Good morning, and welcome to another Shitbox Showdown! Today, as promised, we have two vehicles that both run and drive just fine, and both have manual gearboxes. First, however, there is the small matter of yesterday’s busted cars to finish:
Yep. Transmissions are marginally easier to swap than engines, so that makes sense.
Now, I can tell by the low vote total and comment count that yesterday’s matchup was a bit of a flop. Not quite a Cop Rock-level flop, but a flop nonetheless. That’s okay. Nobody gets it right every time, and what’s interesting for me to write about isn’t always something you all can get behind. I’m still trying to figure out a way to allow reader submissions; we’re just not there yet. Until then, if we have a slow day, I’ll just try something different the next day.
Like these two, for instance. Two five-door hatchbacks, arguably the most convenient automotive form factor, both equipped with five-speed manuals, which feels like the right number of forward gears. Three or four leaves too many gaps between ratios, and six can sometimes get confusing. Even better, both of these five-door five-speeds are five-by-five mechanically. Let’s see which one you prefer.
2004 Chrysler PT Cruiser – $2,850
Engine/drivetrain: 2.4 liter dual overhead cam inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: San Mateo, CA
Odometer reading: 105,000 miles
Runs/drives? Great!
The first PT Cruiser I ever saw looked exactly like this: pearl white, with a five-speed manual. It was at a dealership in Illinois, and the window sticker carried a markup higher than the price of this one. There’s a lesson about patience in there somewhere, I think.
These days, PT Cruisers are a dime a dozen, but that’s not a bad thing. The styling may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s a practical little wagon that, with a manual, is actually kind of fun to drive. It can carry a ton of stuff, it gets decent mileage, and parts are cheap and plentiful. Get past the jokes and the old-person stigma, and embrace the funny-shaped little wagon life.
This PT is in great shape, and is only a little past a hundred thousand miles. It has the basic naturally-aspirated 2.4 liter engine, the aforementioned five-speed, and a really cool shifter with a simple round white ball for a shift knob. The seller says it runs great, just passed a smog test, and everything works. (The ad reads like a William Carlos Williams poem for some reason, but we won’t hold that against the car.)
The inside is tidy, the ouside is essentially straight, and the paint is still shiny. Obviously there are plenty of things that should be checked out before purchase, and I’d ask when the timing belt was changed, but this looks like a good deal to me.
2008 Saturn Astra XR – $3,450
Engine/drivetrain: 1.8 liter dual overhead cam inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: Vallejo, CA
Odometer reading: 165,000 miles
Runs/drives? Sure does!
Saturn made their name with homespun tales of honest little cars, venturing forth from their factory in Tennessee to take on the big world. “A different kind of car,” they said. But as the years went on, Saturns became less different from the rest of GM’s lineup, hawking badge-engineered Chevy vans and slightly modified Cobalts. Towards the end, however, Saturn replaced the dull and weird Ion with something a little more special: a rebadged German Opel called the Astra.
In sharp contrast to the PT Cruiser’s retro pastiche, the Astra is sleek and modern, at least by the standards of fifteen years ago. Even now, it looks pretty good, but that might say more about today’s over-styled cars than anything. The Astra is a popular car in Europe, but it never caught on in the US; Saturn moved fewer than 20,000 Astras here.
Which is a shame, because by all accounts, it’s a great little car. I’ve never driven one, but I once spent a week driving its little sibling, the Opel/Vauxhall Corsa, all over England, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The Astra’s sole engine in the US was a 1.8 liter four, and while it was of course available with an automatic, this one has the correct number of pedals.
This Astra is in good shape, with only a few signs of wear inside, and mostly clean and shiny paint outside. The front bumper shows some fading, and it looks like the drivers’s seat could use some spot remover, but otherwise it looks pretty good. The seller says it runs well, and like the Cruiser, it also just passed a smog test. It has a few more miles on it – 165,000 – but it wears them well.
There’s no reason practical everyday runabouts can’t be fun. All it takes is a manual gearbox, a tight zippy chassis, and enough room to carry whatever needs carrying. We have two styles for you to choose from: a hot-rod throwback, or a sleek modern European. Which flavor do you prefer?
