Saturn Ion rented

2007 Saturn Ion rental car

I rented an 07 Ion a couple of weeks ago. Put on 993 miles driving around Dallas-Ft. Worth-Houston, Texas, usa. It was a typical rental Ion with power windows and cd player. Here are my opinions after spending a week and 993 miles in it:

Summary: The car is dangerous and should not be driven.

Visibility is poor. Center mirror is too small. Outside mirrors are too small and taper to a point where max visibility is really needed - cannot see away from the immediate sides of the car.

Light rear end. Take your foot off the gas on a gravel road and the car will easily do a 180.

Road noise very high. Good thing I always carry earplugs - had to wear them when going over 50 mph on blacktop roads.

No center off position on the power mirror button.

The window buttons were counter intuitive - push down to make them go up, pull up to make them go down.

No lights on window buttons

The gauges are in the center of the dash. I found it distracting having to look over at them.

The tach is useless for this car, it should be a clock.

Radio was MP3 capable but had no elapsed time or remaining time indicator.

The radio and info display is next to impossible to see in the daytime.

Sound quality very poor. Mushy sound. No highs or lows.

Seat had elevation jack lever but no lumbar support.

Headlights very poor. Night visibility was either 50' ahead or 500', no in between.

Visors are way too small, don't extend, and are totally useless. I had to jam a baseball cap into the side windows weather strip and cardboard behind the center mirror - it gets very sunny in Texas.

Reply to
« Paul »
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A friend had one. A 2002 I think. The driver seat legs broke off the seat frame. Saturn actually sent somebody to his house to inspect the car.

Got a new seat shortly there after. Traded it in on a Vue about 3 months ago.

harryface

Reply to
Harry Face

That's done so kids climbing on the buttons won't cause the windows to close and crush their necks.

Reply to
larry moe 'n curly

Sounds like no loss of a gene-pool there, if kids aren't smart enough or controlled enough that they get to push buttons, without the auto-lock feature enabled by parents.

Reply to
Knifeblade_03

The danger things you mention might be unique to the Saturn, but other things like road noise, instability, lack of creature comforts and things are what I've come to expect from GM cars. I'd like to say "especially in the low end", but I was rather underwhelmed about a Denali I've recently ridden in.

As a side note, I have a funny story about a Saturn Rental. This would have been 2003, and I was at a 4th of July party out of state. A lot of people were there from out of state, one individual rented a Saturn.

At one point, us 'kids' were illegally lighting off rockets in the culdesac out front. These were your standard public fireworks display type, not your run of the mill bottle rockets. Don't ask. Yes I agree that we should have known better. But anyways, one of the rockets was so huge and top heavy that it tipped over the bottle as soon as it was lit. The rocket flew into the side of the Saturn, and lodged into the passenger side mirror post. Its thruster exhaust melted the door, then blew a dinner-plate sized hole into the fender.

We had a LOT of fun on our vacation trying to buff plastic and find a replacement fender for that car. A dealership eventually had the fender, but the door skin still looked bad.

John can now flame me as an idiot with no regrets!

-phaeton

Reply to
phaeton

That's done so kids climbing on the buttons won't cause the windows to close and crush their necks.

It's late for me, but isn't this kinda backwards? s

Reply to
sdlomi2

It is, but is there a simpler, cheaper way to make electric windows kind of child-resistant?

Before I saw buttons like this, I thought that all electric windows were designed to automatically stop and reverse if something blocked them, just as garage door openers are.

Reply to
larry moe 'n curly

It is, but is there a simpler, cheaper way to make electric windows kind of child-resistant?

Before I saw buttons like this, I thought that all electric windows were designed to automatically stop and reverse if something blocked them, just as garage door openers are.

There should be a law to require just what you describe. Why don't you design a system, I'll use my political pull to legislate it, and we'll split the $? ;) Sleep well. s

Reply to
sdlomi2

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