Coffee shops that double as dealerships.
Shopping mall showrooms.
These are some of the early ideas proposed by the Next Generation Saturn Retail System - a program formed in January. The current site is a font of information about products and dealers, but it doesn't have real-time connections to the 15,000 people who work at more than 400 Saturn dealers nationwide. Many other industries, especially the furniture and personal computing sectors, use the Internet to build and maintain interactive relationships with customers. Saturn's new system also will allow dealers to trace ordered vehicles from the assembly line to the truck that hauls the cars to the showroom. Eventually, in states that allow such transactions, Saturn dealers will be able to finalize sales online and deliver vehicles to buyers' homes.