GM to Sell Saturns in Japan : Autos: The U.S.-made, right-hand-drive cars will be marketed through the company’s own dealers.

General Motors Corp. plans to sell U.S.-made Saturn cars in Japan through its own network of dealers, possibly as early as 1997.

The right-hand-drive cars will be based on Saturn’s first redesigned models, which will appear in the company’s U.S. showrooms late this summer. Saturn cars first went on sale in the United States in October, 1990.

The GM unit has said for about three years that it wants to break into the Japanese market. While Saturn executives still aren’t saying when the cars might go on sale there, the company said this week that it plans to sell them through a small number of stand-alone dealers selling only Saturns.

The strategy--conceived in the 1980s to distance Saturn from its parent and allow the brand to compete with Japanese brands on its own merit--has worked well for Saturn in the United States, where the company now has 332 dealerships.

“Our determination has been that the brand equity is helped by having stand-alone stores,” Saturn spokesman Bill Betts said from the unit’s plant in Spring Hill, Tenn. “That philosophy will carry over to Japan and we expect it to work just as well.”

The new cars, to be sold in Japan with the Saturn nameplate, are slightly narrower than the old models, Saturn President Richard G. (Skip) LeFauve said Friday. The unit was marking production of its one-millionth car.

LeFauve declined to say how many cars Saturn could sell in Japan or when, although industry reports said sales could start as early as 1997.