My previous Car of a Lifetime entry was a bit of a novella, because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and wrenching and planning on that truck; this one is going to be somewhat short, because it’s a car I inherited when I got married, but still worth writing about.
Much has been written about the Saturn Corporation, here at CC and elsewhere, detailing its birth within GM, rapturous reception, and rapid decline as internal forces tore it apart. I was only dimly aware of Saturns when they were first released, as they generally didn’t show up in the repo lot that much.
When I met my future wife in 2000, she had a car she’d bought herself, something she was very proud of: a 1998 Saturn SC-2, in dark blue. This was a car she bought to replace a balky Chevy Sprint, a miserable lump of an econobox that she was glad to be rid of. I’ve seen a lot of bile on the Internet about Saturns and I always stick up for them (at least, the model and year we owned) because ours was a good, honest, well-made car and always came through for us.
image: topworldauto.com
This SC-2 was a manual, something she specifically looked for. She didn’t know how to drive a stick before she bought the car, and learned how to do it in a parking lot with her then-boyfriend the day she bought it. When she told me that, I was impressed, because I’d never have the guts to make that kind of financial commitment to something I’d not mastered first.
When I met her it was in great shape. This was the second generation of Saturn coupe, which shared the same platform and wheelbase of the sedan. That made the ride comfortable but also explained why the turning radius was that of an ocean liner: something that made parking in the city, where I lived at that time, difficult. The exterior of the car was curvy and sleek, and the panels were all tight and well-fitting. Strangely, it had a wing on the trunk, which was de rigeur for sporty-looking cars of that time, even when their top output was 124hp. The engine was not built for speed. This car got about 28 MPG on average for us, and was optimized for highway cruising, so it had nothing to back up its sporty looks.
image: edmunds.com. What you see is what we got. Nothing fancy, but functional.
Inside, the car was full of hard plastic and designed in the bulbous style of GM in that era. I guess even though Saturn was a New Kind of Car, there was a lot of design bleed-over from the GM corporate office. It was all designed pretty well and, as with the outside, put together better than its GM contemporaries. I remember feeling similarities in getting in and out of this car to my CR-X: the driver’s position was low to the ground. Driving it was a pleasure. It was a comfortable cabin to spend time in, and the steering was tighter and more responsive than my Taurus or Jeep. The clutch was a lot less precise than the Japanese cars I’d grown up with, which took some getting used to. My only gripe with driving it was the tendency of the windows to fog up on rainy days and the inability of the climate control system to clear them.
Image: msrecycling.com. This would have made life so much easier…
This was also two model years before Saturn offered a third door behind the driver’s door, which would have made getting in and out of the back seat much easier, and dealing with a child seat an actual possibility.
Headliner out, repairs underway.
We drove it for ten years, putting required maintenance into it in return for many trouble-free, economical miles. In 2010 I opened the sunroof on the way to work and, when I got there, it refused to close. Luckily this was May, and there are many junkyards to choose from nearby. I found a couple of coupes in the closest yard, and within a half an hour had removed a motor from a red donor, having used a utility knife to cut a square out of the headliner.
At home it was much more difficult to get our headliner out in one piece, but after some Internet sleuthing and careful extraction I got it out, the old motor disconnected and the junkyard replacement back in. I hooked the battery back up and tested it out a bunch of times before replacing everything, and it worked fine from then on.
The mighty Saturn I-4. This one is kind of dirty. Ours was much cleaner.
In 2012 the miles were adding up, and it began to nickel and dime us. It began to have overheating issues, which our mechanic warned us about. He also pulled the #4 plug and found it completely fouled with crap, which was another bad sign–I’d replaced the plugs and wires the previous fall. The tires were bald. We made some basic repairs and it kept soldiering on, but it was getting to the point where we needed four doors and more reliability. Used Saturns at that point were pretty much worthless, so I made arrangements to donate it for a tax write-off, and it was towed away to my wife’s despair.
