Somehow, I found myself driving another end-of-the-line car this week. It's a Saturn Aura. GM is phasing out Saturn over the next few years, so you might still be able to buy one. Here are the things that stood out.
The good:
1) It's a much more enjoyable car to drive than the Pontiac Vibe I had a couple weeks ago. The ride is smoother and quieter.
2) The stereo, in part in consequence of #1, is pretty good. No complaints there. It's not quite as good as the sound system in the Nissan Altima I drove several weeks back, but meh.
3) Plenty of room, especially legroom in the back seats.
4) Even though the front seats don't have a huge number of adjustments, I had no problem getting the seat comfortable.
The bad:
1) There are several places where the build quality is poor. Grab the rear view mirror, and you get the same alarming creak that I saw in the Vibe. The latches on the central armrest/storage compartment are fit very poorly, and the whole assembly makes all sorts of rattling noises. The panel on the dashboard to the left of the steering wheel holds the console brightness adjustment, and if you push on it, it appears to have nothing anchoring it. It just bounces in and out. The driver's door is not properly mounted/adjusted. The driver's-side rear door takes a pretty hefty swing to latch properly.
2) DRLs that bong at you if you turn them off, and insist on turning on automatically every time you start the engine.
3) The shape and position of the windshield and rear-view mirror have an interesting consequence--you pretty much can't see anything out the right-hand side of the windshield. I'm still trying to figure out the geometry involved, and I didn't realize it right away, but it's a real issue.
4) Acceleration on the highway is...well, stupefyingly slow. After leaving the rental car agency and getting on the highway, I put my foot down to see what would happen. And I waited. And waited. And waited. And then the engine kicked in. I tried it again, and found that from the time I pushed the pedal to the floor, the car took nearly two seconds to downshift before revving the engine back up. Yikes.
So that's about it.
For the record, I have now rented the following cars in the past couple months:
Nissan Altima
Pontiac G6
Chevy Malibu
Hyundai Sonata
Pontiac Vibe
Saturn Aura
My favorite up to this point has been the Sonata. I just couldn't find anything about that car to criticize. Sure, it doesn't have huge amounts of power, but it has enough. And nothing stuck out at me as objectionable. I also really liked the Malibu (aside from the DRLs) and the Altima.
At home, I typically drive a '95 Corolla, but also get a fair amount of road time in a '01 Honda Odyssey, thanks to occasional cross-country drives.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Don't buy this car
If you're in the market for a car, and are considering the Pontiac Vibe (or whatever clone GM will end up making, since they dropped Pontiac), do yourself a favor and run away as fast as you can.
A nearly-new Vibe is my rental car this week, and even before I had left the lot, I knew I had made a bad choice. And it only got worse. Here is a list of my complaints:
1) Daytime Running Lamps - yeah, I've griped about this before, so I'll make this short. In this particular GM car, there's no option to turn off daytime running lamps. Period. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than giving you the option and then chastising you for it...
2) Automatic headlights that you can't override. You may consider the headlight controls to be "minimum headlight settings." "Off" means "at least DRLs, unless it's night--then you'll get full headlights." Turning it to "parking lamps" dims the console lights and presumably turns on your taillights (I haven't bothered to check), but again the DRLs remain on, and if it's dark, the car will turn on your headlights. If you're going to a drive-in movie, everyone will hate you.
3) Terrible fit-and-finish. My first clue about the quality of this car came when I adjusted the rear-view mirror before even leaving the parking spot at the rental car agency. As soon as I gripped the mirror, it creaked alarmingly. This morning, I noticed that the armrest on the driver's side was so poorly fit that I could pull it right off with relatively little effort.
4) It's noisy. While the other four cars I've rented over the last several weeks have been nice and quiet, I think the Vibe is louder on the highway than my '95 Corolla. At first, I wondered if I hadn't left a window open, but no such luck. The combination of the wind and road noise is unbearable.
5) The ride is horrendous. Not only do you feel every bump in the road, I think the suspension actually amplifies cracks and bumps in the pavement. As I ran around doing errands last night, it nearly made me sick.
6) The sound system stinks. I am by no means an audiophile or an expert, but I know when I'm having trouble understanding a radio DJ speaking in a calm, normal voice. Certain frequencies resonate piercingly in this car, and others seem to disappear. The road noise and wind noise certainly contribute as well.
7) The engine and transmission feel like something out of a third-world country. From a standstill, I have to push the accelerator pedal in some distance before the engine starts turning the wheels, and at that point, it suddenly jerks the car forward. There seems to be enough horsepower for accelerating on the highway...once it shifts down a gear or two.
8) The power steering, while perfectly functional, makes a very odd sound when turning the wheels against resistance. I'm not quite sure how to describe the sound--it's some combination of grind, whine, and whir, but it is rather disturbing when you first hear it.
9) The center console is badly placed. From a comfortable position in the seat, the stereo and climate controls are just out of reach, even though the steering wheel is at the right distance.
10) Visibility is horrendous. This car has blind spots the size of Manhattan. Take a look at a picture of the car, and you'll notice that the windows are tiny slivers of glass perched on an enormous expanse of door. The rear pillars are aligned such that there's no visibility to the side when you look through the rear-view mirror.
