2007 Saturn Aura

This is Saturn's most important new car, ever. Scratch that. This is GM's most important new car, ever. This week, anyway.

Rick Wagoner is looking down from the top floor of that big glass cylinder in the background. He must recognize the car's importance, even if he's been preoccupied with Kirk Kerkorian and a certain Franco-Japanese automaker's chief.

Now that sales of the new full-size SUVs have settled, and now that that highly profitable segment has the same future as the compact disc, the Aura is the best indication of whether GM can finally stem market-share loss and claw its way back to profitability. Saturn's Aura is a slightly Americanized Opel Vectra (so slight, even the Euro-style fender turn-signal repeaters remain). It's on an updated Epsilon platform, the first to be "commonized" to the point it can be built in any Epsilon assembly plant in the world. It shares about 60 percent of its parts with fellow long-wheelbase (112-inch) Epsilons Chevrolet Malibu Maxx and Pontiac G6 sedan.

Our first impression is that Rick Wagoner can relax, at least until the next most important new car comes along.

A couple years ago, when Saturn sneak-previewed a thinly disguised Aura "concept," the newly recast division said the car would target a space somewhere between the Acura TSX and TL. Surely wary of the folly of when GM exec Bob Lutz favorably compared Pontiac Grand Prix handling with that of the BMW 3 Series, division chief Jill Lajdziak has backed down from that positioning for the Aura.

It's no sport sedan, even a front-drive one. Our $27,619 as-equipped Aura XR is better off chasing nearly loaded V-6 Camrys, fully equipped V-6 Accords and Altimas, and perhaps Nissan Maximas. The new Aura is supposed to be a step up from the Malibu and G6, just as the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme was meant to be a graduation from the old Malibu and Le Mans. Lajdziak promises Saturn will exploit features like thicker windshield glass, extra sound deadening, and better appointments to delineate it, and other cars in the division, from cheaper Chevys and Pontiacs. The Aura has extra features like ambient lighting (in the front inside door-handle scoop-outs), amber-lit LED center-stack gauges, an automatic-up power driver's window, and power adjustable pedals, but, in a good example of GM's strange corner-cutting, no rear-center armrest.

About the only option missing on our Berry Red Metallic tester is the Morocco leather seat inserts and trim, a saddle-colored applique available with some of the other paint colors. With the right color, it's worth the extra $100, a nice signature interior detail, like the Chrysler 300C's optional tortoise-shell trim.