Faymester

My friend had an Ion redline and I drove it around for a couple months while I reminded myself how to drive a stick. Not a bad car. I wasn't terribly impressed with the materials but it wasn't nearly as bad as some other things I've had to drive.

When he was getting rid of the Ion, I went with him to look at the Sky. I was rasonably impressed with the Sky; it was better than I thought it would have been even though it was missing a couple features I would have liked it to have.

But when you think 'roadster' ... I think 'saturn' isn't a logical jump for most people.

AND, there aren't even that many dealerships, we drove nearly an hr to get to the nearest one (most dealerships for us are within 10 - 15 min max). So marketing asside, even if you DO concider Saturn ... do you even know where to go to get one? And are you willing to drive that far just to see if you like it? - maybe that's just the area I live in though ... how many of you know where a Saturn dealership is?

mmarshall

You didn't find the ION's center-mount gauges maddening? I do. And, as you note, it had toy-car plastics inside.

Yes, the Sky is fun to drive, has a turbo option, and, IMO, looks somewhat better than its brother Pontiac Solstice. But the Sky has some cheap materials inside (better than the Ion's, I'll admit), is not particularly well-assembled, has a manual top that is much harder to operate than the Miata's, lacks significant rollover protection, and, according to Consumer Reports, has been well below average in reliability.

rsantiago

I think GM's biggest problem is their executives seem to care more about the $$$ rather than producing a quality car, GM is run by a bunch of bean counters.

I wonder how GM would be like if Lutz was CEO instead of Wagner ??

Threxx

It seems that has changed recently for the better, as has their hindrance by the union (though not entirely, at least partially) and retirees.

Faymester

omg yes that did drive me insane! .. but it wasn't my car so how mad could I get


The manual top was one of the things I wasn't a fan of for sure. We didn't try and rollovers nor did we have it long enough to see how reliable it would be.

HOWEVER, as a friends car that you get to borrow, it seemed like a fun idea.

JessePS

I heard a while ago. GM wanted to rebadge the Saab as a Saturn lol

geko29

You could not be more right. About 5 years ago, I got an L200 as a rental, and it's absolutely one of the worst cars I've ever driven in my life. At that time, I drove an E150 for a living, and getting back in that 5,000lb beast with a crappy V6 felt like taking a Ferrari out for a spin in comparison to that awful Saturn.

mmarshall

In July 1999, as a Saturn SL-2 owner, I was invited, as a select group of customers by the Saturn dealership I had ordered my SL-2 from (perhaps because they knew I was one of the more car-savvy ones), to come up for a special presentation of the then-brand-new L-series and help evaluate it. Its interior had OK fit and finish, and the V6 was peppy, but that was about it. Brand-new, right off the truck that day, the V6 L300 I test-drove had wind noise from ill-fitting doors and windows, multiple dash/body rattles and creaks, especially over bumps, warps/shimmies in the brake rotors, and numb power steering. I also noticed that the rear fenders were metal, unlike the S-series, and the Opel-derived automatic transmission lacked the nice, handy spin-off transmission filter the S-series cars had.

I'll never forget that evening. From this day, I still remember it as the start of Saturn's long drop downhill.

Stormwind

Can you go in detail on what this spin off transmission filter is? What does it do and what are the advantages over the traditional tranny?

Iceman

I realize that to you, that moment marked the start of the decline. I saw it quite a bit before that--I won't got into the VERY long story, but as early as 1994 it was clear that Saturn was getting diluted as a brand and they were losing the magic. It may be just because I was deeply into the Saturn brand (I was made an honorary salesman at my local dealer due to the number of referalls I brought in, and I was in pretty regular communication with Saturn's lead engineer due to some research projects I did in college) that I saw the rot starting from within. For you, it took as long as 1999 to see the introduction of a very non-Saturn product, but of course the corporate decisions that led up to that car being designed, produced, marketed, etc. were set in motion a number of years earlier.

mmarshall

Thanks, Iceman..........I suspected that was the case. Leave it to GM to screw something up........they do it every time. Let's hope they don't screw up the recent advances they've made in SOME of their interiors.

mmarshall

The Saturn spin-off transmission filter, which was about the size and shape of a regular oil filter, was patented and used almost exclusively on Saturn S-series models, from 1990 until the Ion replaced the S-series. It took the place of a regular automatic transmission filter, which, in order to change fluid or flush, you had to take off with numerous screws and gaskets. The spin-off filter made it MUCH easier to do transmission service because it was just like an oil change. All you did was open a transmission drain plug, let the old transmission fluid run out, unscrew the transmission filter, take out the magnets that caught the metal particles, clean off the magnets, put the magnets back into a new filter, put a thin coat of transmission fluid on the new filter's O-ring, screw the new filter back on, refill the transmission with new fluid, and Bingo, you were ready to go. Once in a while, a careless technician/mechanic would get the oil and transmission filters and drain plugs mixed up and unscrew the wrong one, but even so, it was not big deal, and only took a few minutes to correct the problem because both were so simple.