Is the new Saturn Vue Good Enough to Beat the Japanese Competition?

Every time you turn on the news there seems to be more bad news for the American auto industry. GM is the biggest of the American auto companies and while they're strong in Europe, they simply have too many companies here. Saab and Hummer need to be the first to go. Hummer only supplies overpriced, outdated, ugly gas-guzzlers and all Saab's cars are overpriced and outdated. The next of GM's companies to go will probably be GMC and Saturn. Both companies' lineup consists of re badged Chevy's and Pontiac's. 

Saturn's two unique cars are the Astra and Vue. The Astra is a very good car, but hasn't done well here. The new Saturn Vue however is a different story. The new Vue has sold fairly well. Over Christmas we rented a Saturn Vue XR AWD with a 252hp 3.6L V6. Our Vue had 29,000 miles on it and being a rental car, it was of course in worse condition than an average family car with 30,000. 

One of the things Saturn wanted from the Vue was a "European feel". That's term that's tossed around a lot, but the American car companies are very concerned about achieving. The reason for that is cars like the Buick Century (Or any Buick made since the 1980's), Cadillac Seville, Cadillac Deville, or something like the Ford Taurus all were terrible to drive. They had floaty ride quality and steering that did nothing to decide what direction the car went. The sales of those cars got worse as the European cars gained in popularity. So when GM was making the Vue they wanted the comfortable, but yet firm and responsive ride and steering that European cars have mastered. Overall the Vue is good at those. The ride certainly isn't soft, in fact it's almost too firm at times, but no where near as bad as the BMW X3, which feels like BMW simply forget to put a suspension in. The steering is responsive, but a little light. 

The front of the Vue is a nice place to be. The seats are extremely comfortable once you get them into the right position. Quality was usually a problem with Saturn's, but the Vue feels well made, despite the dashboard looking rather flimsy. The rental we drove did have 29,000 miles on it though and that's rental miles, so the car had held up well. Old Saturn's were made of plastic, which was cheap to make and repair, but was a big safety problem and forced all the cars to be boring looking boxes. With the new Vue the metal body allowed lots of curves and creases that make for a very good looking car. The metal also allowed it to be a Top Safety Pick in the IIHS crash tests. 

So far the Vue sounds pretty good, but it has a few huge problems. The biggest it weight, it practically ruins this car. The Vue weighs 4300 pounds, which means even the 252hp 3.6L V6 delivers underwhelming performance, 0-60 mph is nearly 8 seconds and with the smaller V6 and four cylinder versions it takes longer than almost any other small SUV. Fuel economy is another area ruined by weight, as well as the handling. The Vue's exterior dimensions are larger than the Honda CR-V, Hyundai Santa Fe, Subaru Forester and Toyota RAV4, but the cargo area is much smaller. The back seat is also too small and too hard. The Vue is also about $2,000 to expensive, but GM never sells a car for its list price, so that can be fixed easily.

I really wanted to like the Vue and give it a good review, but I was a bit disappointed. The Vue is a very good car, but compared to the Honda CR-V, Hyundai Santa Fe, Nissan Rogue, Subaru Forester, or Toyota RAV4 it simply isn't good enough. It does however beat the Volkswagen Tiguan and Mitsubishi Outlander. There is a new Chevy Equinox coming out soon that's based off the Vue, so maybe that will work better.

My Least Favorite Car of all Time

On BBC's Top Gear Richard Hammond, one of the show presenters used a jet powered drag racing car to burn a 1980's Nissan Sunny (sold as the Sentra here). The Sunny was his least favorite car 0f all time, because it was a soulless collection of metal made only to bring in money for Nissan. They also said that the reason their least favorite car wasn't a terrible British Leyland car like the Morris Marina or Austin Allegro is that the awfulness of those cars give them an almost human like quality or personality of some sort. 

My least favorite car of all time is the Cadillac Cimarron. I think this car represents everything that was wrong with the American Auto industry in the 1980's and 1990's. It also represents one of the reasons GM is in such huge trouble now.

The Cimarron is the result of platform sharing, something that works now, but in the early 1980's when the U.S. car companies started using it created some terrible cars. The Ford Pinto and Mustang 2 were both the result of platform sharing and the Pinto as many people know exploded if it was rear ended. The Cimarron was just a Chevy Cavalier with some disgusting shiny plastic glued to it. I can't think of a more disgusting car. Some of them were even in vomit yellow with a fake gold grille on the front. At first Cadillac called it the Cimarron by Cadillac, which just emphasized how it was just a Cavalier with some tacky "premium" features added to it. This car was sold for 6 years and in that time pretty much destroyed the Cadillac name. 

Platform sharing did at least have some good results, the Chrysler K-Car was an awful car, but the Chrysler Town & Country/ Dodge Caravan did come from the K-Car and those saved Chrysler. Some companies like Volkswagen have made good cars from platform sharing ever since 1974 when they brought out the Scirocco. Volkswagen have always taken parts from more than one platform to create cars like the Scirocco and later the Corrado, that's why they're so much better. The problem with platform sharing for GM was that they made so many cars that were identical, Take the Chevy Venture/Pontiac Montana/Oldsmobile Silhouette as an example, every one of the had the same disastrous safety, quality, and engines.

The Cimarron is a car that really had no good points. It was a truly small car, there is no space inside, but despite that gas mileage is still wasn't good. The EPA ratings for the 2.8L V6 version are 17 city and 25 highway, worse than a new Corvette with a 430hp 6.2L V8. The Cimarron being based off a Cavalier is so terrible to drive that I would recommend it as a new form of torture for the government to use, it would be viewed as more humane than water boarding, but just as effective. The original price was $13,000, or about $30,000 in today's money, but in 1988 it was nearly $17,000, more than a Saab 900 cost in 1988. Safety was another problem, the Cavalier always got terrible crash test ratings even in 2005 when it was replaced, so crashing one of these was guaranteed death, so it's a good thing they were slow. The most outrageous thing is the used values of these. I found two of them on Autotrader for $15,000. I can't think of any reason somebody would spend $15,000 on a 22 year old Cimarron. The Cimarron is a car that I truly hate. I can't imagine why anybody would decide to buy one of these, let anlone decide to build this car. For lots of reasons the Cadillac Cimarron is the worst car of all time.