Saturn Went Crazy When I Wasn’t Looking

I used to write car reviews for a living (or, for part of my living) and to this day I pride myself on knowing with about 98% accuracy the makes and models of cars that come down the road, often from their front grill alone. Usually I can guess the model year within 2-3 based on the body style (at least on the majority of non-pickup trucks on the market) and often do a quick calculation about the residual value of vehicles as I’m on my every-so-often constitutionals on the sidewalks of our little historic neighborhood.

So it’s a little jarring to see a completely new-to-me car in someone’s driveway…to be faced with the prospect of real-life sheet metal in a form that I’ve never even seen on the Web. Clearly I haven’t been paying enough attention, because not only was it a new Saturn that I wasn’t familiar with, but the new Saturn Aura has even been winning design accolades — something that really surprises me out of today’s Saturn.

About a year ago, I needed to buy a car. I had very little money with which to do it, so, being the OCD shopper that I am, I spent hour after hour on eBay, Edmunds.com, Cars.com, Autotrader.com and even Craigslist. (I say “even” because Craigslist is THE ENEMY for many alt-weekly publishers. Since the JFP has never had much of a Classifieds section, I think of them more like East Germans — largely good people, but suffering from anti-capitalistic delusions.)

What I was basically looking for was a Honda Accord, maybe with about 100k miles and another 100k left. I had about $3000 to spend, and had trouble finding a 94-96 Honda Accord for that; one thought was to augment that money a bit with a loan, and when I made that a possibility, I started glancing around at other options — say, a 98 Nissan Maxima or a 97 VW Passat sedan. (I was actually replacing a 95 Passat Wagon, but those are two different beasts; the mid-90s Passat wagons had some notoriously bad automatic transmissions — mine had cost me $2k and still never been fixed. Since I was leaning toward a stick-shift sedan of some kind, I put the Passat back in the running.)

I actually ended up buying a 1996 Mazda 696 and staying right at my $3000 budget. It’s been a great car, giving me no trouble in the 15 or so months I’ve had it, even thought I’ve worked it a little harder than I thought I would. (Technically, I’m told, it’s also the first majority American-made import sedan that was put on the market; it was built in the same facility as Fords. These were the heady days of the Mazda/Ford partnership on the MX6/Probe experiment. One word to the cautious; the automatic they put in the 626 at the time was a Ford automatic, at it gives out on nearly all of them after 100,000 or so. Stick to the stick.)

If I recall correctly, the 626 just clicked over 125,000 miles, and all it’s needed was some brake pads, oil changes and new tires. The worst thing that’s happened to it (aside from me backing into a wall and brushing some paint off the back bumper) is the antenna was ripped off by an automatic car wash I decided to treat myself to just last week. Oh, well.

The reason I’m telling the story, though, is that the search for an inexpensive car reminded me of my first car search after college in the early 1990s…this is when I was finally going to get myself something to replace the Chevy Beretta I had driven since high school. I looks over and over at Saturns around that time — I was in tune with the politics of the “hip, nice” dealership, the no-haggle pricing and I even liked the sportiness of the SC2’s five-speed and dual overhead cams. I tried to overlook the poor fit-and-finish compared to the imports and the bizarre “new car” smell that Saturns have always had.

Ultimately, though, I was wooed by a black-on-black Mazda Miata and a lease deal that was essentially a lease-to-purchase arrangement at 0% financing. I grabbed my little Miata and never looked back, taking it with me from Dallas to Colorado, letting it live with my Mom in Florida while I lived in New York City and then transporting it down to Mississippi when we moved here.

Saturns have always held an interest for me. When I was shopping for what was ultimately the 626, I looked often at the Saturn L300 series. My conclusion was generally this — buy an import. I kept looking and looking at the listings online, and a small local “no haggle” used dealer around town always seemed to have a L200 or L300 on the lot. I could see myself appreciating the Saturn badge, the keyless entry, that sizable trunk…and maybe I could overlook the fit and finish, the questionable service record and that bizarre, personality-free plastic steering wheel.

Fast forward to this week…it looks like the insurance company is going to total out the Miata after it got rear-ended by a Lincoln Navigator. Everyone is alright…it’s just $5k worth of damage to $5k worth of car. So, assuming I have a check in hand next week or so, I’ll be shopping again for something to replace it so that Ms. D will have some wheels.

Mostly I’m thinking Honda Civic. But I was surfing Edmunds looking at the New Beetle (some are close to $5k in the 1998-99 era, they’re asking $7k for the one in the picture) and saw an ad for the Aura. “That’s what I saw in that guy’s driveway!” I thought to myself. Lo and behold, the Aura is not just a much-needed replacement for the L300, but it’s actually winning some accolades. And then, rather quietly, there’s the Green Line hybrid version of the car, which unfortunately, appears to be rated at only 35 MPG on the highway, although it does boast 28mpg in the city, which is decent for a mid-sized sedan. Here’s hoping that mixed driving means a solid 30mpg. (Which, for the record, is about what I see from my solidly-broken-in Mazda 626 sedan, thanks much.)

No, I’m not buying an Aura, but I’m happy to see Saturn swing for the fences and come up with at least a stand-up double. Now that they’ve got a little space between the Buick and Pontiac lines (with Olds out of the picture) I imagine they need to build a car or two that will appear to 30 and 40-somethings the way that the Cutlass and Olds 88 did in the early 80s or the Olds Aurora and Intrigue tried to do in the late 90s. Maybe the Aura will be that car.

And then there’s the new Relay crossover…hell, I hadn’t seen that one, yet, either…Saturn’s “crossover” SUV with marginally better gas mileage than competitors. Who knew?

March 11, 2007 · Filed Under Cars