AutoMuse®

Currently, I’m driving an all wheel drive 2003 Saturn Vue with a V6 engine, leather interior and (thanks to the person who invented them) heated seats.

The Vue is well named. I love the visibility of this unit and the huge moon roof that keeps you from feeling boxed in. This is a good vehicle for anyone with claustrophobia. The driver seat positioning has sensible placement and provides a vantage point for seeing the road. Some SUVs can be ponderous and give you a dark, weighted-down feeling. Not the Saturn Vue. It is a light-driving vehicle with a comfy interior and well-placed cupholders. Yes, cup holders. I am tired of searching every vehicle I drive for the darned cup holders. Sometimes I feel like a game show contestant when I finally hunt them down.

However, I am not fond of having the power window controls located in the center console around the gear shift. That’s where the front seat heat controls are, too, and it feels like there is an abundance of activity in the center just begging for someone to accidentally knock the transmission out of gear. The power door locks are located on the doors — right where you would expect to find them. So, why can’t the power window buttons be there, too? Putting the window controls in the center seems like an affectation of a much more expensive car. I expect to find my window controls on the center console of a Mercedes roadster, not a Saturn SUV.

This vehicle still looks good and drives very nicely after 16,000 miles. However, despite being equipped with a 6-cylinder engine, the response on the Vue feels sluggish — so much so, that I had to check the paperwork to be certain that the one I am driving does have a V6 engine. It does. Ironically, the leather interior on the Vue seems out of place. I drove an identical Vue yesterday equipped with cloth interior and the cloth strikes me as the better fit. Again, I have that same sense of trying too hard to be something it’s not.

Love the compact disc combined cassette radio. I have lots of music I still listen to that simply cannot be CD replaced. The radio is compact and smooth with all the necessary buttons and no fluff. I also like the fact that the lights and windshield wipers are in their obvious places. If you think I’m being stodgy about things being where I expect them to be, wait until I tell you about BMW’s iDrive — where absolutely nothing is remotely where you think it should be. Grrr.

Attributes:
All wheel drive
Silver out
Grey (Gray) leather in
V6
Moon Roof
Heated seats
CD/cassette radio
16,000 miles