Saturn, maker of quirky, innovative cars once billed by owner General Motors as "a different kind of car company," died on Wednesday. When a deal to sell the ailing brand to Penske Automotive abruptly fell apart, GM announced it would wind down the brand, shuttering 350 showrooms and eliminating as many as 13,000 jobs. Saturn was 24.

In the mid-1980s, GM managers dreamed of a new brand that would redefine the car-buying experience and ultimately help the American auto giant fend off competition from increasingly successful Asian importers such as Toyota and Honda. Initially a roaring success, that dream was to be repeatedly deferred and, eventually, altogether abandoned.

At its launch, Saturn was the toast of Detroit. Championed by then-CEO Roger Smith, it operated largely as a standalone company within GM. The brand ran its own factory in Spring Hill, Tennessee—not the Midwest—as well as an independent network of dealers across the country. It won over consumers by selling models at a fixed, "no haggle" price. New buyers were greeted with cheers and rounds of applause from dealership employees. "They were known for taking very good care of the customer," notes Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst with car-buying site Edmunds.com. "In fact, they raised the level of dealer care in the entire industry," she adds.

Innovations extended to the vehicles themselves as well. Early models featured plastic body panels that would not dent; advertisements gleefully showed all manner of objects crashing into various Saturn cars to no ill effect. However, even these developments eventually became a liability. Because plastic expands and contracts with changes in temperature, the panels proved difficult to engineer and created deep gaps in the cars' bodies. "It led to some unsightly designs," says Krebs.

Eventually Saturn was forced to compete for resources with other GM divisions. It took the company nearly eight years to come up with the larger and ultimately unsuccessful L-Series sedan, and almost a decade to redesign the original S-Series. In 1996, GM's ill-fated EV1 electric vehicle made a brief appearance in Saturn showrooms but was quickly pulled off the market. By the late-1990s, Saturn was starved for new models, and many of its cars came to be known as dowdy, bean-shaped vehicles aimed at the unhip.

In 2007, GM's car czar Bob Lutz pledged Saturn would get "better products and more of them." It rolled out a sexy two-seat roadster, the Sky, and glitzy Opel models from Germany rebadged as Saturns. But the automaker stumbled. Customers were turned off by premium prices, partly inflated by grueling currency fluctuations, as well as an incoherent marketing message. GM rolled out a number of conflicting taglines, including the opaque "Like Always, Like Never Before" and "Rethink American."