You can’t find many performance or visual upgrades, while other cars in its class are getting much more attention. My biggest disappointment is the lack of aftermarket support. It had a total package-I didn’t have to put another two grand into it to be happy. I didn’t buy the Red Line Ion to own the fastest car on the street. Using GM Performance to enhance the platform and a brand like Recaro to give the interior more appeal is smart. It’s built on the platform of an everyday driver, but with some quickness added. My major consideration for buying the Ion was its practicality. We won’t go that far, as indeed we have driven better. “This is by far the most fun sub-$20,000 car I have ever owned,” one said. Overall, though, Ion Red Line owners we heard from were pleased with their purchase. The same goes for the center-mounted instruments, a layout that seemed poorly thought out for normal road use and resonated as an absolute disaster for track work, in which you want to view your gauges without having to look across the dash. Inside, the Recaro seats held us in place, but the rest of the interior still rated as one of our least favorites. Gaps between the plastic body panels were still too wide and, worse, inconsistent-a complaint we’ve lodged about most Saturns, not just the Ion. Nearly all of our test drivers commented on the car’s cheapness. Still unimpressive, however, was this Ion’s overall build quality and fit-and-finish. It is also the best braking Saturn ever: We stopped our car from 60 mph in 118 feet, almost the same short distance required by Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution RS (115 feet) and Lamborghini’s Gallardo (117). the chassis is very good and the suspension is quite firm.” As one tester said, “This is the best driving Saturn ever. Regardless, the Red Line averaged 45.9 mph through the slalom and pulled 0.84 g around the skidpad, which put it smack between the Civic Si, Mazda3 and Focus SVT. However, it remained one of the car’s dynamic faults, with an artificial feel in need of tightening. Our test car understeered a bit more than we would prefer, though the steering (revised on all Ions for 2004) provided drivers with more information than before, especially on-center. The Ion Red Line held its own in handling tests, too, thanks to its 17-inch tires and lowered, stiffened suspension. We were impressed with the Ecotec’s beefy torque curve, which made itself known throughout the midrange our 20-to-40-mph (3.0 seconds) and 40-to-60-mph (2.8) second-gear acceleration times were nearly identical. The Ion Red Line’s best quarter-mile time of 15.33 seconds at 94.6 mph also represented solid performance and bettered the Mazda’s run by 0.9 second, the Focus SVT by 0.39 and the Civic Si by 0.6. Even the much more expensive and powerful VW R32 hovered in the six-second range, with a 6.18 best time. Still, it was significantly faster than other fun-to-drive small cars we’ve tested recently, including the Mazda3 (7.97), Ford Focus SVT (7.32) and Honda Civic Si (7.82). With second gear good for 64 mph at the engine’s 6400-rpm rev limit, our test Ion accelerated from 0 to 60 mph in 6.75 seconds quite respectable, even though nearly a half-second slower than Saturn’s claimed 6.3. Thankfully, no matter the launch technique, there was barely a hint of torque steer at the drag strip: Saturn installed equal-length halfshafts and stronger CV joints to tame all 200 lb-ft. We achieved our best drag-strip launches by modulating the clutch between 25 rpm any less revs and the engine tended to bog, and to sidestep the clutch resulted in speed-killing wheel hop. Such output represents a huge gain over the standard Ecotec, and our track-test results reflect the improvement. The Eaton supercharger’s 12 psi of boost, along with revised engine internals-such as lightweight, heat-dissipating sodium-filled exhaust valves and forged crank-and a water-to-air intercooler help the engine produce 205 hp at 5600 rpm and 200 lb-ft at 4400. First and foremost, the Red Line team jettisoned the standard car’s 2.2-liter, 140-hp four-cylinder in favor of a blown version of GM’s 2.0-liter Ecotec four. So when Saturn announced it would build a Red Line performance Ion coupe, our collective pulse increased to somewhere around 60 beats per minute before we asked ourselves if Saturn engineers could transform the little coupe into a real driver’s car. Our feelings did not change after we got behind the wheel: Buzzy engine, horribly vague electric power steering. And yet, we weren’t impressed: What was up with the exterior shape? Why was the steering wheel so small? Did engineers intentionally set panel gaps to the mile rather than the mil? Nearly two years ago to the day, Saturn delivered to our garage the then-new Ion economy sedan it had touted as a paradigm-shifting example of affordable automotive nirvana.
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