Huh. My Dad owned his saturn from new until around 150k when he sold it. Only problem he ever had was the sunroof motor died.
My step-mom bought hers brand new and still has it. It's sitting at around 225k miles, and the only problem it's ever had was the radiator started to leak around 200k.
I've never considered them to be unreliable.
I've had several Aura's for rentals, and was always pleased with them.
Saturns are junk. I only had one all this time, and it sucked. My buddies were buying them and even with 60k miles, stuff was falling off of them. Reminded me of an ugly modern day DeLorean.