed reasonable to invest in a Porsche engine ...
... and the expensive car wrapped around it.

If these claims seem hard to believe, then pit the 2.4L Saturn Engine and its 2.4L Pontiac engine up against virtually any 911 Porsche engine from the same era. The Porsche engine powering the base 2010 911 series displaces 3.6 liters and produces 345 horsepower. Compare this to the 290 horsepower produced by the 2.0 liter Saturn engine found in the Sky Redline edition, a car that cost roughly half as much as its German counterpart. If the Sky's motor were to be enlarged to 3.6 liters and horsepower scaled linearly, it would pack 522 horsepower! That is 177 more horsepower than the base 911 Porsche engine that had the benefit of another 4 years of development. To put that another way, the Pontiac engine that is shared with the Saturn Sky packs over 51% more horsepower per liter than a far more expensive Porsche engine!

In fact, the only Porsche engine that can compete on a performance per liter basis with the potent Saturn engine is that found in the quarter-million dollar Porsche 911 GT2 RS edition. At several times the cost of the much more affordable Saturn Sky, the GT2 RS is in a completely different league and it would barely be fair to compare the two vehicles. Still, the Saturn Sky holds its own in more ways than one with the extremely expensive German counterpart. This is a true testament to the die-hard horsepower-heads over at GM that managed to turn a tiny engine into a true successor to the American iron legacy that the company is so well known for. The fact that the legacy translated well into both a Pontiac engine and a Saturn engine says something, though it is sad to see that economics resulted in the termination of two of America's finest affordable road racers. The Germans may have won this round, but American iron has proven that it has what it takes to compete with German ingenuity when it comes to powerful engines.

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