From the November/December 2026 issue of Car and Driver.

Back in 2007, I gave my father-in-law, Roger, a ride in a Dodge Viper test car. He loved it, and I offhandedly said, “If you like this, a Saturn Sky Red Line is 80 percent of the performance for 30 percent of the price.” That was the extent of my salesmanship, so I was surprised a month or so later to learn that he’d gone out and bought a new Sky Red Line—for less than $30,000.

I mean, people ask me for car-buying advice all the time. But the way it usually works is that someone asks my pick for an electric sedan, I tell them to drive a Lucid Air, and then they buy an F-350 Power Stroke. So Roger’s follow-through was both rewarding and unnerving, because now he owned a Sky, and I owned my opinion, which is dangerous. I once had a boss who asked me to name a car that was “overpowered but understated,” and I blurted three words that I came to regret: “Volkswagen Phaeton W-12.” I think soon thereafter the company handbook was amended to make Phaeton recommendations a fireable HR violation.

Fortunately, Roger liked the Sky, the first new GM car he’d purchased since a 1982 Camaro Berlinetta that was so terrible that he swore he’d never buy another GM vehicle. He usually sticks to such decrees, but maybe Saturn got a pass because the brand wasn’t around when his Chevy was putting him on a first-name basis with the local tow-truck dispatchers. In any case, the only problem the Sky ever had pertained to the notorious GM ignition-switch recall, wherein pre-bankruptcy GM’s pathological commitment to cheapness led to ignition cylinders unfit for a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe and thus occasional random engine shutdowns. This happened to Roger once on a back road, but he was unbothered. “I just put it in neutral, restarted it, and kept driving,” he told me. “Didn’t even stop.” I guess the Camaro might have permanently recalibrated his expectations for build quality.

Eventually, Roger stopped driving, but he still liked the Sky, so it sat in his driveway long enough for the neighbors to plant hedges so they wouldn’t have to look at it. But where they saw a dented, pollen-crusted car with two flat tires, I saw a dented, pollen-crusted car with two flat tires and a 260-hp turbo four, a stick shift, rear-wheel drive, and a limited-slip differential. Roger said that if I could get it going, I could have it for the bargain price of “get it out of my driveway.”

Extracted and lightly reformatted for readability. · Source: pt