2003 Saturn VUE

2003 Saturn VUE 2003 Saturn VUE
First Drive Review

Hope dies hard, but it does die. It fizzled out for some when they pulled the sheet off the Pontiac Aztek. For others it croaked when GM announced that it would pull the sheet over the Camaro and Firebird. For the rest, still believing that the world's largest carmaker can produce a best-in-class vehicle for Americans that isn't a truck or a two-seat V-8 sports car is an act of faith.

By the time the unsold Valentine's Day candy hits the discount shelves next year, GM will test our convictions again with a pair of new buggies that are on a mission to help reenergize the company's prosaic car offerings. One model, the Saturn VUE, may just save an entire division while putting a slightly new gloss on the familiar car-based sport-utility formula. The other, the Pontiac Vibe, was jointly developed with Toyota and is a smartly packaged urban hauler that gets GM early into a segment that is new to this country, the "high cube" mini-wagon now owned almost entirely by DaimlerChrysler's PT Cruiser.

Arriving soft on the heels of the 2001 Ford Escape, which itself arrived rather soft on the heels of the 1996 Toyota RAV4 and 1997 Honda CR-V, the 2003 Saturn VUE is a Ford Escape-sized sport-ute also built on passenger-car mechanicals. The VUE's underside blends existing GM engines, the 2.2-liter in-line four and L81 3.0-liter V-6 of Saturn's L-series, with some drivetrains unique to GM, including an Aisin-Warner five-speed automatic and a home-grown continuously variable transmission (CVT). Also new is the unitized steel structure sheathed in Saturn's requisite thermoplastic panels. Production begins this fall in Spring Hill, Tennessee, with a base price of, in Saturn's words, "less than $20,000."

The VUE sticks to Saturn's innocuous styling template with its narrow rectangular headlights and grille-free front fascia. It's a look that Saturn focus groups actually favored over the pronounced grille and large headlamps of the more typically macho sport-utility face, says Jim Ulrich, GM's vehicle line executive for North American small cars and vice-president of Saturn engineering.

At first glance the new Saturn's styling looks simplistic, but it's clear that designers labored over some of the details. For example, subtle bevels to the pronounced wheel arches cast light in unexpected directions to attract the eye, and the lower side cladding was kept to a minimum to keep the lines clean and emphasize this trucklet's height. The "trademark" Saturn side swoosh is there in subtle curves if you closely study the molded plastic doors, and the unpainted lower bumper fascias have a trace of Audi Allroad in the sharp kick-up where the bumpers meet the body.

Also present are the yawning shut-line gaps inherent with panels made of thermoplastic, which, like asphalt, need space to expand in the sun. The gaps give the VUE a slightly fractured look, but chief engineer Jesse Ortega says Saturn owners are accustomed to them and willing to make the trade-off for dent-free doors and lower insurance rates.