Faults:

I bought this car on 2/7/03 and have had many problems with it. It started off with the Exhaust Gas Recirculation valve going out at 73,040 miles. This part cost over $200, as stated by the dealer.

Next came a coolant sensor. What happened with this is that it reads the coolant temperature and it was messed up saying one second that the coolant temperature was -34 degrees and then the next second it said that it was 165 degrees. This caused the computer to send tons of gas to the motor, causing it to flood out and die. Dealer also covered this.

Next on the list is the rear passenger power window motor and switch. I have heard of this going bad on many General Motors vehicles, but I guess that it is still a problem that I have had. It was cleaned first, then brought in again and had switch replaced, then had a bunch of new parts put on. Now it doesn't work again. But I can put fault to the dealer on this one cause they are trying to fix the problem and not put in a complete new motor. Dealer covered all parts and labor.

This brings me to now. Recently after a party, I went out to start the car and it reved up past 2,000 RPMs and down to 200 RPM multiple times until it stalled. I then started back up and same thing happened. I tried it today to see if it happened again and it did. I put in Isopropyl and still had same outcome.

Also today out on the cruise to see if the idle thing would stop happening, the rear passenger brake caliper locked up in the compressed position. This caused the brake to make all sorts of noises and such. I will bring into dealer tomorrow to get window, brakes, and idle thing checked out.

General Comments:

If it weren't for the dealership, I would have lost my mind. They covered everything and were always nice and courteous to my problems and reassured me that they would take care of any problems. I don't know information about the prior owner about if they had any other problems with the car. I understand that not all cars are perfect and that this one just may be one of them, perhaps a lemon?

This car handles and accelerates very well. I love the interior comfort. By this I mean that the leather seating is comfortable, the heads up display and steering wheel buttons are very nice, and it rides pretty good. The shocks are a bit stiff, but that's OK I guess. I was hoping to get a little better gas mileage since my past car (1987 Mercury Cougar) got almost 30 miles per gallon with a 302 motor and 178,000 miles. This car gets in between 20 and 23 miles per gallon, depending upon lengths of trips and such.

Faults:

Initially the car was near flawless except the trunk lid would open when I was driving. This was fixed by the dealer.

Around 60,000 miles one of the headlight lenses fell out requiring a new $200 headlight. This appeared to be an adhesive failure though the dealer said this was a fluke and they had not seen this problem before.

Around 62,000 miles the other headlight lens fell out. Same story with dealer.

74,000 the lower door panel on the passenger side popped from a broken clip. No, I didn’t hit anything; it just broke on its own. $85 repair.

75,000 miles, transmission began surging. (This felt like when you are driving and turn the cruise control off and get that little surge.) The first repair shop said it was the plugs and wires. This was $400 and didn’t fix the problem.

Took the car to a transmission shop and was told they couldn’t find anything wrong with it and thought it needed to go somewhere with sophisticated electronic diagnostic equipment and referred me on. There was a software upgrade for the transmission, but they also discovered that when the transmission was serviced as indicated in the manual, they apparently didn’t change out the filter and the fluid was very dirty and had more than the normal amount of metal in it. This was a $600 repair.

The car started running slightly hotter than usual so I took it back to the diagnostic place. They said the battery was rusted out and the coolant needed replacing with something other than that corrosive red stuff that came in it. Apparently this is a big job because together they wanted almost $1,000 to do it. I had my husband replace the battery and we simply added the same coolant and that seemed to fix the heating problem.

After all this I decided it was time to trade the car and since I drive through a rather nasty construction zone on the way to work I knew it needed an alignment. When I picked it up from the alignment shop and drove a few block, made a right turn and it felt like someone was jerking the wheel to the left…hard. I turned around and took it back and found the rack and pinion had broken. Lucky me. This was a $500 repair.

General Comments:

This was a nice car for the money and was maintained and serviced according to the Mfrs. schedule except that I changed the oil every 3,000 miles.

I would sell or trade these cars at 50,000 mile. When they go south on you, they go quickly.