I do miss my '06 Ion 3 Quad quite often, it was a fun little car that got excellent mileage for it's comfort level. The cloth seats were comfortable, the trunk was massive (as it's been said before), and my favorite part of the car was the 2.4L paired with the manual transmission - it moved that car like crazy. Mine was generally reliable, a few squeaks and rattles and a fuel injector failure was all that went wrong in the 65,000km's I owned it for. It was a great commuter car, with one solid highway trip landing me 41mpg, generally though I was in the 35mpg range. Quad coupe styling was great too, the Pacific Blue colour pretty much sold me the first time I saw it.
I agree that the Ion 1 and Ion 2 cars were generally boring and whenever I drove one as a rental when mine was in the shop and I needed to be somewhere, I hated the ride quality, but the 3's and Redline were awesome.
Why buy the Saturn when you could go get a Honda with a way better interior for the same money and lower lease rates.
When I bought my Ion this couldn't have been farther from the truth. I priced out a Civic and to get the same options as my Ion 3 it would have cost me about $4000 more. Yes, the interior is nicer, but the Civic lacked the horsepower I was after.
Overall for the price I paid for it, I adored the car - going from an SC1 to the Ion was quite an upgrade in my opinion, although I did love the S-Series as well.
