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Saturn Corporation is a division of General Motors (GM) and a brand of automobiles. It was established on January 7, 1985 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of GM, and is active almost exclusively in the United States and Canada. GM began manufacturing Saturn automobiles in 1990, largely in response to the success of Japanese small-car imports in the United States. During the first decade of the 21st century, GM has moved the brand upmarket, to the mid-price segment that was once occupied by Oldsmobile. 
The company's products used a dedicated platform called the Z-body and a dedicated engine, the 1.9 L Saturn I4 engine, and a dedicated plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee. All of the original Saturns featured dent-resistant plastic body panels which were also touted as allowing the company to change the look of the vehicles at will. However, in practice, the company did not take advantage of this capability often. The first real change came with the 2000 Saturn L-Series mid-size car. It shared the GM2900 platform with the Opel Vectra, along with its engine, and was built at a GM factory in Wilmington, Delaware. The Saturn Sky is now being produced in the Wilmington facility along with the essentially identical Opel GT and closely related Pontiac Solstice. Today, the company shares GM's Delta, Epsilon, Lambda and Theta automobile platforms, along with the company's Ecotec - including the new 2.4L LE5 I4, Turbo 2.0L LNF I4, and DCVCP 1.8L I4 - with the V6's being the High Feature LY7 3.6L V6 and High Value LZ4 3.5L V6 engines. Vehicles are built at many GM plants throughout the world. The Saturn VUE used a Honda engine in the past, and the plastic body panels have been discontinued on most current vehicles. In past years, Saturn sales have been declining, and the ION production lines were halted for two weeks in 2003 to allow dealer inventory to reduce. The L-Series was canceled after production of the 2005 models, and the ION was canceled after 2007. The current Saturn models are as follows: Sky roadster, Aura sedan, Astra hatchback, VUE small crossover SUV and Outlook large crossover SUV built off of the GM Lambda platform (replacing the Relay minivan). GM decided that Saturn and Opel will share numerous models that differ only slightly. For example, the 2008 Saturn VUE will be almost the same as the Opel Antara, the Opel GT is a copy of the Saturn Sky, while the Opel Astra will be brought over as the Saturn Astra to replace the current ION as the entry-level car, and the Saturn Aura is similar to the Opel Vectra. The company offers two sub-lines of vehicles: "Red Line" Saturns are performance-oriented, while "Green Line" cars will be more environmentally friendly. The VUE and ION Red Line models, launched in 2004, have been joined by VUE and AURA Green Lines for the 2007 model year, and Sky and Aura and Red Lines for model year 2008. The VUE Green Line utilizes mild hybrid technology. 
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