Saturn Aura

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.