I owned an 03 Audi TT convertible and loved it for what it was and then looked into a Solstice/Skye and was appalled at how bad that car was in almost every sense. Cheaply made, slow, crappy convertible top design, NO trunk space...just awful. Decent idea but horrible design and execution. I think there is a market for a smaller Corvette-branded and very well-built Miata beater, but it is very small. Talk about an amazing opportunity for a turbo V6 or small-block V8 track car! Maybe the new Cobra...oh wait, that was never really a production car...forget that.

 

That's my point. GM could have done well in sales if they'd done with the Kappas what they did with the Camaros. Limiting the run on the Sky and Solstice was a stupid decision. Hardly any of them were stock from the dealership unless they were ordered by the customer. And some dealerships refused to order one for the customer stating they had to buy one from the lot. Apparently GM only let dealerships order X amount of Kappas based on their volume. So if a dealership ordered one and was only allowed to order one, that was it.

Don't get me wrong, the Solstice GXP actually handled quite nicely other than the crazy over steer you'd get while accelerating out of a turn. Other than the harsh ride (which didn't seem harsh until the dealership replaced the shocks that blew out almost immediately), the car really drove well and handled well.

Everything on the interior was awful other than the seats. (I liked the seats until the bolsters got in my way after a year of hitting the gym.)

Some of the plastic interior parts (like the center console area) had hard sharp plastic seams. The gauges were a complete cluster-f*** when the top was down, which would be nearly 100% of the time since it was a ROADSTER. When the top is down and the sun is beating from above, the gauges are completely blacked out. It's like GM didn't even test the car during the day... at all.

The sun visors were complete jokes. Plastic sun visors that if you pulled back on them to, you know, use them you could break them easily. They only moved 90*. So you couldn't use them to block the sun above the top of the windshield. You couldn't use them to block the sun going THROUGH the windshield, so you might as well just never ever touch them.

And I totally agree the top was simply awful.

All in all, that car wasn't worth the $25+K my dad spent on it, which is why he sold it 3 years later (after the warranty was up) and bought a Corvette. Sadly, the car had low miles. My dad only drove it a couple miles a day (to work and back) and it ALWAYS was in the shop. The car had to go in for warranty work every other month if not every month. It was really sad.

Um.... what?! Is this trolling? LOL

 

Did the Audi TT convertible sell new for $18,253? (Constant dollar value relative to the $20,000 Solstice three years later.)

Did they really limit production? That is, have production capacity and have orders but refuse to build cars? This seems out of character for GM. I really don't see how they could have sold a two-seat inexpensive roadster in high volume. There are only so many auto enthusiasts and girls who want cute little convertibles that aren't Miatas.

.Jinx

 

Yes. They definitely did. They limited the run to (if I recall correctly) 1000 cars the first year and 2000 cars the second (including the GXP). GM flat out limited the Solstice.

By the way, there was a waiting list for the hard top Solstice. And with the hand full of cars that were actually delivered, the rest of the people on the list were SOL. Of course, that was when the Pontiac was taken off the market.

In the mean time, from 2006 to the end of Pontiac, they hardly made any Solstices and Skys in comparison to even Corvettes. They limited the Kappas so much that some dealers marked up the turbo models to Corvette priced territory. And that wasn't just the first year of the turbo models (2007).

 

Not a relevant comment. The Solstice sucked by almost any measure including design. The TT was just my example of a similar car well done.

 

Quite relevant. It's easy for a car to be well done when it costs more and sells for more. A lot more.

Why don't you just compare it to the Miata like everybody else did?

 

Maybe they did this because the car wasn't actually profitable, but pricing it profitably would have made the program a PR disaster. After all, GM promised it would be $20,000. You know the press would have eviscerated GM if they didn't sell it for that.

As I recall they chose to start production sooner with simpler tooling and a lot more hand-welding.

That was when Pontiac was taken off the market.

Extra ironic when you consider that the initial design brief that created the Solstice called for a coupe, not a convertible.

.Jinx

 

No, because the design of the Solstice/Skye was the beginning of the end. They even had two separate models (vs the TT) with which to spread the design and development costs.

