Aside from throwing sunglasses out the window, our vacation went fairly smooth. Except the fact their was another woman traveling with us. My husband was thrilled. Ethan was even pretty excited too. I could have cared less…until we needed her.

When I announced our upcoming vacation I mentioned that as a result of my Detroit trip, GM offered to drop off a 2008 Saturn Outlook in my driveway for the trip. Yes, a brand new SUV for us to test drive. Marketing genius on their part, because I can’t think of a better way to put a family car to the test other than vacation.

We drove over 2,000 miles in 10 days from Indiana to New Orleans and Florida. To say the Outlook handled well is like confirming the Titanic sank. It did!

Both my husband and I were extremely impressed. It combined style and luxury in a well thought out family vehicle. The storage compartments alone were enough to make me drool.

You may already heard that GM introduced the Saturn VUE as a hybrid which can travel up to 585 highway miles on a single tank of gas! Impressive. I’m hoping they may consider making the Outlook into a hybrid model. According to the built in gauge we averaged 19.3 MPG on our trip (which includes a mix of city and interstate driving).

The reason my husband may leave is a woman named Sarah. She was a sweet talking lady who traveled with us on vacation, sitting directly between us in the front seat. Even our son was intrigued by this woman and told me I was jealous.

What’s to be jealous of? If anything I was thankful because she helped us avoid A LOT of arguments on our trip. These heated moments tend to happen when we travel and I say “turn right here” and Nathan turns left. Or when we miss a major turn and he gets directionally challenged trying to get back on the correct interstate and won’t listen to me. Somehow in years past I earned the nickname “Ms. McNally” (because I’m always right).

If we were in the market to buy a new vehicle I would have absolutely no reservations about the Outlook. My 2000 Ford mini-van has about 96,000 miles on it so we’ll probably be looking down that road in a few years. My aunt and uncle vacationed with us in Florida and are currently researching vehicles for an upcoming purchase and fell in love after driving it. The chances are good they will either purchase the Hybrid VUE or Outlook soon.

Our only issue with traveling was the seat belts in the middle captain chairs. If you notice in the picture the belt fastens on the inside of the seat. In most vehicles it is placed along the outside.

The problem was buckling Ethan in his car seat. When we reached over his seat with the belt we couldn’t get it to connect without going up and under his car seat to buckle.

I admit Ethan’s car seat is 3 years old and newer seats may be more contoured to bucket seats such as these. He has probably reached the height to move into a booster seat, but any family with car seats would have found it difficult to latch seat belts in this vehicle. And the design may have something to do with the fact that all the seats fold down, which is a nice feature, but so are seat belts you can reach.

Sarah certainly came in handy driving in downtown New Orleans and helping me locate an outlet mall. Overall she took care of satisfying my husband for me and got us where we needed to go.

Saturn I just have one question. Why is the navigator a woman’s voice? Is it because we truly do read maps and directions better than men?