(Image credits: Craigslist sellers)
The manual PT is the better vehicle. The PT gets a bad rep due to the more common version with the base engine with the slushbox… which is the worst version.
With the manual, they are much better… as in a faster 0-60 time (around 8.5 seconds) and 20-30% better real-world fuel economy compared to the slushbox.
Plus parts and service is likely to be cheaper and more commonly available… though the timing belt change on these can be a bit of a pain than the typical car. But it’s not timing-chain-Audi-Terrible.
A year or two ago I saw an Astra and really thought it was a unique, fun looking car. I don’t hate on the Cruiser like many (and I will add that they were pretty popular when they came out, then they sold a bunch and they started getting old and ratty and perceptions changed), but the Astra is the much more interesting car to my, and my choice.
My wife had that shape of Astra, in the same colour, same 1.8L and same 5 speed (but with the steering wheel on the right and a Lion badge on it) when I met her. At that point it was brand new and fuck, did it feel like a spaceship compared to the ‘90 Corolla I had at the time! The interior materials felt Audi like in comparison too. Unlike my Corolla, you could find yourself doing 130km/hr on the freeway and not realise it.
Mechanically it was okay, it certainly never left us stranded. It developed a loud top end rattle at only a few years old, which Holden could never diagnose. It had a myriad of electrical gremlins which were quite humorous. The Australian sun has not been kind to the paint on these AH Astras and all of them you see these days (90% are silver, the rest are black) have ruined clear coat. The Astras we got were all from Belgium, I’m not aware of any other Belgian cars that were sold here.
All up my wife had it a decade so she must have loved it.
I had one of those Astra’s! Except it had a Holden badge. Not an altogether bad little hatchback
If only the PT were the Turbo GT… but I’d still take it.
PT Cruiser.
In this price range, you’re not getting a good car. You’re choosing what type of bad car you want. Making that sacrifice up-front and going with the PT means you get something in much better mechanical and interior shape for your dollar.
Man, this is a tough one. But I gotta go PT Cruiser due to the Astra’s engine.
The 1.8 is a perfectly cromulent engine. Uninspiring but not dull. The problem is that it’s a Gen III “Not A GM Ecotec.” Specifically it’s the Z18XER. It’s a fine engine.
With parts availability that can only be described as “no.” The only thing to get it over here was, you guessed it, the Saturn. Every other GM 1.8 in the US is an entirely different engine.
The Cruze and Sonic used the same engine, though a few years after the Astra was sold here. Family 1 engine, gen III
Even if you need a new engine, the Cruze/Sonic version is easily swappable, or better yet, the 2.0T LNF 😀
Rockauto shows a pretty good selection of “hard parts” for the Astra 1.8 motor, fwiw.
I would choose the Saturn. The PT Cruiser isn’t bad and rides comfortably in my experience, but the styling was never my favorite and the bottoms of the seat don’t go far out enough for my comfort if that makes any sense.
Had an Astra from 2008-2014, great car that we still miss. XR 5-door manual, sport package (which I think this one has, same wheels). Engine power was perfectly adequate (0-60 in 8.6 secs), and the handling was excellent with great steering feel. Brakes were outstanding, they used the Euro VXR brakes on the US cars to keep dust and noise down. It was a very satisfying (and rewarding) car to drive on twisty back roads.
The downsides (and other quirks) I recall were that the A/C was a bit wimpy (our car was black, no sunroof), and the electric fan was pretty loud. Fifth gear was a bit short on the highway, but MPG was decent and it held in the power band. Not too uncommon for the time, the radio lacked an auxiliary input. The turn signal stalk was the odd self-returning type, like a BMW (though my wife really liked it). GM put so little into Americanizing the Astra (for the better!) that it *only* showed 24-hour time on the center display. There were also hints of the market position the car had in Europe with unexpected features like rain-sensing wipers.
Mother-in-law liked ours so much she got an Astra too. The 4-speed auto in hers was really disappointing, but the other great things about the car still held true. Though she did not appreciate the surprisingly heavy steering as much as we did.
