Junkyard Find: 2004 Saturn Ion Sedan With Manual Transmission
The Saturn Ion is one of those cars you still see on the street today, perhaps not enough to notice, but it’s of minor historical interest as the Saturn-branded cousin of the Chevy Cobalt/Pontiac G5.
Most of the time, the Ion is just background noise to me in the GM section of a big self-service wrecking yard, something I pass by while looking for a Cimarron or Reatta. However, I had heard that the Knoxvegas Lowballers 24 Hours of LeMons team had adapted Ion electric power steering to their mid-Duratec-powered Geo Metro, and I was curious as what this alleged steering column-mounted rig looked like.
Once I poked my head inside the car, found at my local U-Pull-&-Pay, I noticed it had that rarest of all 21st-century Saturn accessories: a manual transmission.
Also present was the usual scratchy-but-tough gray GM seat fabric of the era.
The Ecotec engine appears to have surpassed the GM 3800 V6 as the most plentiful engine found in American high-inventory-turnover wrecking yards. This one was rated at 140 horsepower, which provided acceptable levels of fun in a sub-3,000-pound car with a five-speed.
Saturn had six years to live when this car was made, but the Ion only made it through the 2007 model year.
A catchy little tune, played by various objects crashing into the plastic flanks of an Ion.
The Ion’s appearance mattered so little that Saturn’s advertising wizards decided to omit the cars from this medium-weird ad.
Get a Saturn, get married. Then you’re done.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I've had a 95 SL1 [which my little brother now owns and loves] and currently own an 05 ION 1. The ION is better in NVH, turning circle radius, ride, quiet, ease of entry and exit, holds nearly 15 cubic feet in the trunk, doesn't suck oil nor has it cracked the head like the SL1 did. Besides the ignition switch and sway bar bushings, it has given reliable, inexpensive service and still looks like a late model. A dorky late model, but still. I tried the manual and it's asinine operation killed any enthusiasm I had for it after having the easy to engage Saturn sourced manual in the SL1. The GM 4 speed auto chose was quieter and drove better. And was an improvement over the Aisin 5 speed auto in the 03-05 models with the rough shifting [a flash rectified the shift flare problem]. They were reliable transmissions, [unlike the GM/Fiat CVT collaboration], but not well suited to the ION. And there are plenty of ION manuals out there. They aren't rare. As to the polymer getting brittle in the sun, that's just BS.The cracked panels one sees are signs of abuse, not the effects of sunlight and heat. Still thousands of 20-25 year old S Series around that are immaculate, fenders and doors intact, completely unaffected by age. I see many of them all the time in AZ. More often than not they look far better than any of the same era desert rats on the roads out here. Same with the IONs.
I bought a 2007 Saturn Ion 5-speed in 2010 for, I want to say, around $7500K-$8000K with 33,000 miles. I needed a relatively cheap used car fast after someone, thankfully, ran into my problematic '90s MB S420. After so many problems with the Benz, I wanted something, anything, with as low miles as I could afford, and the Saturn fit the bill. It was a decent car, really, overall. I recognized after driving home from the dealer that it was a "cheap" car. The interior, the plastics, the seats, I knew I just bought a economy car, a far cry from the Benz, but it worked, that's what was important. It's 142HP (I believe) was enough to drive decently, and everything worked and looked new. I was happy enough with it until someone ran into me while I was stopped at a stoplight and totaled it when it had just turned 50,000 miles a few years later.