Saturn Ion

General Motors launched Saturn Ion in 2003 as a replacement for the S Series that had come to an end, but this is not a singulary model, since other designs accopanied this change on the market.

Statistics indicate that, Saturn Ion satisfied users more than any other compact car sold on the American market, and this is the reason why it was sold for such a long time, till 2007 when Saturn Astra took its place. This vehicle relied on the famous General Motors Delta platform and it came with a standard DOHC Ecotec I4 engine that generated 140 horsepower.

The interior design of Saturn Ion had a very striking feature because of the instrument panel position, thus instead of being located behind the steering wheel specific for most other car concepts, it had a frontal position in the center of the dashboard. The Saturn Ion varieties available on the market included the coupe and the sedan. The novelty this car brought was explainable by the gearbox that allowed room for five forward gears modified to fit to the regular manual gearbox. The fuel consume was positively influenced by such a gearbox structure with the potential to improve acceleration too. Moreover, with Saturn Ion, heat was no longer a problem for the planetary gear set.

An upgraded Saturn Ion variant appeared in 2004 as part of the Red Line designed by General Motors. The model was imagined as a sportier car with a more powerful engine of 205 horsepower, a harder suspension and re-valved shock absorbers; the model relied on a 2.0 liter Ecotec engine known as the LSJ. In the same year, General Motors also launched a limited edition of Saturn Ion 3 that had all sorts of additional improvements in terms of interior and exterior design. Even if it were more expensive the cosmetic look was surely different. The only colors for this select model included electric blue, black onyx and chilli pepper red.

Until 2007, several improvements were made for the Saturn Ion engine power and cabin decorations. General Motors stopped producing unreliable models like the Aisin which had bad reviews because of various technical issues. It was during this time that Saturn Ion gained a negative reputation because of the bad publicity received from discontented reviewers. A re-modeling of the Saturn Ion had been announced for 2008, and the world wide web was full of pictures for the new model. And then Saturn Aura emerged.