Stunning Solstice an instant phenom
The Pontiac Solstice slips into Missoula under the first hint of an August moon.
Up ahead, a pair of Harleys pulls out.
Another half-dozen bikes follow, sandwiching the Solstice among chrome tailpipes and chugging flatheads.
They go along that way for a mile or two. The Harleys swap lanes, pull ahead and fall behind.
The Solstice driver knows they’re talking about the car, eyeing it like they would spring’s first tube-top.
In time, one rider breaks from the crowd and roars ahead up alongside the Solstice.
“Nice car,” he shouts down at the driver over the thud of his Harley.
Big grin; “Beautiful, man.”
“Thanks,” nods the Solstice driver, feeling a little foolish for enjoying the flattery. After all, the car isn’t even his.
But so it is in the life of a Solstice driver: Harley riders, little kids, the couple wandering arm-in-arm down Riverside on a Sunday night — they all ogle the Solstice.
He: “Wow. Look at that. That’s amazing.”
She: “It’s not that amazing.”
Doubters aside, the Solstice is a styling grand slam. Looking far cooler than a $20,000 roadster should, it turns heads wherever it goes.
Comprised of a flurry of compound curves, with nary a straight edge or corner in site, the Solstice’s shape recalls great racecars of the past. The cowl humps behind the seats evoke classic Jaguars and the single-piece hood and decklid lift up in a nod to classic design.
It looks so good, it almost doesn’t matter that the Solstice stumbles in some key areas.
The Solstice and its Saturn near-twin Sky represent the first serious attempts by an American company to crack the inexpensive two-place roadster market now owned by Mazda’s MX-5, nee Miata.
Both have manually operated canvas soft-tops with glass rear windows, inline four-cylinder engines and short-throw five-speed manual transmissions. Both boast sub-$20,000 price tags, although the cost of assorted must-have options — such as air conditioning, cruise control and anti-lock brakes — push them above that mark.
Our well turned-out tester blew through the $25,000 mark, with a final tally of $26,490. You can get by for less, but only by passing on leather seats, satellite radio, a limited-slip rear differential and the road-noise-defeating acoustic headliner.
Not cheap fun, necessarily, but good fun at a fair price.
That the Solstice exists at all is something of a miracle. Despite requiring the development of a new platform, as well as some tweaking of the water-based process used to shape those sexy lines, it came to market in just 27 months.
It wouldn’t have happened without some judicious parts-sharing.
The 177-horsepower, 2.4-liter engine is lifted from Chevy’s Cobalt and the gearbox is from the Chevy Colorado pickup. The independent rear suspension and front and rear disc brakes come from the Cadillac CTS and the hydroformed steel chassis is modeled on the Corvette’s.
Up front, engineers developed a purpose-built short/long control-arm suspension with Bilstein coil-over shocks and, in a departure from current GM practice that favors electrically assisted steering, chose instead a hydraulic rack-and-pinion system from Borg Warner.
Good choice. The Solstice steering system is precise and communicative and has excellent on-center feel.
Even lacking the optional sport suspension, the Solstice shows terrific composure in the twisties, with minimal body lean and great grip, thanks largely to 45-series, 18-inch Goodyears mounted on handsome 18-by-8-inch alloys.
Still, piloting the Solstice through the demanding sections is like meeting a would-be lover with whom you’ll never truly connect. Its character is a shade remote and lacks the seat-of-the-pants urgency of the more fully realized Miata. A less-than-optimal engine/transmission pairing compounds the matter. The Ecotec four is slow to rev and only reluctantly releases revs on throttle lift. Further, the tranny’s widely spaced ratios fail to maximize the engine’s torque characteristics. Straight-line acceleration is largely unaffected, but in the twisties the driver struggles to keep the engine in its sweet spot.
But these are car-guy complaints and won’t matter much to most drivers.
A larger concern is a shortage of storage space. The cockpit is roomy, comfortable and better suited to tall drivers than the MX-5’s, but there’s just one cubby of useful size and it doesn’t lock, a major oversight in a roadster.
When stowed, the top consumes virtually the entire trunk. An overnight trip to Missoula meant stowing the bags in the passenger seat. And though it’s not a difficult chore, raising and lowering the top is more cumbersome than it should be.
Finally, it’s hard to understand why GM would come to market with a car lacking side-impact airbags.
Still, great looks trump virtually all other concerns and the Solstice has become an instant bestseller and adds glamour to GM’s passenger-car lineup. Affordable, fun and drop-dead gorgeous, it proves GM still has a few tricks up its sleeve.
Just ask those guys on the Harleys.