Good looks can never beat a good drive

GM's Solstice disappoints Andrew English

This car is Bob Lutz's baby. He told me so. General Motors's "car guy" sees this little two-seater sportster as the halo-effect car for his
companys recovery plan. GM tells us its "Total Value Proposition" means better cars, better brands, better quality and lower structural costs.
Will that all fit in the trunk?

No. In fact, very little will fit into the Solstice's rear-hinged trunk if you've got the roof down. That's because the cumbersome top the sticks
and those superfluous fabric flying buttresses will already have filled it. You can just about fit a couple of small bags around the side and something flat underneath.

Even with expensive accessories such as leather seats, air-con and anti-lock brakes, the Solstice's cabin feels bare, with large,
abrasive plastic dashboard moldings and door liners. The instrument binnacle is quite classy, though. The legroom is mean for six-footers, although the leather seats are wide and comfy.

You sit low in a Solstice, which takes some getting used to, but you are at least out of the wind.

Start the engine and so many vibrations sizzle through the major controls that you wonder whether the exhaust has been fitted correctly.
In Europe, GM's engines can be rorty, but this 2.4-litre, 177bhp four-pot is plain noisy and harsh, especially when the top is up.
The engine is faster than it feels, with performance to match the Mazda MX-5's, but revving it hard is unpleasant, so you tend to stick it
in top gear and cruise. The gearbox shifts easily but lacks the snick-snack feel of an MX-5s.

Ride and handling are heavily influenced by the car's weight (1.28 tons). The body feels stiff and well made and it rides tolerably,
though the hard rear suspension skitters over poor surfaces.

It is very stable at speed, but the soft front end understeers nastily when you corner hard.

The steering, too, lacks the precision and feedback of the Mazdas. Well weighted in a straight line, it goes light and weaselly in
mid-corner, which doesn't inspire confidence. Ease the throttle and the Solstice will tuck its nose in obediently, but it isn't much fun
to drive hard and lacks sparkle for anyone raised on European sports cars.
 
To look at this car is to want one, though. It is gorgeous and immaculately detailed, from the honeycomb grilles to the high-back head
restraints. To drive, it's a different story. Yes, it's cheap - but so was the original Mazda MX-5, which sounded, handled and drove a
country mile better than the Solstice. GM simply hasn't paid the same sort of obsessive attention to driving detail as it has to appearance.

But then the Pontiac Solstice is a car to get people talking. The American press is raving about it at the moment, uncritically for the most part.
It's not such bad news for us, however, because the Solstice won't come to Britain.

Its importance lies in the fact that it is based on GM's Kappa platform for small, rear-driven sports cars - a breed that is under threat from forthcoming EU pedestrian-safety legislation. Victims' heads tend to bend hoods and hit engine blocks unless there is lots of clearance
between the two, or else an expensive pyrotechnic bonnet to create some.

There is a window of opportunity to homologate cars this year, before those safety requirements come into force.
GM has taken that opportunity with another sports car on the Kappa platform, the Saturn Sky, but the rush to secure type approval means
there is no time to make right-hand-drive versions.

While the Solstice and the Saturn Sky are reskinned versions of the same thing, the latter's coachwork is essentially that of the Vauxhall
Lightning concept, designed by Briton Simon Cox in GM's Coventry studio. GM lifted the design to join the revamped, heavily European-influenced Saturn model range.

Reworked with a turbocharged 240bhp engine, different suspension and interior, and a hard-top coupé option, the Sky will come
back to Europe next year, probably badged as an Opel GT. Vauxhall might market this car, but left-hand drive is a small, specialist
market in Britain.

This will be a blow to Vauxhall, which in the next couple of years will lose influential models such as the two-door Holden Monaro
and the Lotus-built VX220 sports car. It will be left with no suitable replacements.

It also makes you wonder about GM's new Total Value Proposition strategy. For years we have been hearing how GM wants to
leverage its brands across the world, yet it can't even engineer a right-hand-drive version of the Sky for a sports car-mad market
like Britain.

GM Solstice

Engine/transmission: 2,384cc petrol, in-line four-cylinder, with DOHC and four valves per cylinder, 177bhp at 6,600rpm
and 166lb ft of torque at 4,800rpm. Five-speed manual transmission with optional five-speed auto. Rear-wheel drive.

Performance (estimated): top speed 124mph, 0-60mph 7.3sec, US EPA fuel consumption, city 24mpg, highway 33.6mpg.

We like: Wonderful looks, strong bodyframe, comfortable seats, smooth ride and a low price tag.

We don't like: Terrible hood design, noisy and harsh engine, iffy steering and huge amount of optional extras to get the car up
to a spec you could tolerate.