11) The interior is cheap, and it looks that way. Cheap silver-painted plastic, thin plastic controls, etc.
12) The design of the key is brain-dead. For once (happily!) the rental car company only put one key on the permanently-bonded keychain. The remote for the car is integrated in the key. Fair enough. However, I noticed that when you go to turn the key in the ignition, the button for the panic alarm is precisely where you press your thumb. That's just sloppy engineering and poor testing.
A few other things to note:
A) On the positive side, the seats themselves (or at least the driver's seat) are comfortable, even if they lack all the bells-and-whistles electric adjustments. I haven't quite grasped the trend toward taller cars in which you sit more upright, but this is one of them. I can't count it against the car, though, since the placement of the seat has not caused me any discomfort.
B) It's ugly, but that's a matter of taste, so I can't list it above.
C) I can't tell you whether it's economical--there's no display that will tell me what my average MPG is.
Several questions come to mind while driving this car:
Did I get a "Monday morning" car?
What were the engineers and engineering managers thinking when they designed this car?
Did anyone at GM bother to test drive it?
Should I bother to lock the doors? After all, who would bother to steal it?
Is this the kind of car our government is subsidizing through its bailout of the Big 3?
A nearly-new Vibe is my rental car this week, and even before I had left the lot, I knew I had made a bad choice. And it only got worse. Here is a list of my complaints:
1) Daytime Running Lamps - yeah, I've griped about this before, so I'll make this short. In this particular GM car, there's no option to turn off daytime running lamps. Period. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than giving you the option and then chastising you for it...
2) Automatic headlights that you can't override. You may consider the headlight controls to be "minimum headlight settings." "Off" means "at least DRLs, unless it's night--then you'll get full headlights." Turning it to "parking lamps" dims the console lights and presumably turns on your taillights (I haven't bothered to check), but again the DRLs remain on, and if it's dark, the car will turn on your headlights. If you're going to a drive-in movie, everyone will hate you.
3) Terrible fit-and-finish. My first clue about the quality of this car came when I adjusted the rear-view mirror before even leaving the parking spot at the rental car agency. As soon as I gripped the mirror, it creaked alarmingly. This morning, I noticed that the armrest on the driver's side was so poorly fit that I could pull it right off with relatively little effort.
4) It's noisy. While the other four cars I've rented over the last several weeks have been nice and quiet, I think the Vibe is louder on the highway than my '95 Corolla. At first, I wondered if I hadn't left a window open, but no such luck. The combination of the wind and road noise is unbearable.
5) The ride is horrendous. Not only do you feel every bump in the road, I think the suspension actually amplifies cracks and bumps in the pavement. As I ran around doing errands last night, it nearly made me sick.
6) The sound system stinks. I am by no means an audiophile or an expert, but I know when I'm having trouble understanding a radio DJ speaking in a calm, normal voice. Certain frequencies resonate piercingly in this car, and others seem to disappear. The road noise and wind noise certainly contribute as well.
7) The engine and transmission feel like something out of a third-world country. From a standstill, I have to push the accelerator pedal in some distance before the engine starts turning the wheels, and at that point, it suddenly jerks the car forward. There seems to be enough horsepower for accelerating on the highway...once it shifts down a gear or two.
8) The power steering, while perfectly functional, makes a very odd sound when turning the wheels against resistance. I'm not quite sure how to describe the sound--it's some combination of grind, whine, and whir, but it is rather disturbing when you first hear it.
9) The center console is badly placed. From a comfortable position in the seat, the stereo and climate controls are just out of reach, even though the steering wheel is at the right distance.
10) Visibility is horrendous. This car has blind spots the size of Manhattan. Take a look at a picture of the car, and you'll notice that the windows are tiny slivers of glass perched on an enormous expanse of door. The rear pillars are aligned such that there's no visibility to the side when you look through the rear-view mirror.
11) The interior is cheap, and it looks that way. Cheap silver-painted plastic, thin plastic controls, etc.
12) The design of the key is brain-dead. For once (happily!) the rental car company only put one key on the permanently-bonded keychain. The remote for the car is integrated in the key. Fair enough. However, I noticed that when you go to turn the key in the ignition, the button for the panic alarm is precisely where you press your thumb. That's just sloppy engineering and poor testing.
A few other things to note:
A) On the positive side, the seats themselves (or at least the driver's seat) are comfortable, even if they lack all the bells-and-whistles electric adjustments. I haven't quite grasped the trend toward taller cars in which you sit more upright, but this is one of them. I can't count it against the car, though, since the placement of the seat has not caused me any discomfort.
B) It's ugly, but that's a matter of taste, so I can't list it above.
C) I can't tell you whether it's economical--there's no display that will tell me what my average MPG is.
Several questions come to mind while driving this car:
Did I get a "Monday morning" car?
What were the engineers and engineering managers thinking when they designed this car?
Did anyone at GM bother to test drive it?
Should I bother to lock the doors? After all, who would bother to steal it?
Is this the kind of car our government is subsidizing through its bailout of the Big 3?
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