PICK3 said:
What's so great about Opel?
They use to suck.
That was 30 years ago. Things change. They've had to get at least reasonably good in order to remain competitive in their home market, against rivals such as VW, Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, SEAT, Skoda, Ford...
GM has pretty much given up on developing passenger cars in the USA. Except for a few lingering older products, platform development for passenger cars has been passed off to their German and Australian divisions. Cadillacs will probably continue to be developed here only because there's no demand outside of the US, Canada, and Arab countries, for cars above a certain size. The only thing GM USA can do well anymore is truck development, and the Corvette.
So most normal-size GM cars will have chassis architecture that comes from Opel (or Holden in Australia for the rear-wheel-drive models), with Americanized bodies and interiors. Saturn, on the other hand, will be selling the German designs as they appear in Germany, changing pretty much only the badge.
That Saturn Astra is the same as an Opel Astra or Vauxhall Astra. The rest of Saturn's range of products will be synchronized with Opel's product line over the next half-decade or so.