General Comments:
I love this car.
I purchased it in December of 2005, used, from a large auto dealer in a nearby town.
Although the dealers themselves were either completely incompetent, or pushy or condescending, the car is fantastic.
It's a 4 cyl 1.8 manual transmission. The stick is easy to shift, and I have only owned one stick shift car previously, which was over 2 years ago.
When I purchased it, it had 62k miles on it and it is still in nearly perfect condition. Everything under the hood checks out, the paint still looks brand new, there are no dings or dents in the car and the interior was still in excellent condition.
All the windows, sunroof, cd, radio, mirrors, locks, remote entry are electronic and function with no problems.
The cabin is small, but what do you expect in a coupe? Happily, the third door makes it semi-convenient for passengers to ride in (the sloped roof isn't exactly comfortable for anyone over 5"5), and is great for shopping or traveling.
The trunk is actually quite spacious, and the back seats fold down for more storage room. I was able to fit a giant desk in the back/trunk easily, and no one expected it to fit into such a compact car.
I have had no mechanical difficulties with the car whatsoever.
All lights (incl. fog lights), windshield wipers, etc, function without problem.
For an economy car, it is actually quite speedy, whether passing another car, getting onto the freeway, etc. It is faster than my Mustang was (of course, the Mustang had many problems, and was a v6 not a v8).
I would definitely purchase another Saturn, and am very pleased with the cars styling, reliability and performance.
Who would have thought you could get such a great car for less than 9,000!
I'll be taking it on a trip across the state next weekend, if anything goes wrong, I'll update this review.
18th May 2009, 18:58
Hi, I was reading up on Saturn cars like mine to see if other people were also having issues, and read your comment about your trunk leak and not being able to determine where it is coming from. I had the same issue for several years, and like you, couldn't find out where the water was coming from. It turns out that there are water runoff tubes that run through the trunk, but that mine were disconnected. The tubes were sending runoff water from the sunroof into the trunk. Once the tubes were reconnected, the water started flowing to the outside of the car again instead of the trunk. While watching someone else reconnect the tubes, it appeared that the tubes run somewhere near the top sides inside the trunk. I hope this helps. I wish I had known earlier. - Tara Eppes