Car Gazing
A gorgeous disappointment
Despite great looks, Pontiac Solstice is a letdown
By Derek Price
Imagine you're a guy who just got a date with a gorgeous supermodel.
You'd probably spend lots of time getting ready for the big night – deciding where to take her, picking the right clothes, daydreaming about how the date might go, practicing your Prince Charming smile – so everything would be perfect when the time arrived.
Then, when you take her to the nicest restaurant in town, you discover the supermodel has awful breath, uncontrollable burping and enough body odor to knock out Mike Tyson.
That's my impression of driving Pontiac's beautiful Solstice roadster.
If cars got awards based on how they looked on magazine covers, the two-seat Solstice convertible would be a contender for Car of the Millennium. It's stunning from every angle, with a long hood, crouching stance, big wheels and slightly muscular curves that evoke the timeless style of a classic Porsche 356 or Jaguar E-type. It's the kind of head-turning car that makes you say, "Boy, I've got to drive that thing."
Once you actually drive it, though, you may wish you hadn't. It just doesn't match how it looks.
For starters, the engine and transmission work together about as well as Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen. They're fine on their own, but combine the two and you end up with a disaster because the engine is designed for high-end power while the transmission feels like it's geared for low-end torque. You'll frequently find yourself shifting from fifth gear to third – and sometimes even second – when you want to pass someone because stomping on the gas in fourth or fifth gear does absolutely nothing. It's pointless, really.
It's a little harder to quantify what I don't like about the 2.4-liter engine, but I know I don't like it. It makes 177 horsepower from four cylinders, which is plenty of grunt for such a small car, but it never seems like it wants to have fun.
A good sports car engine demands that you take it out and thrash it, saying, "Wheee! This is fun! Give me more! Rev me higher!" When you wind up the Solstice, though, it seems to scream "Noooooo! Please stop!" with a raspy, whining tone under the hood. If you push it to redline, it sounds like you're torturing the poor thing.
Nonetheless, I held out hope that my opinion of this car would improve when I took it for an all-day test through the hills in eastern Oklahoma. It didn't. The Solstice overheated several times while climbing mountain roads, and the air conditioner only worked about half the time. The remainder of the time it felt like the gates of hell had been opened on the dashboard.
To be fair to General Motors, I was driving in 105-degree weather on the kind of winding, hilly roads that most people seldom encounter, and it's possible that this particular car had been maintained poorly before I got it. I also realize I could have been driving a lemon and all the other 50 gazillion Solstices could perform better. Whatever the case, I would be furious with GM if I had bought this particular car.
And the complaints don't stop there.
The Solstice's top is irritating. It looks fantastic and keeps the cabin relatively quiet, but it's an enormous pain to put up and down compared with other roadsters. The Mazda Miata's top can be lowered and raised with one arm in a matter of seconds without getting out of the car, but the Solstice makes you get out of the car, open the trunk and go through several steps that I don't want to describe here. It's too annoying.
Inside, you'll find a relatively comfortable cabin for a two-seat sports car. It has several small storage compartments near the seats, which is a good thing because the trunk is almost useless when the top is down. All the controls are within easy reach, except for one of the seat adjustments. If you want to adjust the angle of the seat back, you either have to open the door and reach back or be a contortionist who can dislocate your elbows.
On the bright side, the Solstice has some redeeming qualities. Its suspension, steering and brakes are amazing, making it the best handling car General Motors has made in decades – perhaps ever – with the exception of the Corvette.
It's also very affordable, with a base price under $20,000. Of course, that assumes you can actually find a base Solstice. Because of all the beautiful, glossy magazine photos of this car, demand has been so high that it's hard to find one under $24,000.
I just feel sorry for the people who bought a Solstice based entirely on those pictures. It may be a supermodel, but it's not one you'd want to take on a second date.
(Derek Price is a newspaper editor and freelance writer living in Texas.
Contact him at dprice@cargazingonline.com)
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