THE SKY IS NOT THE LIMIT; Saturn's roadster should be a home run, and according to GM, it's only the first inning.

Byline: WES RAYNAL

When the idea for General Motors' Saturn division was hatched in the late 1980s, the company spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 billion. The plan was to build good, inexpensive, small to midsize cars, treat people with actual respect and integrity at the dealerships, and hope that would bring customers into the GM fold from Toyota and Honda.

Neither Toyota nor Honda is running scared today, and Nissan is cutting into GM's market share, too, but it's fair to say the second part of the Saturn strategy has worked: Customer and dealer relations are superb (no small thing-not every automaker can make that claim). Trouble is, from the very beginning Saturns have been mediocre on their best days. Imagine, GM vice chairman Bob Lutz has said repeatedly, how high Saturn could fly if it had great products to match that customer satisfaction.

That day might soon be here.

We know, we know-we didn't believe it at first either. But having recently seen the two cars Saturn introduced at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the Sky roadster and the Aura sedan, we can say that both are great-looking cars that show real promise.

The Aura is a midsize car GM called a concept at the show, though it will go into production next year in time for summer. Aura is built on a stretched Opel Vectra platform and is powered by a 3.6-liter, 250-hp V6 with a six-speed tapshift automatic.

The two-seat Sky comes from the same GM group that brought us the Pontiac Solstice. The Sky gets its design inspiration from the VX Lightning Concept, the car created at GM's Advanced Design Studio in Birmingham, England. GM built the Lightning for Vauxhall's 100th anniversary, in 2003. Underneath, Sky is basically the same as the Solstice, with a hydraulically mounted 2.4-liter, 170-hp 162-lb-ft inline four providing power to the rear wheels, linked to either a five-speed manual transmission or an optional five-speed automatic mounted in the rear. Engin- eers hint there might be more power on the way: The 2.0-liter, 205-hp supercharged version of the Ecotec could be offered, an engine already in the Saturn Ion Red Line and Chevy Cobalt SS Supercharged.