Faults:

I had to replace the dome (interior ceiling) light after someone borrowed it and returned the car with it swinging by the wires. At the junkyard, most of the Saturns of this vintage had the dome lights removed already, which tells me it's a common problem.

Other than that, NOTHING: we just changed the fluids (oil every 5,000; transmission @ 50,000) and the brakes, and the dumb thing just ran and ran.

General Comments:

Once I put decent (but not expensive) tires on it, it handled like a sports car (I once had a Porsche, and know what I'm talking about).

Visibility is excellent, even to rear, and the "wagon" is big enough to actually put stuff in without folding down the rear seats. (Much better in both respects than a Civic, for example.)

Gas mileage is disappointing: around 20 typically. The automatic lets the engine rev too high: it's rarely below 2,000 RPM, even when driven gently.

A 10-year-old car with NO "dings," dents or scratches, thanks to plastic body panels and flexible paint. Only the hood is metal.

Generally a bit noisy: interior parts tend to creak and rattle, engine buzzes a little.

Reliability has been amazing; it doesn't get any better than this.

The extremely strong "space frame" construction makes it very safe, even though it's pretty small: my wife was in a high-speed accident (on the highway) with it, and although the engine compartment was "mushed," the rest of the car was perfect, so much so that the insurance company didn't "total" it, and fixed it. (No injuries in the Saturn, either.) We drove it for another 5 years after that, with no problems.

Even though the automatic SW1 is the slowest Saturn ever built, it's fast enough to keep up with any kind of traffic, as long as you don't mind "flooring it" on the occasional short up-hill on-ramp.

It's a shame the newer Saturns have little of the innovative technology in this old one.

We just sold this one, because my wife was just plain tired of it. I never sold a car before with nothing wrong with it. My mechanic said I was an idiot for selling it, but he's divorced.

Faults:

Computer in the transmission (transmission relay switch) went bad, causing the transmission to malfunction.

Clutch plate went bad, but after all the miles on the car, I guess that's pretty good.

It guzzles oil. I get oil changes every 2,000 miles instead of three.

I have had to replace the rotors and two CV joints since I have had the car, which I believe is just normal wear, being as it had so many miles on it already when I bought it.

General Comments:

Overall, this car has pretty much been a headache for me since I have had it, and that has only been one year. It was a quick buy after we lost our van in Hurricane Katrina.

The motor is really loud, and the car is not very insulated inside, so if it is hot outside, the car stays hot inside, even though the air conditioner is on.

General Comments:

Well, let me start out by saying how glad I am that I found this site. I’m not the only one!

I bought a 1995 SW1 in 2002 with approximately 200k kilometers and from day one I started having oil burning/leaking problems.

It got to the point where I was putting in a quart of oil every time I gassed-up and changing the spark plugs every 6 months.

Like others, my experiences with the dealership were costly and a complete waste of time.

For some reason I thought the later models did not have the engine issues, and was seriously contemplating purchasing a more recent Saturn, but after reading these reviews I definitely will not!