Driving with Bob Lutz is the worst way to review Saturn's new Astra. Not because I was busy trying to effervesce with wit. Not because I was worried that my toe-scuffing driving skills would fail to impress the man who has two Cunninghams; a man who pats down his cheeks with liquefied testosterone after shaving; a man who owns not one but two cold-war fighter jets. ("He had to paint a big Air Force 'stars and bars' on 'em," says one GM rep, "because when he'd buzz the beach, people thought the Russians were attacking.") No, it was because every synapse, every neuron, every functioning bit of grey matter, pulsed the same message in syncopated rhythm — do not wreck. A trailing security detail in a Tahoe instilled the appropriate fear that if I did, what beaten remains of me there were would be sent to my wife in a FedEx box. COD.

But there we were, driving along the ribbons of switchbacks strewn along the mountainsides of Southern California. Not even three weeks ago, the entire area was engulfed in wildfires, burning so intensely that nearly one million residents were ordered to evacuate — the largest mass relocation since the Civil War. Cleared of their growth, the slopes are peppered by boulders bleached white from the heat. What trees still stand have begun sloughing off their bark, exposing the soft, pulpy sap wood within. Skeletons of utility poles sway in the breeze, threatening collapse. Blind turns without guardrails promised an exciting but swift end. From the driver's seat of a five-door Astra hatchback, I was extremely glad that the chassis of this car hadn't been dumbed down in its journey across the Atlantic. Or so I'd been told.

"We did not dumb Astra down when we brought it over here," I was told the night before by Jon Lauckner, GM's VP of Global Product Management. "The ride is definitely tuned more for handling and high-speed stability than comfort." His statement warmed my heart. When I first heard that Opel's Astra — the second-best-selling car in Europe for four years — was coming to America as a Saturn, I approached the news with the same wariness reserved for family burger joints that proudly boast they've added sushi to their menu. My skepticism wasn't arbitrary — GM's last attempt at a homegrown compact hatch was the Type-10 Cavalier, a car whose reason for purchase fell under the general category of "head trauma," and after its merciful departure the world's largest automaker gave up on designing its own hatches for its home market entirely.

For GM Europe, however, small hatchbacks are the linchpins of the lineup, and the boys over there kept plugging away at the segment, improving each subsequent generation, ironing out wrinkles, and culminating in 2004 with the latest Astra, which is available throughout the world as a wagon, a sedan, a hardtop convertible, and a three- or five-door hatchback. Of those, the U.S. will get only the latter two.

The pair share an aggressive design that is purposeful without being overwrought. The wheels are pushed to the edges of their houses. A single rib, serving no purpose other than to look stunning, runs from stern to keel. Chrome rings, notched around their radii, surround the headlights, setting the projector lamps off from their blackened housings. Various takes on the Astra's avant-garde sheetmetal, wide stance, swoopy glasshouse, and angular lights are already deployed across the Saturn lineup, but the Astra is arguably the most cohesive integration of them all to date.

With precious few common exterior parts save the headlights, hood, mirrors, and door handles, the three-door cuts a profile two inches lower overall than its five-door sibling, with a roofline 35 millimeters lower and its ride height dropped another 15 millimeters. Its windshield is aggressively raked over the single arc of its greenhouse, culminating in a chunky, square-jawed rear. The five-door retains fewer of the three-door's banzai battlestar traits, with a more conservative demeanor by virtue of its taller, upright backlight and a rear door cut that has been pulled back to the roof's trailing edge like a ponytail.

It may be indistinguishable from its international sibling, but some pieces required tweaking to comply with various Federal emissions and safety mandates. The bumpers had to be strengthened, but since Opel's version was originally designed with the possibility of American sales in mind, only the rebar behind the plastic cover required upgrading. Reflectors were added to the taillight housings, extra catalytic converters were bolted up, and brake pads were swapped out for less aggressive pieces that don't squeal as much — a move that also necessitated swapping over to the larger front rotors of the Euro-spec Astra Turbo to maintain pedal feel.

Under the folded-paper hood rests a 138-hp, 1.8-liter version of GM's familiar Ecotec four. As our Astras will be assembled in Antwerp, Belgium, GM needed to use an existing engine, and the 1.8 was the only offering in the European lineup that could be had with either an automatic or a manual transmission. When pressed on the availability of a future Red Line model of the Astra, GM execs demurred, saying only that the hot European engines can't be housebroken for American emissions and the car's Belgian assembly precludes installing the 260-hp mill found in the new Cobalt SS Turbo. For the foreseeable future, the single engine is as good as it gets.

Saturn is quick to point out that the Astra's engine, with its variable cams and 16-valve head, makes 90 percent of its peak torque from 2200 rpm through redline. Unfortunately, it's 90 percent of 125 lb-ft. With the lightest model a not-inconsiderable 2833 pounds, passing an asthmatic VW bus on a slight incline became a harrowing competitive sport, with me stamping down on the foot feed and winding the Ecotec up to its coarse upper reaches, fervently eyeing the next corner to make sure that nothing was in the oncoming lane.

Exacerbating matters is Astra's optional four-speed automatic. It's a surprisingly competent transmission that happily bangs off liquid upshifts, but the lack of sufficient ratios rarely keeps the engine in its powerband. It's programmed so downshifts don't occur at part throttle — a setup that lets drivers lug the engine when climbing hills in the name of better economy, but also one that requires drivers to push through a detent at the bottom of the pedal's travel in order to snag a lower gear. The pedal was on the other side of that stop more often than not as I, and the Astra, fought gravity on the inclines.

