saw a Solstice today....

[skorpion317]

and i must say, DAMN sexy! the rear end makes it look like some kind of secret weapon. I only caught a glimpse of it, but I was happy to finally see one on the road.

[Untamed]

Me too! Er, well, it was the digital advertisement in Times Square. Still looked nice from the Mariott Marquis' 8th floor. *nods*

[NJSPEEDER]

i have seen a few at shows, haven't seen one of the street yet.
i think it is a great lookin little car. strong performance and good value to back it up.
i will wait to test drive teh turbo version in '07 before i place my order

later
tim

[jims69camaro]

why not install your own hairdryer?

regardless of whether you wait or not, it's simple physics: light car plus decent horsepower and torque plus good geometry in the suspension equals a kick ass ride. i have seen one in red and one in black. gd courts can't move fast enough.

[BigAls87Z28]

I have only seen one, and it was for a very quick second. I didnt realize what it was till about 20 ft out and I yelled out SOLSTICE!!!
It is quite attractive, and boy oh boy do I want one.
In retrospect, if I had known last year that I would be inheriting 2 cars, I probably wouldnt have bought the Maxx, and would have gotten a Solstice.

[79dizZy28]

i managed to catch a glimpse of one for a split second as it crossed a light i was stopped at. the top was down and it looked like it was just two of the sales people out for a lunch break cruise. they had thier dealer plate in the windsheild so i'm guessing it was from "cerami pontiac" was is about 2 blocks away from where i was at the time.

[LS1Hawk]

I've seen them at the dealer and it's a damn sexy car. And I saw one on 208 going the opposite direction very quickly. The only thing that messes up the car is slapping the front license plate on it. Totally kills the nose/grill because they stick it right in the middle. Seriously, NJ needs to get rid of that stupid requirement :x

[NJSPEEDER]

why not install your own hairdryer?

let them install it and enjoy the 5yr/60k mile warranty :)

later
tim

[BigAls87Z28]

Pontiac still has the 3 year 36 month warranty. Only Buick, Caddy, and Saturn as well as the Cobalt and Aveo cary the new 4/60k warranty. This will eventualy change of course to all across the board.

[NJSPEEDER]

Pontiac still has the 3 year 36 month warranty. Â*Only Buick, Caddy, and Saturn as well as the Cobalt and Aveo cary the new 4/60k warranty. Â*This will eventualy change of course to all across the board.

the last thing i read was that the 5/60 and 10/100 were available on all vehicles as extended offers. unless that has changed, i havent read anything about it since last december when i bought the alero

later
tim

[BigAls87Z28]

ah yes well extended warranty, sure. But base warranty that comes with every car listed in my last post is teh 4/60k

[NJSPEEDER]

that has changed then. when i got my car the 3/36 was still standard. that is what they had on my '03 and all teh '04's on the lot.

later
tim

[coldkilla]

solstices are sexy but the new saturn version, the sky, is ****ing bad looking. the solstice is the girl with a tight body wearing a nice red dress drinking a martini. the sky is the girl in a black dress with a pierced lip, tattoos, and drinking an irish car bomb.

[Savage_Messiah]

i dunno if I quite agree with that um... thing... word is slipping me right now... oh well comparison will do

I agree tho that the Sky looks badass, at least the last concept photos I saw of it. I didnt liek the grill on the solstice last pics I saw (that double grill rolling down with the bumper deal)

[BigAls87Z28]

Sky is deffinatly a knock out, and what a great way to bring Saturn into its new place in GM's plan. Its great to see GM have vision with at least some of its companies, unlike Buick and Pontiac.

[NJSPEEDER]

Sky is deffinatly a knock out, and what a great way to bring Saturn into its new place in GM's plan. Â*Its great to see GM have vision with at least some of its companies, unlike Buick and Pontiac.

saturn's new place in GM? saturn has no image except that of economy cars. if they try to bring them up a a performance/fun for your money mark they are going to end up fighting pontiac for market sahre.
it looks on paper like GM is creating another internal conflict like the one that destroyed oldsmobile's sales in the mid to late 80's and ultimately lead to their demise. that is what happens when brands try to share a platform, a target market, a price point, and a parent company.

later
tim

[BigAls87Z28]

Saturn as a brand is getting a lot of great product. Aura and Sky are only the begining. Pontiac, if funded right, should not run into the same type of people Saturn will go after. Saturns pricing is also much different then Pontiac and all of GM. IMO, its a great move on GM's part.
It does confuse a lot of product that is out there now, but things should clear up in due time.

