Case of The Purloined Pix

As executives of General Motors thumbed through the December issue of Automobile Magazine, they found an unpleasant surprise. There, in a series of high-quality color photos, was GM's top-secret Saturn automobile, which the company has spent $3 billion to develop and plans to roll into showrooms late next year. What really sent the motor moguls into orbit were signs that the Saturn pictures, along with shots of the 1993 Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird in the same issue, had been leaked to the trade magazine by an employee in GM's design studios. Unlike the grainy, long-distance spy shots that paparazzi regularly take of new models as they whiz around company test tracks, the Saturn pictures were crisp and carefully posed.

GM swiftly set out to find the leaker. Although the company denied it, sources at GM said the giant automaker has offered a $30,000 bounty for information that could lead to the disloyal worker. GM clearly felt betrayed by the release of the confidential photographs. "People are very upset," said corporate spokesman Dee Allen. "It's no different from being on the Detroit Pistons and giving away the playbook."

The company is particularly incensed because the Saturn, which will carry a sticker price of around $12,000, represents the biggest U.S. automotive gamble in years. Launched by Chairman Roger Smith in 1982, Saturn was designed to give GM a small car that would outsell imports from Japan. Said Smith in the mid-1980s: "We believe Saturn is the key to GM's long-term competitiveness, survival and success as a domestic producer."

If so, the future looks oddly familiar. The purloined photos include shots of a two-door coupe that resembles Chevrolet's 1989 Geo Storm, as well as pictures of a four-door sedan that Automobile Magazine said "could fit right into Oldsmobile's lineup." The magazine added that Saturn's mechanical features, also leaked from within GM, were not "particularly innovative." With advance notices like that, GM might do well to devote as much energy to Saturn's continued improvement as to the search for the culprit who leaked its photos.