I didn't compare it to the Miata because I've never had or really looked seriously at a Miata. From what exposure I've had to them (my sister owned one), they are much better cars than the Solstice ever was.

 

As do many, many others.

 

Today's Miata is 1000 times better than the first gen Miatas. To be fair, you should drive an early Miata, then tell us how the first gen car compared to the Solstice.

 

That, to me, isn't a good excuse. They could have waited some time, tooled up better, and produced a car in large numbers to sell at a reasonable price. If they invested a lot of money into a car they new they couldn't make a profit on, that's their fault. But if it's true, they could have simply turned that around by taking some extra time.

 

Read Bob Lutz' book and see how that affects your opinion of what they could have done. They built a car that was long on passion and affordable, but we kick them in the nuts because it wasn't great enough. It seems odd that we're complaining both that they didn't build more to satisfy demand and it wasn't very good...

.Jinx

 

I know it seems like a contradiction, but my original point I made was that if they built them in mass quantity, they could have sold them for the same price with better quality.

Honestly, if it wasn't for the quality of the Solstice, I wouldn't complain about it. But to me it seems that they cut so many corners on it that they hindered it.

I'm not reading Lutz's book. I was annoyed with him before, I don't want to be annoyed with him again.

 

All this talk about the Solstice got me interested in at least reading up on it a little.

It seems that it was actually a hit at first They only planned on selling 1000 cars the first year, and then ended up selling far more than that. They produced over 20K for the first model year.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2...ter-pt-cruiser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_Solstice

But the news article also mentions price gouging and GMs targets of selling 20K Pontiacs/year and 10K Saturns/year. It doesn't seem like they were limiting supply all that much, because by 2007 Pontiac was going to fall short of their 20K target for the 2008 MY.

http://www.leftlanenews.com/pontiac-...in-demand.html

After that we know the economy went south, GM bankrupt, and Pontiac and Saturn were finished.

Anyway I've never sat in or driven a Kappa so I can't comment on the quality. Just seems like it was a bigger hit than I originally thought after reading some of the comments here.

 

I've spent plenty of time in both as well, I don't find the Solstice (Sky) to be all that bad at all, quite a solid and tight handling little car actually...as is the Miata.

 

I've driven the Kappas, and found them to be lacking in power and normal sports car storage space.

Did the Miata have a gas tank taking up 95% of the trunk space as did the Kappas? What a joke. You could take a passenger or a picnic basket, but NOT BOTH!

 

Once again, compare first gen to first gen cars.

The first gen Miata had 3.6 cu. ft. of cargo space.

The first gen Solstice had 5.4 cu. ft. of cargo space.

 

I'm no troll, but I'm willing to listen to your reasoning for this accusation.

 

Sorry, I wasn't trying to accuse you of trolling. Read what you posted. A lot of it just doesn't make any sense. I'll highlight was didn't make sense to me:

Now forgive me, up until I did a google search, I'd never heard of a Toyota 2000GT. I thought you meant Mitsubishi 3000GT. But I did look it up and that car exists.

But you can't have an 05 Corvette in 1967 and I don't know what a Sky XLP is but I figure you mean Sky Redline.

I have no idea what you mean by Feiro, Sky, Solstice to be struck. GM will likely come out with another little sports car at some point. They're always looking for that small limited niche car they can sell to get people interested in GM cars. (like they did with all 3 of those cars)

Maybe it was late at night or something, but I just couldn't make sense of your post.

 

Crabby, comparing the Tiger, Solstice or 2000GT to the Corvette presents the typical buyer's choice process. They are completely different cars compared to each other.

Mentioning the present value of any car today to original price is just an interesting tidbit of data. Had any of us known!

The Fiero, especially by the time in evolved into the '87 and '88 Formula, was an awesome little sports car.

Some bash the Solstice/Sky but as you and others have stated (and I agree with you), that platform was a whale of a start to a good line of entry level sports cars.

I still think the Fiero and Solstice would be fantastic cars to develop to bring younger buyers into the GM family of sports cars. It won't happen, but .....