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Vue actually is stirring up excitement about Saturn among many automotive journalists who have come to associate the brand with underpowered engines, forgettable design cues, loud cabin noise, cheap looking interiors and a general harsh driving experience.

The VUE may be the vehicle that helps Saturn finally become a genuine contender in the U.S. marketplace. Although a late entry into the small sport-utility segment, Saturn's first-ever SUV offers some interesting features and technologies.

Good: Dent resistant side panels, good dealer reputation, rugged looks, ground clearance. Needs improvement: Poor interior materials, hard to close rear hatch, transmission, gas mileage, brakes.

Saturn's Escape-fighting compact SUV Vue won't dazzle with styling, but its segment-exclusive continuously variable and five-speed automatic transmissions, interior versatility (with built-in organizers) and price are worth a look.

When you come late to the party, you're expected to bring a big gift. General Motors' Saturn brand only now is fielding a sport-utility vehicle, a small one, 10 years after the start of the general SUV boom, and 4 years after the small-SUV boom started.

Saturn's SUV, the VUE, doesn't stray far from the pack in soccer-parent, off-road wannabe vehicle design. It is, by and large, exactly the kind of SUV you'd expect from the polymer sidepanel, We Are Family, don't-worry-if-you-lose-your-job-within-30-days-of-purchase car company.

Saturn dealers lack only one thing: cars that the public wants to buy.

But despite annoying tardiness, Saturn's dream date offers reasons to give him a chance: Handsome features. A streak of individualism. A practical, civilized nature.

The VUE is in an interesting size class. It’s not compact, yet not really mid-size; not big enough to have a third-row seat, yet spacious enough for adults to fit in the back seat. The VUE’s shape has an interesting effect from the outside, too. From the rear, it looks rather like a traditional SUV, but from the front it looks like a familiar Saturn wagon with an extreme lift kit.

When Saturn first started marketing cars, it promised us not only a new line of uniquely built automobiles, but a new way of doing business as well. And after ten years, and a modestly expanded line up, they've largely succeeded. So, now for 2002, Saturn is branching out into the growing small sport utility segment. And once again they've made a bold promise that their SUV offers a new view on the concept of small sport-utes.

The 2002 Saturn VUE parked on Main Street here made Joel Vanderwood swivel his head as he passed by in his 1996 Ford Explorer. The Explorer has 122,000 miles on it and Vanderwood, a father of three who makes artificial limbs and braces for a living, is thinking about a replacement.

The Saturn Vue will be the first of GM's North American divisions to offer a continuously variable transmission, which drives like an automatic transmission but has the fuel economy of a manual transmission.

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 2002 Saturn VUE is a Ford Escape-sized sport-ute also built on passenger-car mechanicals.

Considering how long it took General Motors and its Saturn division to come up with a small sport utility truck, I'd expected more.

The oddly named VUE -- yes, Saturn capitalizes all the letters in it -- is the best Saturn I've ever driven. After more than 600 miles behind the wheel, the VUE feels like a vehicle that competes with the best-sellers in its segment.