At a midpoint in the trip, I switched cars to a three-door with the five-speed manual — the setup with which over 90 percent of European Astras are sold — and gained a lucid understanding of the car's essential character. As Lutz told me, "Driving a well-sorted car with a small engine and a stick can be more fun than driving something with a lot of horsepower." He's right — the manual lets me grab the dog by the scruff of its neck and thrash it around a bit to establish dominance, keeping the revs above 4000 rpm where the engine comes alive. The shift action is firm but long, and the clutch pedal releases in the middle of its travel with a nicely linear progression, the way God intended manuals to operate.

A big, fat merit in the Astra's favor is that even though it takes a while to gain speed, it loses very little of its steam going through corners. Both three- and five-door models stay tractable and flat when wrung out, despite 63 percent of their weight hanging out in front. It's a testament to the black art of matching spring rates and dampers, because the chassis itself is completely straightforward with MacPherson struts up front and an evolved version of the torsion-beam axle out back. The rear is a neat idea executed well: the new design takes the traditional steel tube and stamps it flat in the middle to form a double U-shaped channel, to which cast trailing arms are welded. In addition to acting as its own sway bar, the axle's responsiveness can be tuned by attaching the trailing arms at different angles, allowing engineers to dial in the right settings not only for each body style, but also each of Astra's three wheel and tire packages.

A fast-ratio 14:1 steering rack, which is standard on the three-door and optional on the five, is slightly numb when pointed straight ahead, but loads up nicely at speed. Variable assistance comes from an electrically driven hydraulic pump, keeping the comfortable firmness of a liquid-driven system without burdening the engine. The brakes are non-eventful; they stop the car with an unremarkable amount of pedal feedback.

Once I got to a stretch of road where a horrible, flaming death was less likely, I turned off the stability control (standard on three-doors and up-level fives) and pushed the car too fast into a turn. The Astra nosedived through it just like you'd expect, the tires letting out low moans, but it broke wide of the mark in a controllable fashion and was easily brought back into line by lifting off the throttle. Understeer control is built into the stability system, which brakes the inside wheels and cuts engine power when the car overshoots its steering input. Anyone who can get this car sideways on a public street should be taken away by the men in white coats, and rightly so.

After driving for four hours, I pulled back into my hotel lot and immediately noticed that my back wasn't sore. The seats are unchanged from their European counterparts, which means they're firm without being uncomfortably hard, and three-door models have enough bolsters, contours, and cushions to give a fair approximation of sitting on Scarlett Johansson. Every touchable surface from the dashpad to the windowsill is covered with a thick, pebbled rubber, and while the sunvisors are still molded from recycled Sunny Delight bottles, the headliner they attach to is a handsome weave. The Astra's interior has come a long way from Saturn's previous small car — the cyclopean Ion — that felt like the retribution that sinners face when the universe settles its karmic ledgers.

The instruments are straightforward, if awkwardly in lockstep with GM's international campaign against temperature gauges, and lack the funky typefaces and whirligig startup routines of manufacturers clamoring for prepackaged hipness. The steering wheel adjusts for both reach and rake, and three-doors get a cake doughnut of a rim with thumb notches. Redundant audio controls on its spokes operate with intuitive roller drums instead of pushbuttons. GM took pains when designing the Astra's various buttons, switches, and knobs to scrub them clean of the high cheapness that afflicted GM cars for decades. The rotaries are rubber-coated and grippy, bumping through their ranges of action with muted, thudding detents. The stalks for the signals and wipers spring back to attention when released.

The quality paid to the interior's intangibles makes its shortcomings all the more head-shaking. The beaver-tooth center stack is a mélange of identically shaped black buttons that control the radio and trip computer, which display their functions through an oddly prominent orange LCD that's high-centered on the dash vents. A six-disc CD changer is available, but what aren't are an iPod jack or XM satellite service, since OnStar takes up the radio's one available input. A new center console with a single cupholder had to be molded for the fast-food nation, but it's located at the far back of its span where drivers not versed in strappado will have difficulty grabbing their Big Gulps. The climate control knobs are positioned at the base of the center stack, and they're labeled with a dim gray font that resists attempts to read their positions.

Later that night, the San Diego sun was cresting the horizon as I sat across the dinner table from Lutz. How can GM afford to sell the car here, he was asked, with the dollar slumping against the Euro? Lutz's neck stiffened like he'd just scared a rattlesnake. His eyes went wide before responding, "We are considering applying for non-profit status."

Yet with a starting price of $15,995 for a five-door XE model — that doesn't include air conditioning — the Astra isn't exactly cheap. With the lowest horsepower and torque ratings in its class, it isn't exactly powerful. And with EPA mileage estimates of 24 city and 32 highway (30 for the automatic), it isn't the most efficient. A step up to the five-door XR, which adds A/C, foglights, and 16-inch alloy wheels, costs $17,545; the three-door, which is only available in XR trim and includes 17-inch alloys, sport seats, and stability control, costs $18,495. But with the Civic, Focus, Mazda3, and Rabbit meeting or surpassing the Astra in nearly every category, the point at which the Saturn becomes prohibitively expensive for what you get is perilously close.

Which is a shame, because Saturn's Astra is the best small car to ever come out of General Motors — a hatchback from them that, for the first time, will be purchased out of desire instead of necessity — and in terms of driving dynamics, NVH, and baked-in solidity and heft, the Astra feels as German as shaving off your sideburns. GM offering a premium small car in the United States, beancounters be damned, is a revolution. But in a market already saturated with strong competition, it's just not the revolution that the Astra needs to be.