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GARDINER, N.Y. Life is a matter of expectations. If good expectations are met, we’re happy. If not, we’re disappointed. If they are surpassed, we’re very happy — perhaps even forgiving of previous disappointments.

Consider apple-picking here at Tantillo’s Farm Market, about a 90-minute drive from New York City. The women in my family look forward to it every October, when it usually is chilly or cold. They enjoy shivering, riding in a tractor-pulled wagon, hopping off with bags to collect Gala, McIntosh, Crispin and Cortland apples.

I don’t like chilly or cold. I prefer hot and sticky. I don’t like working in orchards, or in any other agricultural field. I avoid such outings.

But I was pulled into this year’s fruity event by a combination of good weather — unusually hot for October — curiosity and guilt. My daughters, Binta and Kafi, owners of foreign cars, wanted to drive and ride in the 2008 Saturn Vue XR AWD compact crossover utility vehicle in my possession. That beguiled me. They tend to be dismissive of most things Saturn.

The guilt was easy. “Mom would like it if you came with us this year,” Binta said. “That would make her happy.”

No problem. The weather was hot. I’d pick a few apples, find a spot to sit under an apple tree. I’d score points with my wife, Mary Anne. The women don’t like heat. That meant, this year, they wouldn’t be picking apples for very long. Easy.

As for the ride and drive, I expected the daughters to trash this Saturn the way they trashed previous models — “toylike” and “not a real car” were some of their previous remarks. But there was no such nastiness this time.

Kafi, the youngest and hardest to please, noticed that the Saturn Vue’s interior has improved remarkably since 2002, the Vue’s first model year. There was no cheap plastic. Leather that felt and looked like real leather covered the Vue XR’s seats. Fit and finish were perfect. Overall interior design was attractive. “I like this one,” Kafi said. “I could be happy with this one.”

Binta refused to vacate the driver’s seat for me or her sister. That spoke volumes. Binta is a car nut. She doesn’t suffer boring cars — those with sluggish acceleration, mediocre steering and handling — lightly. With those, she relinquishes the steering wheel quickly. “I’m tired, Dad. You drive,” she’ll say. Or, she’ll give her younger sister “a chance to drive.” But not this time. With the Saturn Vue XR, she retained control with the tenacity of a dictator.

“Is this really a Saturn?” Binta asked. I answered “Yes and no,” the kind of equivocation that easily angers the older, lawyer daughter. But I was telling the truth. The 2008 Saturn Vue was engineered and designed by General Motors for its Saturn Division with much help from GM’s Opel subsidiary in Europe. The new Saturn Vue, available with front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive and sold in three trim levels (base XE, mid-line XR, top-scale Red Line), thus shares a platform and design ethic with the Opel Antara.

That’s a good thing. Opel is doing quite well in Europe by offering vehicles large and small, powered by diesel and gasoline, that meet and often exceed the needs and expectations of buyers.

The new Vue XR comes with a gasoline-fueled, 257-horsepower V-6 — losing horsepower bragging rights to Toyota’s 269-hp Rav4 Limited compact crossover, but easily beating the 166-hp, four-cylinder Honda CR-V EX. But the Vue XR beats both rivals in standard safety equipment and amenities and matches or beats them (the Vue XR vs. the CR-V EX, for example) in performance and handling.

In short, the Vue XR is now a contender, which is far more than I can say for my apple-sorting abilities. The women assigned me to keep watch over their bags of apples, and ordered me to keep the Crispins separate from the Cortlands, etc. But an apple is an apple to me. I mixed up the apples and the bags, a frightful error that might get me barred from next year’s apple-picking event.

Gee.