Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I was looking back today, at when I first got my Vibe. It's been almost 10 years now since I picked it up, and almost 150,000 miles later. The car is still running great absolutely great. Interior is still in great shape, the only thing showing wear is the wonderful Delco radio buttons. The outside still is shiny and bright in the Frosty color.
When I got the car in late 2003 my son was 6. He's 16 now. So what's a dad to do, but I decided to give my son the Vibe to use to go back and forth to school in. It was either buy him a used car, or give him my "used" car and buy myself a new car. So a new car for me it was..
I really liked my Pontiacs, the Vibe was my 6th Pontiac. However, no more Pontiac. Didn't like anything GM was currently offering. I ended up picking up a Kia Optima. I won't say the Kia is like a Pontiac, but it has a lot of style features that made me feel at home with the vehicle. The standard fog lights, tiger snout grill and the red back lit gauges. Being designed by the ex-Audi designer helped. So far, I am thrilled with my purchase. The Optima drives great, looks great and is an all around nice vehicle. I picked up an EX model which has the leather and all the toys, UVO radio, pano sunroof. Doesn't have the turbo like the Optima SX, but still does pretty good with a 200HP motor, which was about 70 more HP than I had in the Vibe. To top it off it gets great gas mileage, even better than I was getting with the Vibe at about 33 MPG mixed highway driving. I can only hope the Optima will be as reliable as this Vibe has been. Kia has come a long way and has made great strides.
I really can't complain about the Vibe at all. With just standard maintenance and 148,000+ miles on the clock it hasn't needed any really major repairs. Brakes and Tires, a fan module and that's about it. I hope it keeps running great. My son was happy to get it. I kept it very nice, and it looks like a 2-3 year old car when you see it, not a 10 year old one.
The Vibe is a great car. Very practical economical and yet fun to drive and nice looking too. Hopefully everyone will have as much luck and good times with their Vibe as I have with mine.
2004 Base Vibe - Frosty - Two Tone Automatic, ABS, 16 inch factory alloy wheels, Power Package, Cargo Nets and Mat