Short Take Road Test
The otherwise undistinguished career of your humble author took a lucky turn in 1999 when, while working at the trade newspaper Automotive News, a deep throat at GM let fly that the General was talking to the Honda Motor Company about buying V-6 engines. The rumble of Sloan and Kettering rolling over in their graves registered on the Richter scale.
The world's largest automaker, which spawned the automatic transmission, the self-starter, and the catalytic converter, was reduced by changes of fortune to buying engines from a smaller Japanese outfit that, 35 years ago, was marketing air-cooled two-cylinder cars with chain drive. This was big. But to be a news story, it needed a second source, another singing canary. What it got was the head goose.
Not long after, I was a guest of Honda's at the Twin Ring Motegi racetrack in Japan. Dawdling behind the pits awaiting a drive in an S2000, I turned around to find Honda's president, Hiroyuki Yoshino, standing nearby, alone, having wandered away from his ever-present SWAT team of handlers. The question was delivered with a shaky voice: Is Honda discussing an engine sale with GM? Yoshino, arms folded, eyes impassive, remained mute for a moment, then said, "Yes, and we are talking to Ford, too." Ding! Express ticket to page one, please.
Who knows what became of the Ford talks? The first byproduct of the GM deal is pictured right here between your thumbs: the 2004 Saturn Vue equipped with an SOHC 24-valve 3.5-liter V-6 built by Honda at its engine plant in Anna, Ohio.
Hold it! This is basically the same cast aluminum VTEC variable-valve-timing-equipped mill and five-speed automatic Honda drops into the $36,200 Acura MDX and $27,560 Honda Pilot LX, as well as the Honda Odyssey. Bolted into the $24,810 Saturn Vue (base price is $24,185, plus $395 for curtain airbags, $150 for an upgraded stereo, and $80 for floor mats), doesn't this new Vue represent a "roaring" value?
Well, more of a growling value. The Vue is no Honda, although it now sounds and accelerates like one. Compared with the weak jabs of last year's British-built 181-hp, 3.0-liter iron-block V-6, the 250-hp Honda 3.5 delivers a solid right hook. The new Vue's 7.0-second scoot to 60 mph is a substantial 1.4-second trimming of the old time, and the quarter-mile shrivels from 16.6 seconds at 83 mph to 15.5 at 89. Flat-foot the pedal, and the Vue squats on its buns and lunges like a stink bug in heat. On the freeway it zooms by tractor-trailers as if they were rolling on square wheels.
The old cockpit resembled the inside of a brown paper bag. Now chrome accents ring the white-face gauges, and titanium-colored plastic blankets the center console and new three-spoke, two-tone steering wheel. The purposeful 17-inch spoked alloy wheels, standard on V-6 AWD models, resemble Audi parts-bin rims. The Red Line model will also add chunky bodywork flares and be painted in electric colors. Once the nebbish of SUVs, the Vue looks like it's been on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
Not all the additions to the Vue are good. It packs 110 more pounds than the V-6 AWD we tested in January 2002 to come in at 3720. And although it has the throbbing heart of a Honda, the new Vue lacks a Honda's love of the road. Tossed into a corner, the body leans and shifts a bit too much for fun, and the electric-assist steering wheel remains numb in the hands except for the firm torque-induced tug on the front wheels when you floor it.
We are already on record complaining that the Vue is bigger than a Ford Escape on the outside and smaller inside. Still, with the rear seats folded forward to their maximum acute angle, it swallowed two bicycles and related luggage for a weekend excursion. The Vue is an easy SUV to slide into and out of, making city-bound errands a chiropractic breeze.
GM calls the new Vue's V-6 engine the L66. Asked directly, the company's execs aren't shy about admitting where the engine comes from. But don't look for the word "Honda" on the engine or in the Saturn press kit and sales material. The origin of the '04 Vue's new lease on life isn't being publicized. Just enjoy it, and don't ask probing questions.
