Last time, I wrote about my 1994 Nisan Pathfinder. It ended up being too much car for a college student, and coupled with the on-going electrical issues, I returned to form and picked up a two-door car. $1500 got me the keys to a 1992 Saturn SC.
The SC was the two-door realization of Saturn’s vision for low-cost, durable cars. The plastic body panels were designed to repel dent and dings, and surely helped offset the 124 horsepower on tap. While no one would ever call this car fast, it did have a nimble nature that made it fun in town.
I always liked the looks of this car. While the plastic didn’t look great up-close, it had nice curves. Visibility was hard to beat, and thankfully all that glass could distract from the fact that very little of this car’s body was made of metal.
Unlike later SCs, these first-gen cars were built on a shorter wheelbase than the mainstream, 4-door SL. Coupled with the 50-inch height, the SC was not a big car, even by Saturn standards.
The $1500 I spent got me a clean car in a nice gold color with a matching tan interior, sun roof and automatic transmission. It’s the only car I’ve owned with pop-up lights, even though I had issues keeping the sealed-beam lamp on the passenger side from blowing out until I tracked down a guilty-looking fuse.
Unfortunately, the lesson this Saturn taught me is that, sometimes, you get what you pay for. I owned this car in college, so really only got driven on the weekends. One Sunday morning, I was out early. While I was driving, I started to notice the unmistakable smell of burning plastic. In a matter of moments, smoke started pouring out of the dashboard.
I don’t mean the vents, either. Smoke was curling around the climate control buttons and coming our from around the radio. I pulled over as quickly as I could, jumped out and disconnected the battery. After the smoke cleared and a friend showed up, we began to take apart the center console.
The culprit soon became clear. The circuit board that made up the climate control panel had shorted out, burning not only the silicon board, but the plastic on its wiring harness. I disconnected it, started the car back up and got home with no other issues.
After the car spent a few days of sitting outside my dorm, I went to get something out of it and realized the smell wasn’t going to fade quickly, as long as that part was in the car. I took out that entire section of the center console, just leaving the radio. Coupled with an interior door panel I had removed to repair the window regulator, my Saturn suddenly looked very steampunk:
Notice the wrench wedged in there to keep the radio in place. Not sure why I thought taking the faceplate off was necessary at this point. I promise not all my cars turn into such horror shows. I soon realized that a replacement part was going to be way out of my budget, so I learned how to drive a car with no AC, heat or even defrost. It’s all about when to have the windows up or down, and sometimes, having a towel handy.
I drove The Steampunk SC for another 6 months or so, and as the odometer neared 100,000 miles, it began to run warm. Replacing the thermostat helped, but soon, I realized that I had a bigger problem when nothing I could do would keep the temperature under control.
Before long, the car was only capable of making short trips. Making it to work involved prayer, and on hot days, the need to stop to let things cool down.
I’m sure you can see where this is going. One hot day at the end of a spring semester, my SC went to the great Saturn parking garage in the sky in a cloud of steam and smoke. I had it towed, and the news was bad. My little plastic car needed a block. One of the guys who worked at shop that had it took a liking to it, and offered me $500. I took his money in a heartbeat and decided it was time to do the adult thing: take out a loan and buy a car that would last.
The guy who liked probably realised it only needed the radiator cleaned out and got a bargain, these things happen a mate and I drove 300kms the other week to collect a car he bought on an online auction reputed to have issues and being French it went cheaply, the apparently used water and on the return journey it did, maybe half a litre from the expansion tank, further investigation has found a weeping heater hose but apart from that the car is in good order and runs and drives great, The vendor had been told horror stories by a garage he’d taken it to and got scared then decided to ditch it so for $362 and a tank of diesel for me my friend has a tidy reliable Xantia.
If the engine was bad there would be other symptoms than just overheating. The coolant would look like mud, or there would be excessive amounts of white exhaust smoke. If it were a cracked block, you would see or smell the coolant leaking. They also sell combustion leak testers somewhat inexpensively.
That being said the car had a lot of other things wrong with it and it was older than the Pathfinder you replaced, so you probably made right call.
I have decidedly mixed feelings about my old SL2 as well. It was certainly a good commuter car, and not having to worry about door dings was quite a weight off my paranoid mind. Surprisingly fun to drive, too. But then – at fewer than 45,000 miles – it developed mysterious starting problems. Wouldn’t start for days, then fired up seemingly at random. The dealer couldn’t replicate the issue, naturally, and back then I didn’t have the time or know-how to investigate myself. A sad end to what started out as a pretty nice little car.
“and decided it was time to do the adult thing: take out a loan and buy a car that would last.”
Ah, the moment of epiphany!
When I was young and poor, I had a boss who was old, wealthy, and cheap. He would go on and on about how Sam Walton of Walmart drove an old pick-up truck.