We had two problems with the car in the years we owned it. First, the overpowered brakes meant the rear calipers didn’t work work very hard in normal driving. One of them occasionally stuck, fixed with a little grease and a few hard stops. The second was what prompted us to move on – the central LCD display, also used for the radio, failed at around 65k miles. The car was still under factory extended warranty, but the “Saturn Authorized Service Provider” Chevy dealer had never seen an Astra at that point. It took weeks to diagnose the issue, get parts from Europe, and replace the display/control unit. Since this was supposed to be the newer/more reliable car in our fleet, it was obvious it wouldn’t be well-supported and it was time to move on while the car still had any resale value.
I would have actually said, “get over yourselves and vote for the PT Cruiser” since it’s would actually be a useful driver. However, I have driven the Opel Astra from that same era in Europe and rather liked it.
Funny story about the Astra – I was on a trip to France and knew I would be doing a lot of driving. I was renting out of Charles de Gaulle airport and I was also worried about being able to find a convenient place to fill up when I returned the car. So against normal habits I told Hertz I’d just buy the tank of fuel and that way I didn’t have to return it full. Well, it turns out I did drive a ridiculous amount and still had a fair amount of fuel left in the tank when I returned it. The Astra performed really well on that trip and holds fond memories for me.
But nothing against those who vote for the PT Cruiser, it’s almost certainly a safer choice.
Just curious if your family ever had an Ion-and how you would compare that to the earlier S-series?I looked after multiple SLs, and remember the Saturnfans forum being mostly unkind to the Ions some 15 years back.
The reason the SaturnFans folks didn’t like the ION was because it wasn’t the S-series.
To be fair, the ION was a rather unremarkable car when compared to the introduction of the S-Series. I didn’t hate the ION but it was clear the car was thoroughly GM’d.
The ION wasn’t a bad car. However, it was the follow-up to Saturn’s bread-and-butter line and it failed to live up to expectations.
GM blew it with the Ion at launch by cursing the interior with a hard plastic interior so awful that it looked bad even compared to other GM cars at the time.
And then when they fixed the interior, they blew it again by ruining the exterior with a fake grille. The actual driving experience was fine (I always liked how the Ecotec felt in small cars), but not enough people could get past the aesthetics to know that.
This is all based on my impressions as a then-owner of a 1999 SL2, which had the best interior of any small Saturn before or after. (The 2001 redesign made the dash harder and uglier.)
I bought an Astra 5-speed new and drove it until I bought a 2014 Volt in 2017. I loved that car. You could load it with every option and still get the manual. I had everything except leather with the manual, including heated seats, a huge panoramic sunroof, and a 6 disk cd changer in the dash. It was great on gas and really fun to drive. I never had any problems with it in 120,000 miles and it was still on the original clutch. I think they just didn’t sell many because you could get the Aura for nearly the same price. Once they closed up Saturn, I did an exterior rebadge with an Opel grill and emblems. Most people didn’t know what the were when badged as a Saturn, so the Opel badging confused them even more. I always thought the 3 door was a little better looking, but we have kids so the 5 door was much more practical.
I voted for the PT because: It has low miles and is immaculate inside and out.
Which is something that you don’t normally find at this price point.
It is ridiculously clean for a PT Cruiser. Someone has clearly loved this car. They were never great vehicles, but for a cheap DD you could do much worse than this one. A $2,500 Accord or Camry from the early aughts is either going to have well over 200,000 miles or it will be a fright pig that has clearly spent the last decade as a rolling dumpster.
Thats what is great about an old folks car. Never hooned well cared for low miles.
I say buy the PT Cruiser but slap some RV swooshes on it and find some seat covers with crazy ass patterns and finish it with a straight pipe exhaust. Maybe even take 4 inches off the top and really make it stand out.
I wonder if a Beetle ute Kit would fit the PT. https://www.smythkitcars.com/new-beetle-truck-conversion
I thought they were working on a PT kit, actually. Maybe it’s just not out yet?
