1994 SATURN SL — Complaint #589831
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN:MANUAL TRANSMISSION:FLOOR SHIFT ASSEMBLY filed July 25, 2006
NHTSA complaint #589831 (ODI reference 10163429) concerns a 1994 SATURN SL and was filed on July 25, 2006. The owner reports the failure occurred on July 20, 2006. The vehicle had 120,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to South Carolina based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as power train:manual transmission:floor shift assembly, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same SATURN SL cohort independently describe similar power train:manual transmission:floor shift assembly failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 1994 SATURN SL shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
MANUAL TRANSMISSION - GEAR SHIFT LINKAGE TO SHIFT CABLE -- BROKEN BUSHING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE MANUAL FLOOR SHIFTER WHERE IT ATTACHES TO THE SHIFT CABLE. THE CABLE FALLS OFF THE SHIFTER LINKAGE. SATURN PARTS (OEM) WANTS TO SELL ME THE ENTIRE SHIFT CABLE ASSEMBLY FOR ~$200 (PLUS 3 HOURS LABOR TO INSTALL IT) -- SHOULD BE A $5 FIX FOR THE BROKEN PLASTIC BUSHING. APPARENTLY THIS IS A VERY COMMON PROBLEM AMONG SATURN OWNERS. (SEE HTTP://WWW.CHAOSMAGNET.COM/BLOG/ARCHIVES/000112.HTML ). *JB
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 589831 |
| ODI Number | 10163429 |
| Date Filed | July 25, 2006 |
| Failure Date | July 20, 2006 |
| VIN | 1G8ZF5594RZ |
Similar POWER TRAIN:MANUAL TRANSMISSION:FLOOR SHIFT ASSEMBLY Complaints for 1994 SATURN SL
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.