I agree that Saturns probably get a little more trash-talk than they deserve. My dad bought a ‘93 SL2 new, and it served him, me, and my sister well enough over the years (we kids each got to drive it in high school). It too had the non-functional spoiler, as well as the overheating issue if you were just sitting at idle for too long in summer. And the lack of power didn’t really bother us as the local roads had speed limits of only 25-35 mph.
About how many miles were on it when it left your service?
As I recall, it was somewhere north of 175K but I can’t be sure.
Interesting story. I guess the term YMMV is appropriate regarding Saturns.
I bought a new 1996 SL2 (4 door sedan) 5 speed and had it for one week. It was so problematic, and the service people so inept at fixing the problems, that I demanded my money back (and got it) because that was Saturn’s policy back then.
Not much later they ended that policy. No doubt I was not the only one taking advantage of it.
I really wanted to like that little plastic car; it pushed all of my car quality and size logical buttons, and the TV ads were impressive to someone looking for a well built car (like the guy who stopped the production line because one car was missing a little clip). But, those ads were bogus, as was their dealer prep and service people. What a surprise!
OK. Maybe I was naive.
I did like one little act the Saturn sales people did for potential buyers. They’d take a door panel from a Saturn, put it on the floor, and jump up and down on it in their wing tip shoes to show how strong and flexible it was and how it remained pristine after such a trouncing.
Two years later in 1998 I bought a new 1999 NB Miata. I still have it.
Wow, that’s really lousy. I’m shocked, because it’s a stark contrast to our dealer experience; the Saturn was the only car either of us has bought new, and our local dealer was nothing but helpful and accommodating every time we brought the car in (which was, I admit, only a few times). Both the service guys and the front office. My wife said the sales folks were very relaxed and did not put the hard sell on her, where the other dealerships she visited saw a single female walk in the door and immediately started sharpening their knives.
Saturns are, in the words of a former owner I know, “the Rodney Dangerfield of cars.”
There is something noble about an average, nothing-special car that does its job until it is worn out.
I have a similar Saturn story.
I got remarried last year and my new wife brought her silver 2002 Saturn SC2 (with the 3rd door but with an automatic) to the family and it had about 275K miles on it. Now my wife is a speech therapist with an established practice so she can afford pretty much any mass-produced car she wants (within reason) but she held on to the Saturn for pretty much the same reasons-it was the first new car she bought on her own, she loved it, and ultimately, it was a good car. She also purposely bought one with the 3rd door with the intention of putting a baby seat in the back since she was newly married to her first husband at the time. She wound up not having any children with him but the 3rd door was very handy as my wife is active in the horse community and the Saturn became a handy farm car and it often hauled bales of hay when her ex and his pickup wasn’t available, and it handled several cross-country moves.
Now we have a newborn daughter and the Saturn is still a productive member of the family with 310K miles on it. The engine and transmission are original and unrebuilt and the body and paint still look good so the Saturn stays on as a spare car and still occasionally hauls some hay around when me and my pickup aren’t available. Interestingly enough, the child seat we bought wouldn’t reasonably fit in the small backseat so my wife has adopted the 2002 Durango left over from my first marriage that has carried me and my kids around since it was new.
The Saturn seemed like such a breath of fresh air when GM announced it. But then, well, GM.
I always felt that GM launching the Saturn brand was tantamount to admitting defeat, as though all the existing brands’ credibility was irreparably damaged. Like saying “We know some of you young folks don’t want to be seen in our cars, so try this.” – still GM though, and that was part of the problem.
I had a ’99 SL2 and had the same window fog issue, constantly playing with buttons and knobs to no avail.
That said, it was a comfortable and reliable car for the 9 years I owned it. At the time, I worked in a small town outside of the city I lived and got to daily it on some sublime curvy back country roads. It was a pleasure to drive.
Ah, the Saturn S-Series! I have owned 2 SL sedans that represented the range of options from stripped to loaded. My 97 SL2 was purchased used in 01, white over black, with every available option the little company offered that model year minus the auto trans. An attractive, kinda sporty sedan that my then gf loved and learned to drive stick with and suited me well until I lost it in a flood parked on the street outside her riverfront home.
