The Death of Saturn
This past week GM announced that they are going to kill Saturn. In many ways I am not surprised at this decision. I have had two Saturn cars, a ’97 SL2 and an ’03 ION. When I started college my parents contacted our insurance agent and ask what would be a good car on insurance for a 18 year old male commuting to college and working part time. She said that an SL2 would be one of the best choices. My father and I looked at a few used car lots but didn’t find any SL2s that had below 100K miles. We then drive to a Saturn dealership in the area. The whole Staff was great, they not only showed us the cars, but how to take care of basic maintenance, items to be aware of and they really made me feel like I was valued. When ever I had problems with the car I took itto the dealership and they treated me vary fairly and were very honest with what they were doing to the car. One time I had changed the spark plugs with A different brand from what Saturn recommended, the engine was running very roughly. I took the car tothe dealer and they found that the plugs ( Bosch plat. +4s) were wrong, they replaced the plugs with NGK (the recommended brand) at only the cost of the plugs. The car was fairly solid too, I had very few problems with the car. Sure, in some ways it was alittle tin and plastic can on wheels, but the car was light and got very goods gas mileage (about 32 city 37 highway). The car wasn’t fancy, the only fancy thing on it was cruse control. it had an automatic transmission, and I ended up changing the head unit out with a pioneer one so i could listen to my i Pod. I learned how to change the oil, air filters, change spark plugs, and other maintenance tasks. So when it came time to replace the SL2 I when back to Saturn. I ended up at a different dealership because the second one had a used ’03 ION Quad Coupe that I really liked. I had the same great sales experience. The service staff was great to.
But here is where the tail turns sour. See the ION was never really a Saturn design (yes I know the S series was not designed solely for/by Saturn but it was only made and sold by Saturn). GM must not have tested the ION design very well, if at all. Within a few months of having the car I had several strange problems. At 25K miles the bushings in the front suspension started to wear out and I got a clunking every time i went over the slightest of bumps. I also had a strange noise from the transmission atlow speeds. I had a seat belt retractor just stick in place, that had to be replaced. I had to have the bushings, and sway bar end links replaced again at 50K miles. I had other odds and ends things happen, all before 50K miles. By this time I was thinking “It is no wonder nobody was buying GM cars, They’re shit!”
Here is another example of how crappy GM is. The 2004 model year Ion Red Line had some problems that were addressed in the next model year. One of these was the intercooler pump was wired backwards negative to positive and positive to negative causing the impeller in the pump to run backwards. It circulated coolant but at a much less efficient rate than if it was wired properly as it was in the 05 and after model years, and would sometimes cause a hesitation/stumbling at low RPM operation due to the increased intake air temperatures. GM never issued a recall for this problem but did issue a Technical Service Bulletin. So in other words if you didn’t read all the TSBs for your car, you would never know that there was a wiring problem that was causing your carto run badly, seems shady to me.
Would I buy another Saturn? No not till I know for sure that they quality is back up. I really liked my SL2, It never let me down. my ION on the other hand has been a pain. The problem with Saturn hasn’t been that the dealers don’t try, they do and are some of the most helpful people I have met in the car sales and service industry. The problem is that they have been stuck trying to sell re badged GM shit cars and SUVs since 2003.
In some ways I hope Saturn can be sold off, and some how recapture the “glory days” when they produced a cheap well made/designed car that was different from the rest.