2007 Pontiac Solstice: Regular Car Reviews 

RIP Jazz; he could've been in the new prequel movie given that they have a Porsche (car he originally was) with the Autobots, but nah it's Mirage.

@@ajvark Unfortunately Bay was ALLLLL ABOUT that GM money. Throughout all 5 movies there's so many awkward close ups on GMC and Chevy badges lol.

Jass still is one of my fav characters

What a good comment for my youth

Ironically, that’s what I think about everytime I see one of these

Kunkelman actually owns numerous dealerships in western Pennsylvania, southeastern Ohio, and northern West Virginia, also known as the golden triangle in some circles.

Kunkelman? I guess it's true that Pennsylvania is full of Germans because that's a German Name, of course it's "Kunkelmann" here Speaking of Germany and the Pontiac Solstice, isn't this the Car that is the "Opel GT" but just different Looks and some other small Changes? The Opel GT is hell of a fun car Prost & Cheers from the Bavarian Alps

I just used Rinaldi and Kline, and I’m wondering who stole my dog?

No one stole nothin" pal, we put yer' dog in that there hole over there, and then we went ahead and poured some of this here concrete right on top.

because issa Opel in Europe

@@ComicusFreemanius I didn’t know that thank you

Clarkson tested it on an episode when he did the Laguna Seca Playstation race, but apparently really hated it, particularly due to the unfortunate transmission. I feel like they also mentioned it another time (news segment?) and said the suspension was overly hard for moderate cornering performance.

I remember that review as well.

Then again since Top Gear argued successfully in court that they're not an information but an entertainment program in order to be able to lie for entertainment purposes, you shouldn't trust their "reviews" anyway.

bruhh, I also own a manual GXP. I'm telling you these things are still a diamond in the rough. Everyone always thinks about the NA 2.4 when they think about the Solstice which is a huge shame because these things CAN actually have power.

Same here, I'm installing a bunch of aftermarket parts from RPM Motorsports to try and get to like 350 WHP so I guess it's not fair comparison from to drive mine. I hope he takes somebody up on the offer!

@@brucesabatoni3410 Haha I submitted my car a few years back when it was stock. It's making 300hp. At lights, nobody knows what it is. I've gotten Corvette, Porsche, Viper. Then again, it does have an aftermarket Viper style hood

@@UpperRobin29 C4 corvette with a misfire, maybe. Viper? No. Porsche? Yes. Old 944? Yes.

@@brucesabatoni3410 Yeah, the only things I've done to mine are adding the wind deflector, getting adapters to throw my stock G8 wheels on it (same stock tire size between the two), and adding a backbone brace to reduce my windshield cracking. Those can all be put back to stock pretty quick though if he wanted a fully stock example.

Mallet did this as an aftermarket with an LS2 T56. Gm did the turbo lnf ecotech GXP but never intended the LS3 as it would undercut the Corvette. A Pontiac Corvette fighter goes as far back as the 2 seater Banshee that DeLorean personally has his hand in. As a Pontiac fanboi I would of loved the Corvette to sweat abit. It has hell of a ring to it - Pontiac Banshee. 😁

Apparently a 2JZ also kinda bolts right up as well

I wouldn't call it a direct bolt on. An LS/LT will fit in there with some fabrication and you have to be very specific with header and oil pan choices. Engine bay is tiny as it is for the 4 cylinders it came with.

@@TheStuntastik with the LS it is small enough it fits quite well there is someone who did this swap only took a couple days to drop in and get it working

It should have debutted the Colorado Truck 5 banger, with manual trans only. 😔

It's a great car, Gosh darn it!

Wife’s boyfriend

The concept car versions looked even better somehow, but overall this is one of those rare cases where the production car still had the look of the concept car. Back then the "bubbly" styling looked cooler than it does now.

The "mini-Corvette" aesthetic was even more obvious with the Sky. It was basically a baby C6.

@@benn454 that had room for a LS

@@pontiacGXPfan The Hot Rod LS7 Solstice built by Mallett was insane.

@@benn454 the one I read about was the LS2 I didn't know they shoehorned a LS7

Me too! This or the Saturn sky. They ended up not buying one bc it was manual only and my mom wouldnt let my dad buy a car she couldnt drive

The styling is better on the sky too

Saturn Sky Redline or Pontiac Solstice GXP! Those little turbo cars are sweet!!

