Consumer Complaints
| Fail date | miles | occurences | Purchase date |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTHER | |||
| 12/13/2007 | 2 | 02/28/2003 | |
| Horn is very difficult to actuate, requiring hard pressing one of two specific small horn logos on the steering wheel air bag cover. these are hard to find in an emergency, and impossible to quickly find when driving at night. this has resulted in a few near misses, because the horn could not be activated quickly enough to alert another driver that they were leaving their lane. i had to swerve evasively to prevent the accident. saturn dealer in past has said that horn works normally. this is the only vehicle that my wife or i have driven in thirty years that has this problem. it appears to be a poor design, and something should be done to rectify it. the horn is useless in a suddenly developing emergency situation. date is not specific; as form would not allow submission without a date. i have not had an accident yet, but this should be rectified before someone has a serious accident. *tr | |||
| 12/29/2003 | 2 | ||
| I own a 2003 saturn ion. the battery went dead today because my wife left the lights on by accident. when the battery in this model car becomes discharged two undesireable problems arise. i feel that both of them introduce safety concerns. first, the key won't come out of the ignition switch through normal means. second, the car can't be moved! the gear shift lever remains in the park position. i feel that a car designed such that these two problems occur when the battery fails is a poor design. the instruction manual provided with the car makes no mention of these problems occuring with a dead battery. in order to jump a dead battery in a car it is often necessary to move the car i n order to jump the battery from another car. i feel having an intentional design in a car that prevents it from being moved by the owner creates a safety concern. regarding the key situation, my wife left her entire set of keys in the car when they got stuck in the ignition switch. many important keys were left in the car unattended. it could have made a bad situation much worse. it turns out that the instruction manual in the car discusses how to get stuck keys out of the ignition switch, but no mention is made in the book that keys will get stuck in the ignition switch when the battery goes dead. i spoke to the consumer complaint department at saturn regarding this concern, but it is not saturn's policy to respond to this type of customer complaint. since i feel these two problems do have a safety impact, i decided to register this complaint with the nhtsa. *ak | |||
| 10/17/2003 | 5100 | 5 | 08/06/2003 |
| I bought a saturn ion in early august of 2003. i have had 5 separate occasions where the vehicle has stalled out on me and had no control of the car what so ever! the latest time was at the interstate at 65 miles per hour with an eight wheeler truck right behind me. had i not thought quick and put the car in neutral and restarted the car or else i would have been hit it the rear by a several ton vehicle. i could have been killed! the entire power to the car dies !! the steering column locks up and you the entire car shuts down and you are stuck in front of another car w/ only the prayer of restarting your saturn ion so that you are not killed! the first person i spoke with in the service department told me that he had heard of this in a couple of other cars the service manager claimed he had no knowledge of what the first service technician was talking about. i am outraged that saturn said they would try to get the car to duplicate this problem for them. i have told them that it is not something that happens everyday or even every week. their response was we can't fix what we do not know is broken i am going to ask that the car be returned to gmac which is the lean holder! i do not think this is a safe vehicle for myself and my small children. i strongly discourage others from purchasing the saturn ion !!!! i feel as if i have been riding in a death trap!! *la outraged unfortunate saturn owner of winston-salem. *la | |||
| 06/12/2003 | 3 | 06/12/2003 | |
| I purchased my 2003 saturn ion quad 3 on 6-12-2003. i've had nothing but problems with it since the beginning. the transmission slips constantly. a tech from spring hill says this is normal for this type of transmission. trying to turn left in front of oncoming traffic is a nightmare. this car is in the shop as we speak. the rear quarter panel is cracked and being replaced. the rear bumper is being painted because of scratches from the trunk rubbing. the front bumper is being painted because of runs in the paint. none of the body panels seem to match up. they're attempting to fix a popping noise in the front end. they're replacing the dr side glass because it is severely scratched. it sometimes runs rough at first crank. | |||
| 09/19/2003 | 4 | 10/23/2002 | |
| On three different occasions my knee has accidentally hit the keys, causing the engine to shut off. my wife has had this happen once. i am 6 foot 3 inches, my wife is 5 foot 6 inches. in other words, normal heights. two of these occasions have been on a freeway, going 65 mph. luckily traffic has been light so there has not been an accident. had traffic been heavier, this could have been much more serious. *jb | |||
| 08/19/2003 | 1 | ||
| I own a ion 2003, when we purchased the car we also purchase the plastic window guards from the dealer. i had problems with the back door, the two parts making up the door were separating at top of window. they try to gluing, it didn't work, then they try something else and it did work, and finnally they order a new part. when they install the new part, they removed the plastic guard fron the window and said they will replace it at the next oil change. well the next oil change came a they not only did not replace the window guard but they removed the guard from the other window!!!!they stated the guard was the caused of the problem. now i want to know are the doors safe. my wife place my grand child in the back seat. is there a bigger problem with the doors ????*ak | |||