2004 Saturn Vue with manual transmission

GM’s Saturn Division has been absent considering that the remaining 2010 Auras, Outlooks, Skies, and Vues slunk apologetically out of the showrooms, and I’m accomplishing my ideal to doc the more interesting models from The General’s after-innovative brand. Some of the afterwards Saturns began daily life as Opel designs, but the Vue essentially was the 1st auto to go on the all-new GM Theta platform the Opel Antara was therefore a Saturn duplicate, a simple fact that Saturn enthusiasts no question trot out when they get shamed by Opel zealots over the Astra. Present day Junkyard Gem is a most abnormal Vue, in the feeling that its original purchaser was wonderful with each the foundation guide transmission and the leather-upholstery up grade.

Certain, the most inexpensive way to invest in a new Vue— which was sold here for the 2002-2007 product years— was to get it with the base transmission: a 5-pace manual. You can continue to obtain a new vehicle with a five-on-the-flooring handbook suitable now, but only in a handful of cheapmobiles by the center 2000s, a little-and-at any time-shrinking subset of American auto purchasers would even contemplate a three-pedal commuter car.

Truly, there were being only two good reasons an American new-motor vehicle buyer would have deemed a non-enthusiast automobile with a manual transmission in 2004: both an eccentric desire for the very good ol’ stickshift or just plain penny-pinching.

The lowest priced probable ’04 Vue was the variation with four-cylinder 2.2-liter motor, entrance-wheel-travel, and five-velocity handbook transmission, and it begun at $17,025 (about $26,080 in 2022 pounds). That is what we are on the lookout at here. The optional CVT automated transmission expense an added $2,095 ($3,210 nowadays), so it built feeling to get the guide if you preferred to conserve serious dollars on your Vue.

However, this auto is loaded to the gunwales with good machines updates, to the tune of at minimum the Leather-based Appointments Bundle ($755) and the Sports Furthermore II Bundle ($1,300) and almost certainly a good deal far more. 

So, a customer who failed to care about electrical power (so no V6 motor), did not want all-wheel-travel, preferred driving a manual transmission … but insisted on electricity every thing and a total-zoot comfortable leather inside … in a affordable small SUV marketed by a quickly-fading brand name. The discussions with the Saturn salesmen about this detail have to have been exciting.

Developed in Tennessee, sold new in Denver, will be crushed near Pikes Peak.

Saturn’s massive enchantment, back again in the period of the S-Sequence, was often the no-stress/no-haggle obtaining process, regardless of the perception among the some GM fits that the plastic human body panels had been the most significant advertising issue.