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Saturn Aura Concept: GM to Relaunch Saturn Unit With New CarsGeneral Motors is relaunching its Saturn small car division with a new family of products, including sports utility vehicles and sports cars, aimed at doubling sales to at least 400,000 units a year by 2007.
The vehicles, to be launched by mid-2006, will double Saturn's product line and represent "a completely new design direction" for the brand, Jill Lajdziak, the division's general manager, told the Financial Times on Monday. She declined to give financial details of the investment programme.
The first of the new family, the Relay sports utility vehicle, was launched at this week's Detroit motor show. The Sky, a two-seater sports car, will go into production in early 2006 and the Aura, a sporting saloon, will go on sale in mid-2006, taking Saturn more upmarket.A second sports utility vehicle will be launched later in 2006.
Design and development of the vehicles has been high up the priority list of Bob Lutz, GM's vice-chairman who was drafted in several years ago to revitalise the carmaker's model programmes - increasingly criticised even within GM for their conservatism.
The Saturn brand, marketed only in North America, was launched as a GM division in 1980 pitched mainly at less well-off private buyers.
Sales hit an early peak of 285,000 in 1984 but have remained below that level since, as the saloon-based
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