I think the Solstice is a great little car. I couldn't believe how sharp the concept looked a few years ago at the Detroit Auto Show, and I was equally impressed with the production version unveiled a year later. Pontiac is definitely onto something, as is Saturn with the Sky.

I'm just glad they showed the car with a top! For the longest time, I wondered if they were ever going to show how the top came up. From what I've seen, the combination fastback/clamshell compartment concept makes a winning design statement.

Congratulations, Chris. I know you'll enjoy the little roadster, whenever you're not enjoying your Mustang, that is!

 

Congratulations, I think the solstice is a great car.

I personally think the Saturn Sky looks better,

This car is a great bargain at 20K, it is an exciting little sportscar. Hopefully they can squeeze more power out of the ecotec in future models.

They should strecth out the chassis a bit an make a small 2+2

 

Don't worry sharkstang, you're not alone. I too cannot afford more than one automobile per person. I have mine and my wife has hers and that's it. I do, however, wish I could afford another car so that my Mustang didn't have to be my daily driver. Oh well

 

I still say the Saturn Sky is MUCH cooler looking.

 

It looks like wanna-be Corvette (only outside, what's under the hood is different story)

 

Don't worry sharkstang, you're not alone. I too cannot afford more than one automobile per person. I have mine and my wife has hers and that's it. I do, however, wish I could afford another car so that my Mustang didn't have to be my daily driver. Oh well
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Most of my friends and they are all in mid to late 30's drive clunkers. They simply cant afford car payments and some actually make decent money. Once you have a mortgage or rent these days of $1000 to $1200 a month a car payment is a big burden. I have little rent which goes to my folks otherwise I would be driven a clunker also. Ah life.....

 

Thanks, Matt. I was thinking the same thing. The Grand Am I had went through pure torture and I never had any problems mechanically or otherwise until it was totalled. (Even then the body stood up really well for an 80mph crash)

Chris, congrats on the soon to be little sister. I can't wait for our local dealership to get one in so I can go look at it.

 

congrats! not what i would have spent $19K on but its not a bad way to use that $19K (hehe, i woulda modded the 05 lol)

its a nice car. i like it and the Sky pretty much the same. but when it comes to cool 2 seater roadsters, its all about the Miata! honestly, i do kinda dig the Miata. the newest ones, the Mazdaspeeds, are preety cool.

anyhoo, enjoy your lil roadster. as long as you dont have to give up a stang for one, more power to ya rock on

 

Slap a turbo on that Sky and it would be great for autocross looks great to.

 

Thanks, Matt. I was thinking the same thing. The Grand Am I had went through pure torture and I never had any problems mechanically or otherwise until it was totalled. (Even then the body stood up really well for an 80mph crash)

Chris, congrats on the soon to be little sister. I can't wait for our local dealership to get one in so I can go look at it.
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Sorry guys, but while Tom may not be giving the new Solstice a fair shake I can fully understand why he is giving a warning. My mother had a Cadillac Catera that was just a disaster. The little Caddy's motor has this wonderful tendency to break one of multiple timing set pieces and the when this happens the motor virtually always goes "boom". Unfortunately for those who bought one, this happens frequently, very frequently in actuality. Early Catera's (97, 97, etc.) all suffer from htis problem and GM's one attempt at fixing the problem actually made the problem worse!

After their "improved" timing set proved to more closelt resemble a frag grenade than did the first they started shirking their own extended warranty responsibilities. Back when these problems first surfaced GM stretched the warranty out to 100k should this part of the motor fail, and offered the above mentioned fix. However, when these fixed cars started regularly failing within 20k miles of the fix GM basically said "opps, we meant to say that this is a one-time only waranty coverage issue for those whose original factory warranty has already expired".

For those not out of warranty when the second motor went kaboom GM actually retrofitted the new motor out of later Catera's on occasion. but by the time the second one went virtually everyone I have met was out of warranty so you figure out what most folks ended up with. And, GM even stopped retrofitting after a point as it was proving too costly to fix these cars.

The real problem is.........that there is no fix for the problem available from GM or anyone else. Nobody makes a part to fix this and unless you want to sell your Catera (trust me, you do) the only way to actually remedy the suituation is to swap the motor for a different design. The other problems with this car could comprise a lost long enough to paper your walls, and most of them are issues that genuinely cannot be remedied, so my advice is to push any Catera's you might own over a cliff.

Car number two:

My fiance owned a 99 Grand Am that was a basket case. Over the course of 70k miles it required more maintenance and spent more time in the garage than did my 100k plus mile 88 Turbo Coupe on it's way to 200k miles! For example: While under warranty her seat developed a malfunction that the dealer promptly fixed with a new seat.....that developed the same malfunction. You will notice that this is a trend as GM seems to take some form of odd enjoyment in replacing the defective part with the exact same, and still defective of course, part that broke to begin with. Again we have a major problem with no fix available because GM is juts going to keep swapping parts until your warranty goes out.

Problems that occured before 75k miles but after the warranty had expired include: A bad alternator, a bad computer (twice actually), battery (alternator took out the battery when it died), rotors (3 times if I recall), radio (3 times too...and yes Mustangs have problems but they are apparently actually fixing these and not sticking the same broken radio in untuil the warranty goes), and the front bearings were on the way out when she got rid of the car.

She eventually got hit on the interstate and the car was totalled. To be fair crash performance was actually pretty good as everything worked like it was supposed to and she was fine. However, I would still never advise anyone to buy this car and it goes without sayung that her current car is not a GM product.

Both of these cars were religiously maintained and just plain stunk. For those who have owned a GM and had a good experience I am happy for you but IMO you were playing with fire when you bought something the General screwed together. My brother had a 00 Le'Sabre that went well over 100k miles with absolutely no issues, but it says something that in my mind he dodged a bullet. And again, when you do have a car with issues GM seems to like the approach of acting as though there is no problem.

I definately understand Tom's warning....and would give a similar warning myself if asked. All GM's are definately not like the cars above, but far too many are for me to roll the dice on one or advise anyone else to do so..