Third Place - 2004 Saturn VUE AWD Red Line - Compact SUVs Comparison - Truck Trend

Third Place
2004 Saturn VUE AWD Red Line

It's easy to imagine the Saturn VUE Red Line as sort of a make-the-best-of-it vehicle a young sport-compact car-culture guy might turn to if a lost weekend in Vegas ended with an inexplicable bride and little-one-to-be. What to do? Buy the transformer-like Red Line.

It'll accommodate both sides of your awkward new life, offering such unusual feature pairings as easy-access LATCH attachments for the child seat and a big-attitude electric-lime paint job. Or how about room for the collapsible crib in the back and a 250-horse Honda-designed-and-built engine stuffed up front? Maybe married life can be tolerable. The idea of a cargo-swallowing SUV set up to perform entertainingly on the street isn't new. It just hasn't been pursued much below the mega-buck strata of Porsche's Cayenne or BMW's X5.

In Saturn's case, it exists in the form of the Red Line Performance Package, which consists of a bulked-up suspension beneath a one-inch-lowered body, 18-inch painted alloy wheels surrounded by 245/50 all-season tires, a special front fascia (with a serious underbite), the monochromatic treatment, and a chrome exhaust tip.Total: $1995. Together with the stout (Pilot and Odyssey-sourced) Honda engine that comes standard with the AWD V-6 model, the VUE Red Line is an SUV that can be maneuvered farther off-road than you'd imagine--although we sometimes had the feeling that a reel from "The Fast and the Furious" had gotten mixed into "Lawrence of Arabia."

While the others in this test--to varying degrees--steer, brake, and accelerate competently on the road, the Saturn elbows you to strap on Mr. Toad's goggles. When a corner approaches, you don't just estimate the steering angle you'll need and approximately when to apply it; you're invited to calculate an exact mental trajectory, dot by dot, from entry to apex to exit. The brakes, much like the Equinox's, have a good solid feel when you start to tap into them.

The VUE shares the Equinox's feather-effort, electrically assisted steering, which is so over- assisted that you wonder why it doesn't go all the way and steer itself. Yet it's interesting to note how the Saturn's stiffer suspension presents this steering in a much better light. For instance, in the middle of a long bend, the two vehicles probably have very similar steering angles and efforts. But the VUE's tightly tied-down chassis means you can inject much subtler steering motions entering and exiting it. There is a ride penalty here, but that's what often comes with such a marked increase in handling prowess.