Looks like a Vauxhall VX220

@@isaacsrandomvideos667 The VX220 is mid engined, it looks more like a Lotus Elise than a Solstice

Absolutely! If only they would've had a proper gear selection for the automatic transmission! Even with a sluggish paddle shifter or e shift option it would've been nearly perfect for it's time and price 🤷‍♂️

Nothing goes together quite like Mr Regular and premature uploading.

Have they really? It's still constantly jumping in and out of focus. They've been using the same Nikon since the very start. Also lots of jigglies from electronic stabilization and slow rolling shutter.

The 60fps is gross for anything that isn’t gaming footage

@@ziginox Is that the one that can cause motion sickness?

The Sky looked like some kind of Amazonian poisonous insect. The Solstice looked like a ladybug.

honestly i really liked them both in their own ways. I think it's cool just how subtle, yet definite, the differences were.

@@zlinedavid you have a vivid imagination

Especialy the new ones. (shivers in disgust)

Pontiac always did

Badge swap it

I bet. I miss both of my 2002 Pontiac grand AM and 2001 Montana

You can't damn drive

@@kanagawa85 Not bad, although I'm a sucker for convertibles. Between both the 97 Del Sol and the 06 Solstice I used to have, I would run topless if the weather was even close to good enough for it. Basically as long as it was over 50 degrees and not raining, I'd have the top down.

It didn't do that. You did that.

It's a shame you drove it into a pole you mean.

What band? Genuinely curious.

at least in the 80s they used bands for tax breaks more than for hits

Following. Need to know more.

3 people on you asking, Foss. We understand if it's a little hard to get together, or if life gets in the way, but just remember... We'd love to hear your story.

Foss? Foss? Foss? We gotta know

The solstice is a cool car but you made the right decision lol.

This was the good timeline

I drove the Saturn version. I liked it, it had a great seating position and was comfortable if you're over 4'10".

@@neelsahay5227 But everyone and their mothers have a Miata. I get it, the Mazdaspeed Miatas are pretty rare but the Solstice GXP is a LOT more unique. Plus even with both of them being turbocharged, the GXP/Redline still walks a Mazdaspeed Miata.

Definitely got the better car there

The hardtop fastbacks were a production car, only available in the GXP trim and only for the last model year, but you could infact buy one. Honestly it defeats the purpose of the car to me, half the fun is having the top down on good-weather weekends and hitting all the twisty roads you can find. That's what a "Roadster" is for after all.

They made about a thousand Solstice coupes in 2009 for the final production year. They're basically unicorns at this point though

GM also had a 1953 Corvette-inspired Nomad "shooting brake" wagon based on the Solstice/Kappa chassis that was a really sharp looking car that made the rounds in that era prior to release of the Solstice and Sky. I also recall a Motor Trend issue (including the design drawing) had an article devoted to a Chevrolet version of the Kappa car.......called the Stingray......which had front end elements very much like the Sky, which also happened to look like the new for 2005, C5 Corvette. I give Bob Lutz, head of GM at the time alot of credit for trying to bring GM into a more driver-oriented lineup of cars, but it proved too late for their bankruptcy and current morphing into the very bland GM, er, gm of today.

@@TheFishE77Official I think the problem is that a lot of men (and boys) think of convertibles as chick cars, and those owning them a bit feminine. They see Miatas as “hair dresser cars” not the superior autocross track car. Even the owner of this one admitted that it was his wife’s. They also don’t seem to understand that it’s actually a plus that chicks like the car. It’s a bit shallow to think, but they’re more likely to date you rather than say a truck. (If they’re the type of person who’d date you based on the type of car you drove). That may be why the majority owning the WERE the boomers. For them, convertibles did not have that stigma. I think it also had to do with the fact that Millennials, at the time, didn’t have a whole lot of money, so buying a brand new car that didn’t even have a backseat wasn’t practical. But back on the hardtop fast back topic, there were plenty of convertibles already on the market at the time. In fact, I believe most of us STILL aren’t sure why they didn’t bring back a trans am version of the Camaro. A two door sports car was an emerging market. Not including the corvette and thunderbird, the miata now had to deal with the existing BMW Roadster, new Nissan Z, Honda S2000, and GMs offering of the Solstice and the Sky. An “affordable” two seat sports car was quite a new concept for domestic automakers. So for a hardtop fastback, that would give them more of an exclusivity, that no automaker in the US had. As hardtop versions of these cars weren’t very fastback like, and looked more like removable hard tops. I suppose you could argue that it would compete with the Z, as the BMW version hadn’t come out yet and wasn’t in that price range. I just so happen to own a convertible AND a little 2 seater hardtop fastback, and both have two different experiences. Granted, they have less than 30 years between them, but it’s definitely a different type of vehicle that I’m glad automakers were trying to bring back. Like station wagons, there used to be a ton of these in the 60s and 70s, which typically were either British or Japanese, not American.

