Well, today we lost the oldest member of our Saturn extended family. My daughter's 1994 SC2, which she called "Kitten" is gone. She's been donated to a local charity, Vehicles for Change, that takes used vehicles and provides them to families that need a good, usable car to drive to work. Kitten gave her over 50,000 miles of reliable transportation and I'm sure she'll be just as good to the next owner.
Thanks, Kitten, for keeping her safe for all these years. So long!
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on February 24, 2009 at 1:12pm —
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Updating an earlier blog post (sorry, been way too busy to blog lately):
I've been keeping detailed gas mileage records on my former 2003 VUE and my 2007 VUE Green Line since March of 2005. This lets me directly compare the cost of operating the two vehicles.
For the 2003 (AWD V6), I recorded 21.361 MPG over 20,529 miles at a cost of 0.12 per mile (for fuel only).
For the 2007 Hybrid, I've received 26.777 MPG over 20,504 miles at a cost of 0.11 per mile.
Gee, you might say, only 1 cent per mi…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on September 24, 2008 at 9:00pm —
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I try to spot Astras on the road with little success (ok, today I spotted one. Unfortunately, it was my wife Diane driving hers so I guess that doesn't count.)
However, I'm also collecting photos of Astras on the road. Unfortunately, not here in the US. :-)
Earlier I posted a bunch of Vauxhall Astra photos taken in the UK, mostly on the island of Guernsey in the British Channel Islands (that's where Diane's from.)
Today, I posted a couple of Opel Astra photos taken in Bermuda.
Now all I have…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on August 12, 2008 at 10:12pm —
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This weekend while sitting at a traffic light, a woman in a minivan motioned to me to roll down the window. I thought she was going to be asking for directions. What she said was "I was admiring your car and was wondering what it was." When I replied "a Saturn Astra" I got the classic "that's a Saturn?" response, then a comment that she would consider it when she dumped the gas guzzling minivan.
I didn't see a camera anywhere so I don't think this'll be the next Astra ad. :-)
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on June 16, 2008 at 12:02pm —
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I've been keeping detailed gas mileage records on my old 2003 VUE and my 2007 VUE Green Line since March of 2005. This lets me directly compare the cost of operating the two vehicles.
For the 2003 (AWD V6), I recorded 21.361 MPG over 20,529 miles at a cost of 0.12 per mile (for fuel only).
For the 2007 Hybrid, I've received 26.330 MPG over 16,858 miles at a cost of 0.11 per mile.
Gee, you might say, only 1 cent per mile? Big deal. Well, it's not quite that easy. That 11c per mile is mostly due…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on June 10, 2008 at 2:30pm —
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We recently were on a trip to the UK. While I was there I looked around for Astras and grabbed photos when I could. They're certainly a lot more common there than here. :-) Have a look at my photo albums for a few pictures.
Extra credit for whomever figures out where we were for most of the photos (not the two from the bus, which shows an Astra on the highway.) The license tags are the big hint.
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on June 4, 2008 at 2:02pm —
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This weekend's fun involved installing the XM receiver into our Astra. The post here at Saturfans - http://saturnfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114919 - has very good directions. I mounted the XM antenna just behind the regular radio antenna and ran it through the passenger side sill. This required lifting the trim piece by the passenger door, but that went fairly easily.
I used an XM antenna switch from Crutchfield. The switch is installed by disconnecting the AM/FM antenna from the back of…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on May 13, 2008 at 10:52am —
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Power windows are a great convenience. It's great not having to crank away, and I liked having the ability back when my kids were young to lock the rear windows. However, like a lot of convenience items, they've always had a drawback: you stop the car, remove the key, then someone pipes up "my window is open", so you've got to re-insert the key and turn on the ignition so they can roll the window up.
The Astra doesn't need you to do that. For five minutes after the key is removed, you can opera…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on May 10, 2008 at 8:21am —
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This is another neat thing about the Astra. If you're leaving the car in the dark and would like to use the headlights to light your way, you can set it to run the exterior lights for a 30 seconds after you exit. That allows the headlights to light your path back into the house, for example.
I like the fact that this is selectable as there are times when you don't want to light up the world when you leave the car, and times when you do.
To turn on the delayed headlamps:
- Ignition off, key rem…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on May 7, 2008 at 9:36pm —
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One of the neat things about the Astra (at least to me!) is the number of little doodads that the car has. As we run across these non-obvious things I'll try to remember to blog about them. As I'm one of the three people on the planet that actuallly
reads their owner's manual, I'm likely to find a bunch of these. :-)
Today's nifty feature is appropriate as the weather is starting to heat up here in DC. It's called "Comfort Open Windows" and uses your remote keyless entry (RKE). Once you'…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on May 6, 2008 at 11:18pm —
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(Three as in three Saturns here - the daughter's 1994 SC2, my 2007 Green Line and Diane's Astra 3XR.)
My wife's Astra arrived as promised and we took delivery yesterday. I've put an album up with a few photos but it's still a bit early to say too much about the new addition. The delivery was handled well, in typical Saturn fashion. One comment I've had is that the return-to-center controls (like the directional signals) took a bit of getting used to.
I'll be installing the XM receiver soon, prob…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on May 6, 2008 at 5:47pm —
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Given the level of complaining I've been doing on the delivery delays on my wife's Astra, it now appears that whatever the problem was has now been solved and they're starting to flow out of the US ports. In true Saturn form, they're going to try to expedite shipments for those of us that have been patiently (and sometimes not so patiently) waiting for their new bundles of automotive joy. :-)
Gee, if they could arrange delivery for May 7th it would be a nice 25th anniversary present for the wif…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on April 30, 2008 at 11:16pm —
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In an earlier blog post, I mentioned the fact that my 2007 Green Line seemed to work better with midrange fuel (a tank half regular and half premium, more or less.) That run was all highway over a very hilly route (over the Blue Ridge mountains on a 120 mile trip from Harrisonburg VA to Annandale VA) where I got over 31 MPG. So, the next tank was all local travel with lots of short trips (averaging 30 miles per day). That local-dominated tank got almost 27 MPG where with regular I was seeing 22-…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on April 27, 2008 at 7:09pm —
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We're still waiting on my wife's Astra (see my earlier blog posts.) At the suggestion of one of the Saturnfans.com members, I've sent a message to the Saturn customer care center. We'll see if anything comes of it.
Still Frustrated.
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on April 24, 2008 at 2:38pm —
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I've kept very detailed mileage records on most of the life of my 2003 Vue and now the 2007 Green Line. For the GL, I have miles, gallons, cost, etc. for every tank.
For a while, I tried using premium fuel to see if the mileage would be better or worse. It didn't seem to make any real difference, so I went back to regular. However, I had the battery leakage problem back in February. When that happened, my mileage tanked, big time. Now with the new software and new battery, I'm noticing a big dif…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on April 14, 2008 at 9:09pm —
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So of all the members of my family - me, wife, and two daughters, we've all had Saturn-related cars. Loosely stated, of course, as the wife once owned a Mitsubishi Eclipse that was bought used from my local Saturn retailer. So, I want to get her into a
real Saturn, so I convinced her to dump her Mazda 6 for a Astra 3 door.
Ordered January 21st, 2008.
Hit the boat February 24, 2008.
Landed in Baltimore March 18, 2008.
Still in Baltimore almost a month later!
Today's poke at the reta…
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Added by Rick Murphy (RicksVue) on April 14, 2008 at 8:30pm —
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