Faults:

Too small for a family, and you have to almost get on the ground to get in. Head room is not there for someone over 5' 5" unless you lay way back in the car.

Interior is junk, this car's plastic is vibrates all over the place. At each RPM you get a different vibration from somewhere in the car. This includes at idle.

Sun roof does not seal well, and I have problems with getting in after rain and get soaked.

Because you are "crawling in the car", the edges of the seats have holes in them.

In a crash, the plastic body acts like an indy car and explodes on impact; instead of fixing a dent with a little bondo, you have to replace a panel with the right color, and if your car has faded, the panel won't match.

General Comments:

The car is very sporty and handles great in turns.

Great gas saver and with decent pickup in a 1.9 L.

Best idea that I have ever seen was this the "oil filter type" transmission filter.

Faults:

I guess oil burning is a "normal" problem for this car.

General Comments:

I had a problem with it leaking oil around the valve cover gasket/valve cover. We used standard washers - about 3mm thick and.75cm in inside diameter with replacement bolts from the hardware store and found it to work. The previous valve cover bolts (stock) broke under pressure, so we used standard bolts from the hardware store with washers to apply more downward pressure on the valve cover gasket and the engine block. Problem fixed.

It bothers me that Saturn states this car is normal to burn about a quart of oil every 2000 miles. But I guess it is just as well for a car with 200K miles.

High MPG: 25-30mpg around town and 30-35 mpg on highway. Twin Cam motor adds horsepower while still giving decent MPG.

Comfortable seats. Good luggage compartment - seats fold down to fit my instruments.

Looks great, drives smooth.

A/C works!

Faults:

Nothing has gone wrong with this car. The only repairs/maintenance I have done in the 12 years I have owned it have been oil changes, brakes, and mufflers.

It drives nice, is quick and great on corners (I'm a bit of a lead foot).

It does make a tremendous amount of rattling... but it is 12 years old.

Wouldn't mind a quieter car, but wouldn't give up this car's performance record.

Faults:

Electrical - In Florida the engine compartment layout causes excessive heat buildup under the hood. The excessive heat has caused two batteries and alternators until to fail (under warranty). The dealership replace the two batteries and two alternators as different time, but until they replace both the battery and alternator with upgrade units did the problem go away. This happened in the first two year. Since then, 8 years later, have had no unexpected problems. Just replace two batteries as excepted for sealed batteries in Florida.

Engine power - When I first had the SC2, during some accelerations, the engine would seem to lose power. After numerous attempts by Saturn to detect and then repair the cause, the factory finally sent out a newly designed knock sensor and new program that cleared the problem. The problem was with the knock sensor in a manual transmission SC2s. The sensor would pick up noise that was detected as knock from the engine and the electronic would adjust the timing, causing the loss of power. Have not had a problem with the engine power since the correction, 80,000 miles ago.

Engine vibrations - the 1996 1.9L SC2 engine mount rubber begins to separate every 50,000 miles of fast starts off the line. This would cause vibrations at idle. It is a design issue that was corrected in later models. But replacement cost is about $250.

Headlamp motor - the clutch in the right headlight motor has started slipping at 110,000 mile, but only when the outside temperature is below 70F. Yet, replacement is expensive as the assembly is only half the cost. Yet, at 128,000 miles, thing start to fail.

General Comments:

After 128,000 miles the SC2 has not shown the typical deterioration as I have seen in my other cars.

The body is still looking good.

I still have the original exhaust system.

The interior shows little wear or fading.

However, the door panels are coming unglued and have and to be re-glued twice.

It gets better gas mileage at 128,000 then when it was new. I did get 27mpg no mater how I drove. Now I get nearly 30mpg.

Overall this has been the best and most reliable car of the 6 cars I have owned, including the 1973 Duster with the 232 slant six.