1996 Saturn SC consumer reviews

[Comfort] This is a very small car. It's smaller than a Honda Civic, but despite this I'm over 6 feet, and I can fit in the car comfortably with head room to spare. The suspension is fir, but not harsh. It handles bumps well. It's sits pretty low to the ground. The seats are nice and supportive and comfy enough to go on long car trips and still be good. The back seats are small on intended for children, but I can fit back there. [Performance] Good for such a cheap basic car. It's light, small, and sits low with a 100HP punchy 4-Cylinder. The manual transmissions are really nice, and the Automatic's come with a Normal, and Performance mode. It handles very well. [Exterior Styling] I think it is a very good looking car. It stands out amongst other cars in its class, and is very curvy for an older car. These cars came available with lots of nice colors, and plastic body panels which I thought were stupid, but now I wish all cars were plastic. [Interior Styling] Plain and simple. Simple, but unique look. A nice big gauge cluster along with big easy to use switches and buttons. Very practical design. [Value for the money] Really good! Cheap to buy, reliable, and easy and cheap to fix. A good Do it Yourselfer Car! [Reliability] Really good overall; However, there are a few things to watch out for. The Catalytic converters go bad faster than you average car. It burns more oil than the Average car. With Automatics, the shifts into Reverse a little rough when the car gets hot. I put Synthetic oil in and the oil doesn't burn that much at all. I've driven mines for 50,000 miles I'm the 2nd owner. It now has 220,000+ miles on it still running. Always starts right up on really hot days, and really cold days. Nothing, but daily maintenance has been done to it. I just recently bought another Saturn. Now I own a 1985 Toyota Corolla, 1996 Saturn SC1, and a 1994 Saturn SL2.

I have no complaints about my 1996 Saturn SC-2. I have owned the car for over 11 years and that alone speaks for itself. The car is very reliable, has great gas mileage, and decent performance. Mine has the 5- speed manual. I have rarely had to work on the car besides regular PM. When I have had to do any work on the car it is easy to work on and access components. Currently my Saturn has 190,168 miles and still running strong.

i owned a 96 sc1 from 2001-2008, 5spd, no criuse control. and in those 7 years, it was the most reliable car i ever had when i bought it, it had 74,754 miles on it. When i got rid of it, it had 191,520 miles. if i still had it, it would have 295,000 the only reason i got rid of it, was because my daughter was born and when i got rid of it the only things it needed was for the clutch to be blead there was air in the line, new e-brake, and a new a/c whitch was broke for the last 3 years i had it (bad in the west texas summers) fuel milage even running at 75, i would return between 37-40 mpg bottom line GM made a huge mistake in cutting saturn but smart for geting rid of hummer

I have owned a 5 spd 96 SC1 for 4 years now. I love mine!! GREAT on gas, comfy, and fun to drive. Other than regular maintenance, (knock on wood, lol) I have not had any problems, and mine has just over 250,000km on it. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a car that gets 600+km to a tank for @ todays rate of $35 a fill up!

I have owned this car for 9 years now and have to say, it has been a great car. Had to replace the engine early on, but that was due to the previous owners lack of upkeep. Had great power for its size and great gas mileage. The only reason I am looking at getting new is the transmission may be going and will cost me 3k to replace. Now that the brand has been discontinued parts are going to be harder to come by. Its going to be a shame to see it fall by the wayside, but I just won't have the money to keep it up.

I bought my Saturn used with about 100,000 miles on it. I now have close to 200K on it and it is still going strong. A little general upkeep and these car will last a long time.

I bought my 96 SC2 as my 2nd car. At first I thought it was really cool, but then the problems started. At about 120,000, alternator went out, and since then the flashers make a buzzing noise and don't work, plus the bright light icon doesn't appear either. The rear defrost button has another short and I believe is what fried the Alternator. Now, alternator went out again, so now I have to crawl underneath and try to repair it. The lights are a joke, can't see very well even with the brights on. It has a very rough ride, but it is really close to the ground too, so that's expected. The stereo is not very good, speakers are not very good quality. The transmission is starting to go out too... I'm not sure if my car was mistreated before or what but it isn't that great, wish I would have kept my 89 Pontiac Bonneville....

I had this car for my first car and it suited my needs as a student really good. It had everything I needed from traveling to and from school to going out on the weekends with friends. It's roomier than it looks and it drives pretty well. I've stuck with a Saturn since then and found that these are pretty reliable little cars.

I bought this car a year ago and I have had very minor problems with it. The only problems were not expensive to fix and were typical of older cars to have. The car has a lot of great qualities, like power locks and windows, sunroof, and many other great qualities. It gets EXCELLENT gas mileage and it costs very little to fill up.

I got this car used and have had it for 6 years and have only had a few problems. For 5 out of 6 years I have really enjoyed the car and had a lot of fun driving it. It ran exceptionally well and got excellent gas mileage. My only hesitation in recommending the car is that, despite relatively low miles (96,000) and good maintenance, the car is in the process of dying - the transmission is practically dead and there are several electrical issues, so unfortunately at this point it'd take more money to replace the transmission then the car is worth.