Saturn averages 4.08 complaints per production run against 3.72 across the market, and its cars reach the halfway point of their complaints at 6 years. Cleanest model in the range is the SC (1.22 per run), heaviest the Aura (10.7).
When it starts to break
Not the calendar year the complaint was filed — the age of the car when it failed. This is the number that decides whether a fault costs you anything: inside the warranty the manufacturer pays, outside it you do.
| Age at failure | Complaints | Running total | Warranty |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 years | 7.3% | covered | |
| 1 year | 12.7% | covered | |
| 2 years | 18.7% | covered | |
| 3 years | 27.9% | you pay | |
| 4 years | 38% | you pay | |
| 5 years | 49% | you pay | |
| 6 years | 59.8% | you pay | |
| 7 years | 69% | you pay | |
| 8 years | 77.5% | you pay | |
| 9 years | 83.4% | you pay | |
| 10 years | 88.9% | you pay | |
| 11 years | 93% | you pay | |
| 12 years | 95.8% | you pay | |
| 13 years | 97.9% | you pay | |
| 14 years | 99% | you pay | |
| 15 years | 100% | you pay |
The market pattern: failures peak at four to five years, while basic warranties stop at three. That is why a three-year-old car off lease looks like a bargain and a five-year-old one is where the bills start.
Saturn models ranked
Cleanest first. The rate is complaints per production run, so a model that sold in millions is not punished for it — this compares how often owners of the same build actually filed.
| Model | Per run | Complaints | Breaks at | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saturn SC | 158 | 5 yrs | 1995–2002 | |
| Saturn SW | 116 | 3.7 yrs | 1995–2001 | |
| Saturn Relay | 99 | 3.7 yrs | 2005–2007 | |
| Saturn SL | 1,222 | 4 yrs | 1995–2002 | |
| Saturn LS | 303 | 5.6 yrs | 2000–2000 | |
| Saturn Astra | 146 | 7.5 yrs | 2008–2009 | |
| Saturn Vue | 1,937 | 6.3 yrs | 2002–2010 | |
| Saturn Ion | 3,501 | 5.9 yrs | 2003–2008 | |
| Saturn SKY | 462 | 7.4 yrs | 2007–2009 | |
| Saturn Outlook | 1,079 | 5.1 yrs | 2007–2010 | |
| Saturn Aura | 1,284 | 6.7 yrs | 2000–2009 |
Good year or bad year — the VIN settles it.
- Check any VIN against complaints for its exact build year and plant
- Exact value for that car, adjusted for its mileage
- Full research report as a PDF you can hand to a mechanic
- Alerts if a recall lands on a car in your garage
- No ads, on every page
- No ads, no tracking — and much more
How we measure it
Reliability scores usually arrive as a number out of five with no working shown. We publish the arithmetic instead, because two things about it are arguable and you should be able to argue with them.
Rate, not total. A model that sold three million units collects more complaints than one that sold thirty thousand, and that says nothing about either. So we divide by the number of production runs — the distinct first-eleven-character VIN prefixes on record. Across 1,100,006 complaints and 295,326 runs the market average works out at 3.72 per run.
Age, not year. Every complaint carries an incident date and a model year, so we can work out how old the car was when it failed. That is what the warranty question turns on, and it is why our «worst year» rankings exclude anything built in the last 6 years — those cars simply have not had time to break yet.
What this is not. A complaint to NHTSA is a deliberate act, so this measures serious faults, not paint that scratched. It says nothing about running costs or how nice a car is to own. And an absence of complaints on a rare model means an absence of owners, not excellence.
Related tools
Frequently asked questions
Is Saturn reliable?
Saturn averages 4.08 complaints per production run against 3.72 across the market, with the halfway point of complaints at 6 years.
Which Saturn model is most reliable?
By complaint rate, the SC at 1.22 per run. The full ranking is in the table above.
Which Saturn should I avoid?
Heaviest complaint rate in the range is the Aura at 10.7 per run — though a high rate on one generation does not condemn the model outright.
Where do these numbers come from?
Complaints filed with NHTSA, the US federal safety regulator. Filing one is a deliberate act, so this measures faults people considered serious — not survey opinions.