I had 2 Subaru Legacies [sp?] between my Saturns then purchased a 99 base model SL, the opposite of my 97 SL2. Crank windows, grey bumpers, different quality of upholstery, and only a driver side rear view mirror, black panel on the PS door… I loved this car until a known internal 5 speed trans issue killed it. Didn’t have time to deal with it as I was buying a house at the time. Miss that car! NPR got it as a donation…
We Saturn defenders can be much like our Subaru defender brothers…Source: I am both…. The classic “If you fix ______ and address ______ and spend some cash on ______ as well, they are great cars!!!!!!”. A great car shouldn’t need such attention but I digress. Sure Saturns are rattle-y (My 99 was named the RatL Trap by friends) and agriculture in nature, but i found them to be comfortable commuters/great knock around town cars. As they say on a Saturn forum ” Check your d_mn oil!” and they run forever.
Ratl-trap, wish I’d thought of that! In my 98 SL2 I used to stick my hand between the door and dash to stop the dash from rattling.
My first car was a 98 SL2. Honest little car, so many memories associated with it. Mine had that window fogging issue as well, I used to make my passengers wipe my windows so I could see the road. I sold it after a year and a half as I wanted a something a little bigger, sportier and with a manual.
Your experience matches that of the college student who lives with us so he can commute to school. He has a ’96 SL1 that is older than he is; it is a crude but generally reliable mechanical devise that he loves as it is his first car. His family is not mechanically minded, so there was plenty for me to practice on when he moved in and now it will go uphill under its own power. Maintenance is easy, save for the oil filter hidden in back of the engine ( first time I changed the oil I tried to replace the automatic transmission fluid filter instead, not the first time someone has tried that). Although crude, it is like earlier Hondas in that it seems to appreciate every little thing you fix and then it runs a little better. 143,000 and counting now. Change your oil!
I used to own a 1995 Saturn SL1. I never had any serious mechanical issues with it; the main annoyance was how much it rattled, as others have mentioned. When stopped at red lights I used to put one hand on the dash and the other on the door panel to try to quiet the rattles. Other than that I did have to keep an eye on the oil level, but it always ran fine.
My favorite feature was the wrap around rear window the first generation body style had, which virtually eliminated all blind spots.
The thing that finally did it in was California’s emissions testing. After I moved here it would fail its smog test on the first attempt almost every time, and every time there was some different emissions related item that needed to be fixed. I finally got tired of having to fix those things and accepted the state’s offer of $1000 to “retire” it (similar to Cash for Clunkers).
The Saturn S series. I liked the first generation better then the later one but it was a good honest point A to B cars
Other then the oil issue and the sun roof issue, the only other issue I have come across on these were the worn out shifter bushings on the manual trans (they used a nylon sleeve)
The bushings were easily replaced (unlike on my Probe)
As far as reliability, in the early 90s, our BMW dealer in Houston used the S sedans as service loaners, my service manager said they were unbreakable, much more so than the cars they worked on!
My ’94 Saturn SL-2 seemed, on the surface, to be a great car.
I bought it in 2010-2011. It had a great Carfax. 71,000 miles on it. Automatic transmission. I didn’t care for the gold exterior color, but it was just intended for commuting to work, so I could live with it. And it was only $1600. I bought it.
I WILL say that it was reliable. But that’s it. It started drinking oil. Lots of little nickel and dime stuff was constantly wrong with it. I went through a pair of front tires. it needs both control arms replaced. The headliner started coming down. It had automatic seat belts, the driver’s side shoulder belt being stuck until one day, it wasn’t. I had found out about the pulling-the-fuse trick for that, so it diodn’t move at all after that.
In the end, I got another car. I, too, decided to donate the Saturn for a tax write off.
I’ve SELDOM been happier to see a vehicle depart on the flatbed!