Originally Posted by grabber2

Are you kidding me???? Which city was that???

Originally Posted by mmarshall

Although cars, in general, are assembled much better today than they were years ago, and generally more free of defects (some of the German makes are an exeption), it is still somewhat risky, IMO, to make a deal sight unseen, without at least a visual inspection of the car and test-drive. You should see, for example, what I do when I myself check out and inspect a car, either for myself or for someone else if I am shopping with him or her. I go over it with a fine-tooth comb.

Originally Posted by mmarshall

That policy was not a gimmick. I found that out myself. I owned a plastic-body 90's vintage Saturn SL-sedan that I was very pleased with. But when I ordered a bright-yellow 2001 Limited-Edition coupe (only a few thousand were made that year, and they weren't stocked on dealer-lots, so I couldn't test-drive it in advance like I usually do), it arrived and was delivered with what apeared to be engineering and/or production defects which caused both a shimmy and rattles that could not be adequately addressed. After two weeks (and after both me and the shop-foreman working on the car, unsuccessfully), I just gave up and returned the car. Right there, in the dealer's buisness office, they cut me a check for not only the car's purchase price, but the sales-tax as well. When I questioned that (being the honest person that I am) and pointed out that they didn't have to refund both the purchase price and the tax as well, they said that, don't worry, Saturn routinely did that even though legally they owed only the purchase price. So, I got back every penny I had put into the car.


(BTW, that's how I eventually got into Club Lexus. I had looked at the then all-new Lexus IS300 at the D.C. show that year, and liked it. I took the money that I got back from the Saturn coupe I retured, went down to the Lexus shop instead, added a little more of my own cash out of the bank, and came home with a yellow IS300. I kept the IS almost 5 years).




Of course Saturn went downhill after 2001.....we all know that. But that was not the company's fault. Parent-corporation GM was, IMO, guilty of almost criminal mismanagement of the company, and, in just a few years, ruined what was one of the great automotive success-stories of the 1990s, turning it into just another ho-hum GM division, and then, of course, an unprofitable one at that.