Ezra Dyer: Maybe the Saturn Sky Red Line Is Not Quite a Discount Viper, but It Comes Close

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.

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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.”

So, one day, I arrived with a battery jump pack, an air compressor, and five gallons of fresh gas. The questionable tires held air, and the electrics powered up. I splashed in some fuel and turned the key. The Sky fired up like it had been parked an hour before, its digital odometer showing just 43,000 miles. I put it in neutral, let out the clutch, and it immediately stalled because it wasn’t actually in neutral. Turns out you can wiggle the Red Line shifter side to side quite a bit even when it’s in second gear.

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Other revelations mostly pertained to ran-when-parked status. The flat-spotted tires and various wheel-on-curb encounters gave the Sky the ride and directional stability of a grocery cart you pull out of the corral and immediately swap for a different one. The battery wouldn’t hold a charge, the interior smelled like a cologne called Old Must, and the A/C didn’t blow cold. But the scrappy Red Line ran like a champ, the turbo issuing a jaunty chirp on upshifts and all 260 horses feeling ready to gallop. It just needed a little deferred maintenance.

I bought some Pirelli P Zeros and got an alignment, since I’ve found that cars drive better with round tires all pointed in the same direction. I changed the oil and recharged the A/C. Next, I tackled the battery, which is mounted somewhere near Earth’s molten core. Accessing it requires removing the right front fender, and I got impatient and only mostly unbolted it, figuring I could bend the flexible composite panel enough to get the battery out. That’s how I tore a fender while replacing the battery, which is not a sequence of words I expected to write back when I told Roger that a Sky Red Line is a discount Viper.

But I stand by my assessment. The Sky was, and is, huge fun. It’s agile and powerful, low-slung and eager to carve a corner. It makes any drive feel like Bowser and Koopa Troopa should be trying to beat you to the finish line of Rainbow Road. The critiques that dogged the Sky when it was new—cheap interior, little storage space, poor visibility—seem less important now. Saturn ran out of time to perfect the Sky, but it’s perfect enough. Dents and all.

Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He's now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.

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