1994 Saturn SL SL2 Twin Cam from North America - Comments

The engine was replaced when it was a few months old, but this was due to driving through a flooded section of road during the flood in SW Georgia in 1995. Saturn did replace the engine for free though, and the original engine was on display at Saturn of Macon for a while.

The battery once.

The A/C had some work done, but I think it was just recharged.

The cassette stereo was replaced long ago for free.

The paint is starting to get dull and cannot be fixed by buffing. However, it will never rust or dent easily!

This has been a great little car. My grandmother bought it brand new and still has it. She drives it less than 10,000 miles per year, so it is still like new overall.

This was the first Saturn in the town where she lives, so she felt very unique driving it and she said people always gawked at the car because it was so attractive. She bought it with every option including the biggest, nicest alloy wheels, traction control, ABS, power windows, locks, mirrors, and cruise control. To me, it still looks a lot nicer than the new Saturn cars. It certainly has been more reliable.

The performance is quite good, especially for a small car, and even with the in-town driving it still gets 35+ MPG.

It's a tad noisy on rough roads, but it is also somewhat of a serious entry-level driver's car. It handles as well or better than my '94 BMW 318i.

She considered getting a new car for a while, but the new Saturn models don't impress and hers has so little mileage on it, we told her to keep it.

I have to agree that the new Saturn models don't look as great to me as do the older ones.

You said your grandmother bought the car with everything, and you mentioned one of those things was mirrors. Was there a point in time where Saturn sold cars without mirrors? (Just curious)

I was noting the power mirror option among the list of other power accessories. It is common to list them this way.

Update: 100,000 miles. We took the car to the dealer for the 100,000 mile service and they told us that it needed a new valve cover gasket and a new ignition harness for $280. We passed on having this done at the dealer, brought it home, and replaced these items for about $35 in parts from Autozone. This only took about an hour to do. The valve cover gasket is actually not a gasket, but rather a silicone sealant that is sprayed on at the factory to reduce costs. It's not a bad design, but it should be noted that it breaks down around the spark plugs and leaks oil onto the harness. The car was still running perfectly, even with all the oil down around the spark plug. The way the car is driven, it is going to wear out cosmetically long before it will wear out mechanically.

Update: 105,000 miles. We went with my grandmother recently and picked out a new 2007 Honda Accord EX-L for her and said farewell to the Saturn. The Saturn was still in good order mechanically, but the car was getting a bit dull cosmetically. Also, the power windows had become somewhat temperamental as they would refuse to work in extremely hot or cold temperatures. The odometer had also seized up. There were not any major problems, but little things were adding up that were more of an annoyance than anything since she lives and hour-and-a-half from her Saturn dealer which was the only worthwhile place that would touch the car. We received the private party price from the dealer instead of the low trade-in value. We also got an additional $2,400 discount on the Accord as it was the end of the year and they had a large inventory to shake. The Saturn was one of the rare cars that I can say the owner got their money's worth as my grandmother drove it for 13 trouble-free years and did not have to pour large amounts of money into it.

Oh wow, best of luck with the Honda. 105K miles is nothing on a Saturn..

I own a 95 Saturn sl2 twin cam. She is at 274,000km and she still kicks like a beast.