@@TheStuntastik i saw one on the road a couple weeks ago and my friends didn’t understand what I was going on about

Back some years ago I saw one go for 19k on eBay. Was a bit odd looking but cool.

@@MultiRokusho They only built 2600 of the hardtops from 2009-2010 before their factory got shut down. They go for like $40-50k in low milage condition.

@@UpperRobin29 yeah, can still pinch myself to not buya nice one that was on offer around here 4 years ago for around 20.000.

Ukraine joke?

@@mromatic17 that would be yellow and blue...

@@benjaminmcintosh857 ohh yeah my bad

9 here, where you at???

East coast

I know right, it makes no sense.

Also midnight here. Eastern time

10 o’clock here, MST

It makes me sad that it's in hell frying for all eternity.

now the rest of the GM family is close behind thanks to typhoid Mary

Wonder if thats a teaser for a future episode. If so, imagine the amount of Commie Bashing Mr. Regular might do.

@@cesariojpn I dont think its a teaser… It still has German plates on it, so it was only just imported Would be cool to see a trabi on rcr, tho

You could get a Trabant in a bunch of colors. Red, orange, two shades of blue, yellow, olive green, beige, but white or very light cream colors were the most common. The Tramp could be army green or grey

@@dvh5394 You can buy used German Plates online and just slap them on.....

@@cesariojpn well, I guess you were right…

That car had a lot of potential. It's too bad that GM shackled the platform to dying brands.

Bro here in EU we have to fit front license plate even to Lambos....it looks ugly AF

@@420JackG And relegated it to 4cyl engines as to not cannibalize Corvette sales

Very true

Dude what are you smoking? Opels of that era looked dated the very day they came out. Saturn Sky is no different, ugly car.

It was a bad analogy.

I'd say he did bad with the comparison, but also he was driving the Automatic Trans version too. The stick shift version even without the turbo is a completely different feeling car, all his complaints about it hunting for gears on hills, or hanging at 5k on the tach are non issues when you get to throw it into each gear yourself.

No, the Solstace is not that bad, it's heavy, it's not economical and sporty compared to the Miata, it's slow, and not well made, compared to the Corvette, and it does not handle like a BMW Z3, which was the car it tried to be the most. Once you let all that go, and accept that its spiritually closer to the Geo Metro Convertible than anything belonging on the Nuremburging ring, it's all right. Not great, but all right.

@@twotone3471 You're also bad with analogies I see. The Solstice performs pretty identically to the Miata of the same model year, the NC. 0-60, 1/4 mile, slalom and skid pad tests all produced almost equal numbers (each winning some over the other) when AutoWeek tested the two against each other. I've never driven a Z3, but have driven Miatas and Solstices quite a bit and it's nowhere near a Geo metro convertible lol. I'm not going to disagree about the build quality, at least interior wise.

@@ledheavy26 The Solstice did the numbers you stated, until brake fade took over. The Solstice hit the skidpad numbers too, but never with the confidence that a Miata inspires at the limits. It's the difference between playing with a 100$ guitar, and a $800 one. Technically both do the same things, but the quality and ease of getting those results are different. And for the Metro Comparison, the base Solstice's top speed of 117 is closer to the Geo's than the Vette's.

Miata’s are ugly. Solstice for the win!

Partner Elijah agrees.

I can fit two regular duffel bags in the trunk with the top down. I’ve down many road trips in the car.

Check out the GXP Solstice though. Good power to weight and handling. GM put out a factory tune that didn't void the warranty which brought it pretty close to 300 HP on a 3000 lb vehicle. Interior was had a plastic theme, but mechanically a nice car.

Never thought about it that way but definitely can see it.

Sold about as well as the C1 too.

They strike me as a better Thunderbird than the (11th gen.) Thunderbird.

Just make sure you get a GXP or a Redline. The 2.0L Turbo i4 is way better than the NA 2.4L

Was about to post this, the only other thing to say about that is it was an NC1 the Solstice was up against, arguably the worst miata of the bunch. I HIGHLY suggest every nerd who likes to go indepth with all this stuff to watch the savagegeese documentary on the NC, one of the top Mazda engineers at the time goes into an amazing amount of detail about how the NC2 was improved compared to the NC1.

I'm totally thinking about buying one to drive around while I rebuild my z32