2007 Saturn Aura: Bu! Look at that interior

The biggest gripe I have with the Aura's interior is Saturn's use of amber colored lighting on the radio display. It gets totally washed out in even moderately bright sunlight. I had an Aura as a service loaner once and I remember driving with the sun directly behind me and the display looked totally blank.

I agree about the Malibu. After years of everyone useing a sea of monotone grey or beige, it's nice to see a automaker with guts to be different

Robert - you are 100 percent correct, washed out display is a big prob on the Aura.

I think the steering wheel on the Malibu looks out of place. The rest of the interior looks so majestic.

Ow, my eyes... Maybe in person it's better, and the quality and texture and better in the Malibu. But that Halloween color scheme is awful.

I like the Malibu interior design but I rather take the all black with silver trim than that, that... cartoonish thingy...

Your first mistake is getting an Aura with the fake wood Trim. My XR has the silver (fake metal?) trim with the black leather and it looks much nicer.
 
Your second mistake is assuming that just because the interior of the Malibu screams at you that its better. I'll take the more subdued, classy Aura interior over it.

The Aura is anything but classy, tacky maybe, with the nasty outdated wood trim and extremely poor panel fitment, and the out of place color for the radio and HVAC. It looks like someone placed a cutout over it and spray painted some satin like finish over it.

The Malibu has a more refined, cohesive look to my eyes than the Aura. I don't much like the orangey color, but the other two-tone combination I see on the chevy website seems a bit nicer. Really nice execution overall.

I agree with those who don't like the orange hue. From the picture you cant really see material quality or feel, but I prefer the Aura's color choices over the "LOOK AT ME!" orange of the Malibu.
 
But I do like the overall interior design of the Malibu better.

The pictures do not do justice at all to the two tone scheme of the Malibu. Having actually sat in one, it really isn't nearly as orange as it looks in pictures. Its more brick red-ish. Unless, of course the one I sat in was the exception and the rest all really do look like that. Whatever the case, I do prefer the 2LT's interior a bit better than the LTZ's.

Unless you have actually sat in and driven these cars in day and night conditions, I wouldn't make judgements based on these photos. I actually love the orange instrumentation in my Aura.

I feel the orange will fade out of favor like a fashion trend, while the fake wood will remain constant over time. The orange may be nicer right now, but in ten years, it's going to be a heck of a lot easier to sell the fake wood interior than the orange one.

I can't stand the 2-tone interior. It looks like it should come in a package with a vinyl roof (or one of those oh so classy fake convertible tops) and exterior opera lights. Yuck

The Auras interior execution is to blame. The design is ok but in terms of fit/finish and execution its lacking compared to its cousin. The Mailbu also had better detailing.
 
I actually like the Bu-Lee-Mals interior all except the door panels as they are just to flat and plain. It needs something.
 
The only thing Im unsure about the Malibu is the interior color offerings. Not that their bad but some colors seem to not go with the cars more upscale persona. The colors Im speaking of tend to be more on the sporty side and would better fit the G6's image.

Yes but then again, the G6 is an utterly hopless car.

hondaacura4, this is the grammer police. The correct word is They're(They are) not their(whose cup?).
 
Moving on, I like GM's new interior offerings(well, the newer ones anyway). Its good as the traditional BBG(Black Beige Grey) interiors have become boring. VW's Mocha Brown and BMW's red & brown are the best IMO. In that above picture, they forgot the G6(IMO the prequality interiors).
 
Actually, I'm proud of GM as a whole. My dad confused the Malibu with an Acura TL and a lexus! Great for chevy, but for acura... Where was this GM 10 years ago?
 
-Cj

"My dad confused the Malibu with an Acura TL and a lexus!"
 
Understandable. The side profile (especially the window frame) of the Malibu is an exact copy of the TL.

I'm so distracted by the hideous colors of the Malibu that I can't see anything else. I'd like to see one in a single-tone, preferably black leather, before rendering judgment.
 
Regarding the amber colors washing out in the Aura, I have to wonder again, how can that possibly escape product testing?

wayyyyyyyy classier that the Auras wood interior trim...
http://static.taume.com/image/196.jpg
 
probably because it's so little.

Again with the amber instrumentation...I live in the northeast and have had the display wash out less than a handful of times in my daily driving.
 
Not sure where some of you are driving that this is a constant problem, but for me its not a big deal at all.

Chevy hit a home run w/ the Malibu. I don't particularly like American cars- in fact, that's been a negative for me but the Malibu looks stellar inside and out.
The exterior looks twice as expensive as any of the competitors, and twice as tasteful as the bulging, bloated Accord.
 
I am shocked you don't have one in the Long Term Test Fleet! My only concern, and the major one raised in your consumer comparison was the long term reliability!!

"hondaacura4, this is the grammer police. The correct word is They're(They are) not their(whose cup?)."
 
You know, I just noticed what I typed. Thanks for the correction.

Great White McCainless North
 
Cool to see such polarized opinions around...two GM products! Pro or con or like or hate makes little difference. I just find it neat that folks are arguing with such passion over GM products. Maybe there's life in The General after all!
 
Briancam: Yes, I agree with you in that the G6 is totally incapable of hopping.
 
I'll duck now... :-)

@cx7lover:
 
"The Aura is anything but classy, tacky maybe, with the nasty outdated wood trim and extremely poor panel fitment, and the out of place color for the radio and HVAC. It looks like someone placed a cutout over it and spray painted some satin like finish over it."
 
The mismatched climate control and radio faceplate finishes are among my biggest gripes with the Aura's interior. If you have a decent monitor you should be able to see it in the photo above. Plus, the climate faceplate often does not line up well. On one car I had, you could stick a piece of paper in the gap on the left side but not the right. It was horrible. The one in the picture looks misaligned as well.

I dont think its that bad at all.

Is it just me, or were about half of the comments deleted from this post? I know both of mine were -- and they were not offensive.

they're not deleted. When a certain amount of comments come, you have to either press the "previous comments" link or the "All Comments" link to see the older ones.

I always expand the comments using the "All Comments" function. The only difference is that this time, both of my posts disappeared.
 
I'm pretty sure there was some sort of major glitch around the time that the R8 posts were added. For a while, a few entire posts went missing, but they had reappered when I visited the site later in the day.

I noticed this too. And when I go into the "stealth subaru" post all the posters names are missing.