Saturn Vue: Minor Quality Snafus

A friend dropped by the house today with a Saturn Vue that he had picked up at the rental car agency. The Vue only had a couple of thousand miles or so on the clock. I had driven a Vue Red Line back in Detroit, but I always relish the opportunity to hop into a new car.

Overall, I like what Saturn had done here. I like the exterior styling, it's sleek and modern looking. The car's interior had a very nice look to it. The plastics look good and feel suitably expensive and the seat's fabric feels upscale.

Having said that, this particular car had some issues. Firstly, when I went to use the passenger assist handle in the ceiling it came off in my hand. Looking at the screw that holds the left side of the handle in place, it had definitely been tightened all the way as you can see the thread locker is worked into the screw. It's hard to tell if the threads were stripped or if the screw had just worked its way loose. Next I wanted to see how the interior lit up at night. As we were sitting in the car, looking at the dash I noticed that light was leaking out of the glove box. I opened and shut the glove box, but the light was still there. We turned off the car and waited for all the lights to turn off, but the glove box light was still on. I felt around the inside of the glove box and found that the switch was hidden behind the box. The funny thing is, there is a cheap piece of foam stuck to the back of the glove box that is supposed to press against the switch. However, the foam has been indented so that the switch is never pressed in which in turn means that the glove box light never turns off. We temporarily fixed the issue by pulling off the foam and repositioning it so that a new piece of foam would come into contact with the switch. Voila!

Both issues are easily fixed, but it does leave you nervously looking around the car for anything else that might not be bolted down all the way. Chances are that this was an early production model and all the kinks were not worked out yet. However, I'd advise GM to rethink the foam block/light switch setup as it seems like that is ripe for failure.

I really do want to see Saturn succeed. I love the vehicles and I don't want to see anything get in their way.