Ok, I promised I'd explain how our extended warranty that we paid for when we bought our truck has more than paid for itself in the time we've had this VUE. This may end up being long, so if you want to know the details, read on...
We bought our Saturn VUE in March 2002. Black silver in color (which they no longer offer as a color choice), decked out with all the options we wanted. We were trading in our '00 Nissan Xterra, they offered us $16K for it, so we went all out on the VUE. We also decided to try out Saturn's "Car Care" extended warranty package, which also pays for all regular maintenance, for five years or 100K miles (I think.. it may be 80K). About the only things not covered are what are never covered under any warranties--parts that wear out like brakes, etc.
Suffice it to say, we've had to take our truck in so often that the maintenance director knows me by name, and sometimes worries when he sees me come in, wondering what's gone wrong with our truck this time (he was very relieved one time when I was just bringing in our other car, my little green saturn SL1, for its regular service).
Ready for our list of troubles with our truck?
<object, keeps the drive shaft from hitting the ground should it ever break & come loose. Nice, eh?
I think that covers most of it. Josh is gonna read through my list here and let me know if I've forgotten anything.
Basically the liftgate noises made up about a third of our complaints when we took in our truck because often it was rather noisy. The struts are another large portion of our complaints. Our VUE is an AWD vehicle, and we've often joked that we're scared to take it offroad in fear the truck would fall apart. Ok, so maybe we're only half-joking, and half-serious. So far we've never driven it off road, and frankly I don't think we ever will.
In all fairness to Saturn, their vehicles are pretty solid overall (my SL1 is a '97 and has 125k miles on it, and still going pretty strong). I have a feeling because this was a brand new model (we got ours as soon as the VUEs were available.. we had to wait, what, around a month for ours to be delivered?), that Saturn just needed time to work out the kinks and whatnot. We are seriously considering buying the new VUE that is supposed to be coming out in 2005 that will be a hybrid. Yes, that's right, a hybrid SUV. I can hardly wait! Of course, that being a new 'model', it will probably have it's own kinks to work out, but we'll probably get one all the same.
Despite all the issues we seem to have had with this truck in the short time we've owned it, we still love it.
(see? Told ya this would be long. a pat on the back for you if you stuck around and read it all!)
That's all, folks...