Finally one Monday morning, having spent the whole weekend screwing with my beater, I’d had enough of ‘ol Sam and the virtues of cheap cars and I went off on my boss:
“Of course Sam Walton drives an old pick-up. He’s rich; he can afford to. If it won’t start some morning, he just drives another car. If something breaks he just pays a mechanic to install new parts. Burn a cigarette hole in the seat? Buy a new seat. A poor young guy can’t afford to drive an old car. He has to get to work every morning or else. He needs need a car with a warranty.”
What? You guys think vehicle loans are a great idea?!? That’s crazy talk! I’ve never- in almost 40 years of motoring- had a new car or a new car loan. But I love everyone that runs out and buys new cars more often than I buy underwear- keeps the supply of good cheap used cars big for me!
Yours is a great concept, as long as you have four things:
First is time. You have to have a social life that factors in evenings and weekends spent working on your car.
Next is a good set of tools, or a budget for the same, or realistically both. Often time I’ve priced the tools required to do a job and decided it’s just as cheap to have somebody else do it. How often am I going to use an engine hoist?
Then, third is a garage where you can leave the car torn down for several days while you wait for the parts and or tools you didn’t anticipate needing to arrive. Note that the arrival of said parts must coincide with time available to work on the car again.
Finally you need talent and skill. You have to be able to properly diagnose the underlying problem from the symptoms, and ideally identify it before supporting systems have been damaged. For example overheating coming from a hose that only leaks under pressure must be properly identified before the head warps…. Which is usually after you changed the thermostat like the Net told you to.
Last and unofficially, you need a woman who is fine with you coming home, gobbling dinner, ignoring her, going to bed greasy, and not even talking to her on the weekend while you replace the struts….
Or you can have a car with a warranty and take her dancing
I have over the years found that last point to be the most crucial! Fixer-uppers are fine for second or third cars, but the mainstay has to run every time.
You pay either way in the end. A new car will cost you money reliably, every month. An old car will cost you money irregularly. Three months, six months, sometimes a year without any costs, and then boom. $500 if you’re lucky, $1200 if you’re not. The used car costs you less over the long run, but if you don’t have an emergency fund (as I didn’t at many points in my younger days) it can really play havoc with your finances.
This is why my wife drives a 4 year old car that we bought new and is still under warranty, and I drive a nearly 20 year old beater. You get the best (and the worst) of both worlds that way.
Sort of reassuring to see that a modern plastic car can still be jury-rigged and ductaped!
One of my friends in high school drove a SC1, red like the first few photos.
When we were all 15, I remember her saying how happy she was that her parents were buying her a car but she just hoped it wasn’t going to be red because she thought red cars looked like they were made of plastic. Oh the fun we had when she ended up getting a car which was red and actually made of plastic.
A smart man learns from his mistakes. Taking out a loan for your next car should prove itself a smart move. With this SC you had a choice: minor in automotive repair or focus on your chosen field of study. Of course you could have spent some time in a junkyard to get the needed parts but that does not seem to fit your inclinations. That’s when a steampunk car becomes a real distraction.
In keeping with the ‘say one nice thing’ theme from yesterday about Toyotas, my wife and I bought a Saturn (2S I think?) in that Firethorn Red (or equivalent color) for her son to use while he was in college. It had a stick and was pretty fun to drive. I remember her asking me to go to the car dealership to test drive the car while he was at school before she committed to buying it for him. She can’t (or won’t learn how to) drive a stick. He was away at school, and trusted my judgment, saying his main parameters were that a) it got good gas mileage b) it had to be a stick. Since he graduated and got a good job, he kept that choice of car going by trading in on the Saturn on a Mazda 3, and yes, it has a stick.
One other nice thing I can say about these SCs is I’ve always liked that wheel on those cars (like the rims on the car pictured at the top of the page). If I were in the market for one of these back in the day, I would’ve gotten mine in that nineties teal that was all the rage, and it would’ve had to have those wheels.
I think what always bothered me about Saturns is that they looked like they were styled by people who had never designed a car before….but who were told to “make it look reasonably mainstream”.
I was really disappointed when the Ion replaced the SL, as it looked like GM had gotten yet another group of designers who had never worked on cars before being hired by Saturn.
I thought that the 3 door coupe idea was fantastic, though.
“The plastic body panels were designed to repel dent and dings,”
That’s not all, I always found the body design on the SC to be repellant.
At least you got part of your money out, and you have my admiration for the roadside fix. I think most people would have just called the scrap yard and walked home.
The SL looked a lot like the GM 10 Cutlass at the time. The SC 1 which came later had the exposed headlights of the sedan, which I thought looked better, or just different. An interesting choice.
The SC was too low and had Mustang II legroom in the rear seat. The sedan styling seemed better balanced and on the SL/SL1, had better taillights.
Stephen: electrical problems are my greatest fear, even now and not just in cars, but houses. So random and potentially so dangerous.