I may be in the minority here, but I do believe that the pendulum is starting to swing the other way for the PT and that positive sentiment will do nothing but grow with post Millennial generations.
Great match-up, as always, Mark!
Had an Astra as a rental twice in Germany- was the “Audi A4 or equivalent’ and I couldn’t complain as it was a decent driver
I’ll take the cheap and plentiful parts of the PT.
As much as I’d like to visit that cute little neighborhood in San Mateo, I’d have to choose the Astra. Just an interesting looking little car with Euro DNA and without the PT’s reputation baggage. This is probably the one case where the PT would be the more logical choice for reliable transportation, but I’m not here for logical car choices.
Seriously though. That neighborhood is like the quintessential neighborhood for a PT-doting grandma.
Went from neither yesterday to both today. Hard to say no to a decent 5 speed. And both with DOHC but no engine pics? Thanks for nothing, sellers…
That PT looks well cared for. But the Astra has it all going on so that’s my pick.
Based on the fact that the Astra has a brand new license plate, I can only assume someone from the auto repair shop (GREAT place for photos) probably purchased the car from a customer who was ready to “move on.” That means they’re “flipping” the car and probably gave their customer less than $2K for the poor old thing. If I could buy it for $2,500, I’d consider it… but at $3,450, it’s a hard pass. (And everything negative said here about the P.T. is spot on.)
PT Cruiser is never the answer. Unless the question is looking for a superlative negative classification for a vehicle. For example, “What is the worst idea in automotive history?”, or “What is the ugliest vehicle ever made”.
I was going to say it’s the Astra, no competition. But with 50% more mileage after 100k…. eh, it’s still the Astra
The weekend I graduated from high school, both these cars were in our driveway. My uncle flew in and got a rental PT Cruiser – “drives like a Neon.” My grandmother purchased an Astra the same weekend, which would be her last car and the last Saturn in our family after becoming my sister’s first car.
Even in a base automatic form, it was a nimble drive and pretty comfortable. It didn’t clock a lot of miles under my grandmother’s ownership until my sister got her license. And it did keep her safe when a girl in a Corolla pulled out in front of her. With the repairs, IIRC only the one headlight was repaired, so the new driver’s headlight was shiny and clear and the passenger side stuck with the fogginess or delamination that they had developed (not merely the yellowing). See, it did not especially love its time in the shady, humid southeast, with bits of trim deteriorating more rapidly than expected after 5 or so years compared to any other car we had before, like the plastic drip rails cracking.
The accessory belt tensioner was a common issue, always squeaky and rattly and made it sound rough, before it eventually shredded itself in our neighborhood. That was tame enough, but it eventually was becoming more of a hassle to maintain for whatever it was worth on a by then 10-year old car – not just nickel and diming, that would be fine, but various ignition issues (coil packs I think) and brake issues starting to compound and affect driveability, and it was decided to move on rather than sink more money in. Didn’t even get up to the mileage needed for the timing belt which was 60k I think; I thought the belt was a little ironic given a timing chain was a selling point for the original S-Series in a time when most imports used belts.
Being grandma’s car, sentimentality had kept it in the family longer than we might have otherwise, and especially longer than grandma would have as she was also the type that would trade in a car when it was due for tires so “she didn’t have to deal with that.” When my sister finally was trading it in, as they appraised the car and the salesman closed the driver’s door, the rearview mirror glass fell off – a rather poetic happening, like driving home the point about not looking back.
The dealer did put it in inventory though, and the Carfax remained active for a while after it was sold, which was pretty quick being a budget priced car – and then was also totaled pretty quick thereafter, quick enough that the accident actually registered before the title change was recorded, so the accident looked like it was under our ownership. I did find the pictures on one of those copart-type sites a year later, and it looked something like a rollover. I decided not to share those pics with my family, let the memory of the car remain intact.
I had gotten to drive a 5-speed Astra too at the time and it was fun. But now 15 years later, I might take the cheaper, lower-miles, more serviceable PT.
greatfallsgreen: You are a true car enthusiast when you remember what your relatives drove to your graduation party!
Loved reading your stories of these family vehicles.