General Motors (GM) opened the Saturn manufacturing facility in Spring Hill, Tennessee, in 1990. Saturn commanded the largest single industrial development in U.S. history to that date, and it was a model plant, with the most advanced team concept and worker participation programs in the United States. Its advertising and brand image affirmed that its workers comprised a new labor elite, different from their fellow United Automobile Workers (UAW) members in old auto cities. The Saturn brand was terminated in 2009 during GM’s bankruptcy reorganization. Its demise did not, however, signal its failure to re-structure the UAW. Rather, Saturn contributed to the disorganization of one of the most powerful segments of the U.S. Fordist working class. The politics of scale provides a lens to assess Saturn’s impact on UAW politics and power at the local and national levels.