Saturn VUE Probed for Safety

Hot off the press. Check it out, unfortunate Saturn owners!

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Reply to
bc
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uh, yea unfortunatelly true..if you plan on driving at 40-50mph and attempting to jackknife your SUV by violently making a rapid u-turn at that speed. I dont know of any SUV that has passed this new test. So far, up until this new test, the VUE has passed every NTSHA test. The bad part is that during this test they have sucessfully been able to recreate a situation under non-real life (testing) situations which can cause the rear wheel to collapse under such extreme duress. Out of the thousands of VUEs sold in the past few years, only one case has been reported, which led to this extreme new manner of testing. Read the article in the NY Times and you will see. Personally, I would rather have the rear wheel collapse than have my SUV completely roll over as most SUVs do under even lesser testing.

marx404

Reply to
marx404

The NHTSA does not rate vehicles "Pass" or "Fail" in the dynamic stability test. It merely reports whether a vehicle tipped or did not tip.

Did not tip:

Buick Ranier Chevy Trailblazer/GMC Envoy/Olds Bravada Dodge Durango Ford Explorer 4X4 /Merc Mountaineer Honda Pilot Isuzu Ascender Jeep Liberty Toyota 4-Runner Volvo XC90

Tipped:

Chevy Tahoe/GMC Yukon Ford Explorer 4X2 /Merc Mountaineer

In some cases multiple versions of the above vehicles were tested.

So far, up

The real-world report of the collapsed suspension had nothing to do with this test being conducted. The new test was developed to be part of routine safety testing in response to the increasing number of rollover deaths which now account for one third of all vehicle occupant fatalities. The fact that over 80% of the SUVs tested "passed" shows that the test is not extreme. More to the point, none of the other SUVs suffered a suspension collapse. The fact that both Vues broke in the same way certainly indicates a poor design if not a recall-worthy defect.

Read it. Here it is:

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See also:
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As previously stated, most SUVs do not roll over even in this test (NHTSA dynamic rollover test.) Although the NHTSA has not yet revealed whether the Vue tipped, the presumption is that the folding under of the suspension is likely to increase the chance of a rollover.

Reply to
satyr

Actually the Vue's rollover rating is no better than the majority of other SUVs. The only current 4x4 SUV that has a worse rating is the Ford Explorer Sport Track (the silly SUV/Pickup truck thing).

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

Looks like GM has decided on to recall over 200,000 VUEs

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-rj

98SL2
Reply to
richard hornsby

shhhhhhhh! keep this quiet

Reply to
twinkie

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No, they would be unfortunate if GM fought the NHTSA, rather than admitting the problem and fixing it for free. Recalls are good, not bad. There are always issues that don't turn up in vehicles during pre-production. An excessive number of recalls wouldn't be a good sign, but I don't think this is the case with the Vue. Ford showed the futility of fighting safety-related recalls.

Reply to
Steven M. Scharf

Do you mean Ford or Firestone?

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

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