Rick Murphy (RicksVue)'s Page

This weekend while sitting at a traffic light, a woman in a minivan motioned to me to roll down the window. I thought she was going to be asking for directions. What she said was "I was admiring your car and was wondering what it was." When I replied "a Saturn Astra" I got the classic "that's a Saturn?" response, then a comment that she would consider it when she dumped the gas guzzling minivan. I didn't see a camera anywhere so I don't think this'll be the next Astra ad. :-)

I've been keeping detailed gas mileage records on my old 2003 VUE and my 2007 VUE Green Line since March of 2005. This lets me directly compare the cost of operating the two vehicles. For the 2003 (AWD V6), I recorded 21.361 MPG over 20,529 miles at a cost of 0.12 per mile (for fuel only). For the 2007 Hybrid, I've received 26.330 MPG over 16,858 miles at a cost of 0.11 per mile. Gee, you might say, only 1 cent per mile? Big deal. Well, it's not quite that easy. That 11c per mile is mostly due… Continue

We recently were on a trip to the UK. While I was there I looked around for Astras and grabbed photos when I could. They're certainly a lot more common there than here. :-) Have a look at my photo albums for a few pictures. Extra credit for whomever figures out where we were for most of the photos (not the two from the bus, which shows an Astra on the highway.) The license tags are the big hint.

This weekend's fun involved installing the XM receiver into our Astra. The post here at Saturfans - http://saturnfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114919 - has very good directions. I mounted the XM antenna just behind the regular radio antenna and ran it through the passenger side sill. This required lifting the trim piece by the passenger door, but that went fairly easily. I used an XM antenna switch from Crutchfield. The switch is installed by disconnecting the AM/FM antenna from the back of… Continue

Power windows are a great convenience. It's great not having to crank away, and I liked having the ability back when my kids were young to lock the rear windows. However, like a lot of convenience items, they've always had a drawback: you stop the car, remove the key, then someone pipes up "my window is open", so you've got to re-insert the key and turn on the ignition so they can roll the window up. The Astra doesn't need you to do that. For five minutes after the key is removed, you can opera… Continue