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It was a dark, stormy night.... No, it was a sunny afternoon during the summer around 1998 or so. I was looking for a used car, and there had been a Saturn Store near my dad's place for some time. I knew that Saturn at the time had the best resale values of any car, so I thought I would check them out to see how much they really would cost, used. Of course I couldn't afford one, but I still wanted to look. A car only two or three years old was still way out of my price range.
Jump ahead to 2002. My wife and I were looking for a new car for her, and I knew that Saturn cars were very good cars by this time, and they are completely American vehicles. We test drove an SL1 and we were really disappointed in its performance. We didn't think that we would be getting much for $15,000. We left sadly, but once I did my research, I discovered it would have been a lot for $15,000, although not what we were looking for.
Moving along to December of 2002. I saw the new ION at the local mall, and I was very impressed. Looking at the window sticker I noticed that there was a lot more offered at the $15,000 price than there was for the previous model year. I wasn't in the market for a car since we had just boughten one for my wife, so I forgot about it.
January, 2003. My Oldsmobile was starting to have problems, and I was at a point in my life where I wasn't making much in terms of income, so I needed a reason to find a better job. I thought, "hey, finding a car that I would really want would help me get my butt in gear." Sure enough, I test drove an ION-3 at my Saturn Store, and I fell in love with it. Although I drove a total of 26 cars, I still only thought about the ION. Needless to say, I ended up finding a better job to save for the car. I didn't know if I was going to buy the car in 2 months or 2 years.
Suddenly, Saturn started to offer incentives. This was extremely unusual for them, so I started paying attention. To make a long story short, I realized that I qualified for the incentives and it would count as a downpayment. So then I had to ask myself a few serious questions: What is stopping me from buying the car? The answer was a lack of a downpayment, as I knew the monthly payments weren't going to be a problem. Then why use my own money for a down payment when I could use their money? So that is what I did; I used GM's money for a downpayment. I qualified for three incentives: 1) GM Loyalty (since we owned a Pontiac Vibe), 2) Recent college grade allowance, 3) 0.0% financing, which equalled $3000. So all together I had almost a $5000 down payment. This is something like 27% of the car cost! Why turn that down? So I took it.
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