1997 Saturn SC SC1 from North America - Comments

Broken pulley $105.

Passenger door lock $100.

One of the belts needed replacing $100.

Two tires worn wrong $150.

That is it so far; I've only owned this thing for 7 months, and all this has already happened.

After someone totaled my Toyota Tercel that I’d owned for nine years, I got stuck with a Saturn 1997 SC-1.

Don’t get me wrong, it looks cool, but that is the only thing it has going for it. My Toyota was never in the shop; my dad loved gloating that of his two teens (and later college students) his daughter’s car was the easiest to maintain. The Saturn, on the other hand, is in the shop more often than my brother’s completely beat up and abused 1993 Geo Prizm.

Day two of owning it and driving down to the city for school, the car starts smelling weird. I take it in to my mechanic, who, after a whole day of looking at it, he finds that the pulleys on one of the belts are completely destroyed. $105 to fix that. Two months later, I’m still recovering from injuries from my accident, and I take the car in for its oil change. Now the worthless piece of junk has decided to eat two of its four tires. Lovely! I haven’t been able to replace them. The passenger door lock has a habit of detaching itself so you cannot lock it from the inside. That was $100 to fix. The tires, I haven’t gotten fixed yet. My mechanic tells me not to worry when it blows its trans; I’ll be able to get Saturn parts for cheap. Compared to my Toyota Tercel, this car is a piece of crap. And it is supposedly in a better class. Between this and the Ford coupe I drove as a rental car, I’ve pretty much sworn off American cars. I’ll feel free to buy Toyota, Mazda, or Subaru in the future. The Saturn is worth more than my 1995 Toyota Tercel DX was; I cannot fathom why, as the Toyota was the better of the two cars. If you have a choice, buy something else. Sure, my friends tell me that the Saturn is better looking than Grumpy (the Toyota) was, but my father and I are forever spending money on this thing.

You bought and eight year old car and your wondering why it's not perfect? Maybe next time you should buy a new car.