I loved my 95 SL1 and if the manual version of the ION had been as easy to use and second nature as the S, a five speed would have been the choice.
My little brother is still driving the 95, has taken it across country and it now has nearly 200,000 miles. It was amazingly solid at 116,000 miles when I first bought it.
Yes, there comes a time when effing with an older car just becomes too much of a hassle. After 10 years of driving my 63 Valiant, a car with automatic, power steering, brakes, working AC and only 79,000 miles was a substantial step up into adulthood.
I owned a first year Saturn SC2 – manual transmission. It was reasonably quick. The dealer service was a huge improvement over the Chevy dealer where I had spent a lot of time due to my 1988 Beretta GT.
The build quality of the car was good. I like the styling. The plastic panels held up to the rigors of a post-college graduate apartment complex lot.
Traded it in on a 1996 Honda Accord EX 5speed because the Saturn ended up getting to be too small for where I was in life at the time.
The Honda was boring but a good car.
Family member bought a ’95 SL2 stick shift for $1000 in ’04 that had 110k miles on it.
It always used oil, but held on until 2010 and finally broke it’s timing chain at 264k miles and was junked. Starter, alternator, water pump, coil, ps pump seal, ac o ring, coolent temp sensor, shifter cable, motor mount were all replaced while she had it.
I have an automatic 1998 sl2 its been a pretty good first car for the year I’ve had it but it too is starting to run hot. I’m pretty sure it’s leaking head gasket, the transmission is starting to sound and act a little rough aswell. I was completely caught off guard by how nimble it is, hilly roads are always a treat. I’m planning on selling it soon which will be a difficult task. I will use my funds to buy something better built, manual and sportier.
Also someone commented on the wheels. I redid mine but silver with gold accents as my car is gold. Looks pretty nice
Theirvman: check your ETCS [electronic temperature control sensor]. Type in “Saturn ETCS” on Google and many links come up.
It’s a standard part to be replaced and one of the “maintenance” things S Series owners do.
Agree, they are updated and a it’s common, easy and cheap part to replace.
Automatic transmissions on these cars tend to have problems with solenoids and sometimes valve bodies.
In late 1995 I bought a brand new 1996 SL2 5 speed and then five days later took advantage of their 100% 30-day, 1,500-mile money-back guarantee.
I was impressed by their commercials, you know, the one where the line assembly guy pulls the stop cord because he saw a missing fitting. Well my 1996 SL2 was so bad it took me 4 hours to take it home from the dealer because the right side power windows did not work. During the week a number of things fell out or off the dashboard and console and a mid week service visit fixed none of the issues.
I stormed into the dealer on Saturday morning demanding my money back. They hustled me into a private office (there were customers in the showroom) and they promised to have a check for me on Monday morning. I did not want my Sable wagon trade-in back as they had been using it all week as a company van, so the refund would be what I paid plus the value of the trade-in.
Monday at noon I got my check.
Some time later, the money back deal was changed to a vehicle exchange program. I guess I wasn’t the only one who took advantage of the former offer.
I bought a ’94 Saturn SL2 in the same gold color for $1600. It only had 71,000 miles on it. And it had a clean Carfax.
I hated it within a few months. Yes, it was reliable, but it drank oil, had an automatic when I would have preferred a stick, the gold color is awful on sedans, had those (unprintable) automatic seat belts, and it constantly had mechanical troubles (despite being reliable).
I’ve seldom been happier to donate a vehicle. And I’m not sure I’d EVER buy another Saturn.
SOLD IT FOR $500 BUCKS??!! YOU DID EXTREMELY WELL!!!
That was my thought too! 🙂
Had two of the. SL models. a 97 and a 2k. They were both darned near perfect except my butt hurt after driving a couple hundred miles. In 2002 we bought a first year Opel Vue. For the first 75k miles it worked well too. Then things turned to garbage and I cannot see myself doing GM for a while longer. That 2002 has been the cause of a couple new Nissan sales and one used Toyota.
IMO the plastic was a great idea that was executed pretty well. I thought the SL models were designed pretty well. Then we bought the new vue.
Why General Motors bothered to fit both airbags and automatic shoulder belts is beyond me…
That is unless this particular Saturn model has driver’s side airbag only and no beach ball for the passenger side.
The automatic shoulder belt is one of the worst safety equipments ever conceived next to the seat belt interlocking alarm that annoyed the drivers and passengers to no end in 1973-1974.
cc effect? i shot these a couple of days ago. maybe it’s yours!
from behind
I always rather liked the styling of the SC, coming as it did at the end of the pop-up lamp era. Your determination in driving it as long as you did is to be commended–by the end it sounds a lot like my wife’s Alero, a car in whose last few months we had to top up the oil and water/coolant before going *anywhere* lest it overheat or the oil light come on. We ended up donating it before anything catastrophic happened, but whoever bought it at auction would have had some major work to do if they wanted it to be viable transportation again.