Power Train Problems of Saturn Relay

Tl the contact owns a 2007 Saturn Relay. While driving 50 mph, the vehicle accelerated to 80 mph. When the brake pedal was depressed, the vehicle did not decelerate. The contact placed the vehicle into neutral and the speed decreased to 40 mph. The contact then shifted into park and the vehicle stopped. The vehicle was not taken to a dealer to be diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 150,000.

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Noted that driving lights flashed with wipers on delay setting. At next use, low oil pressure light & warning sounded but lights did not flash with delay wipers. Turning off engine and pulling hood latch & closing hood ended low pressure warning (oil pressure/ level were correct-false alarm). 2 days later, lights again flashed with wipers on delay but no oil pressure warning. Continued this back-and-forth (either oil warning or light flash with wiper use, but not concomitant) for 2 months, then low pressure warnings became constant, and the lights no longer flashed with the wipers at all. The low oil pressure warning can often be stopped by either turning off engine and carefully restarting or pulling hood latch and slamming hood. Shifting gears may also trigger the low pressure warning if it isn't already on.

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My wife placed our 2005 Saturn Relay minivan in park, and stepped out to get the mail. The van immediately started backwards, with the door pushing her down. Luckily, as it pushed her down, she fell to the inside, and was able to activate the parking brake with her hand, stopping the car. She did receive a very minor knee injury, but it could have been much worse. Our two daughters were both in the car, which would have rolled down a hill and into a neighbors house, had she not stopped it. My first thought was that she'd made a mistake, but after looking at the shifting mechanism, I can see how this happened. As you know, on a steering mounted shifter (like this) you pull the lever toward you, move it to the appropriate gear, and release it, locking the mechanism in the newly selected gear. On this vehicle, there is a large dead space (for lack of a better word) between reverse and park. It's possible to release the lever before the selector is fully in the park detent. When you do this, there is no outward indication of a problem, other than an unusual feel to the lever that's easy to miss if you're in a hurry. Once you do this, the lever (after a few seconds) will either pop into park, or into reverse. Obviously, if you're no longer in the drivers seat, this is going to be a problem. I've checked this on other Saturn Relays and on one Chevrolet (same model, different name) and they all did this. All of the ones I checked were 2005, so I do not know about any other year models. We now always set the parking brake when stopping, just in case. This is more a design defect than a component failure, from what I can see.

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