[NJSPEEDER]

It does confuse a lot of product that is out there now, but things should clear up in due time.

that is what they thought when they put out the regal+cutlass+grand prix+lumina on the same platform. 3 of the 4 are gone as well as one of the companies.
i jsut don't see why GM doesn't market the upgrading system the way they used to.
you buy a chevy when you want a good car and money is an object. once you have a little more money if you wanted to go a more sporty route you moved on to pontiac, if you wanted something more pedestrian you looked at buicks and oldsmobiles. once you made your money and you want luxary you went and bought a caddy.
saturn was brought out originally to get chevy off the bottom step of the ladder of car buying success. that was all well and good since chevy's image in the small car market was not good at the time and GM needed to fill that void.
now GM is trying to say a caddy is a race car, a saturn is the future of performance, and a wrong wheel drive 4banger chevy deserves to have the SS badge on it's fenders.
GM had it straight and simple, they tried to go another way. that way has lost market share consistantly.
wanna see how it works, look at ford, they still do it the same way as GM used to. start at a ford, move up to a mercury, then get successful and buy a lincoln. simple straight lines, no messy marketing cross over or price point sharing on the same platform.

later
tim

[BigAls87Z28]

And look how well Ford is doing with its badge engineering.... :roll:

Caddy is NOT a race car
Saturn is NOT a performance brand.
Saturn was brought in to fight off the gathering low buck imports. Well since teh late 80's, the low buck imports are now big buck imports that carry advanced engines and drivetrains with other gizmos at a good price.
Saturn, on the other hand, is still a low buck import fighter...why?

Saturn is going for the VW/Honda/Acura crowd of entry level sporty luxury, and they are being equiped to do so. Great move
Pontiac on the other hand must move itself to a RWD bias platform, and now that Pontiac, Buick and GMC are now cosiderd to be one brand, there will be less sharing.
As for platform sharing, its the best thing to do in the world, and everyone else is doing it.
The Sloan ladder no longer applies when there are so many more choices out there. It worked well when there were only a handful of American car companies, and GM rulled 50% of the market, but it no longer applies.
As for SS on Wrong Wheel drive cars, SS has always been the top performance of that brand. Every SS out there fits the mark of the best handling car in its group and one of the best in its class. Cobalt SS is a fantastic little compact, and will be joined by Malibu, Trailblazers, and many others.
Stop making the SS badge some sort of super duper icon that is untouchable. Half the SS cars of the 60's are considerd dogs now.

As for Caddy, they are matching what the rest of the luxury world is doing, and going sport. Want a soft cushy ride, buy a Buick. Want sport and luxury? Caddy is the place.

[NJSPEEDER]

ford's big mistake is going retro crazy. when financial research says that 20somthings and 30somethings are the people with teh money, ford decided to make cars for the 50something crowd. the only retro ride that turned out to be actually cool and performance oriented also quickly priced itself out of the buying power range of all but the elite of teh 50something crowd.

GM is going have buikc dead with in the next 5 years. sharing platforms on a GLOBAL level like all the car companies do is one thing. or even on two completely different target market and price points in one market(look at toyota and scion). GM is trying to flood the market with the same cars at teh same price with only mild cosmetic changes. it hasn't worked for the last 25 years!!! why would anyone think it is going to work now?

Caddy's are nice cars, but they are not race cars, and at the price point they come in you get to choose from companies with a much stronger luxo-performance reputation. taht is bimmer and benz country, and GM isn't making a dent pretending that caddy's can zig. that should have been left to pontiac since they already had a long standing reputation for strong performance in more creature comfort oriented vehicles.

what GM has failed to realize is that you don't tell the public what your reputation is, they tell you. the accelerating pace at which they are dropping market share just goes to show they aren't listening.

later
tim

[BigAls87Z28]

First off, the only Retro ness Ford has is in the Mustang, GT, and Tbird. 2 out of 3 have been hits for them.
50 somethings DO have the money. The baby boomers are now reaching the point of where they now have extra money, where the kids out our leaving the house, and that they want to live there lives. They are spending the money.

GM's cars are very different from each other. Look at the Grand Prix, LaCrosse, and Impala. 3 cars on the same chassis, each car uses different engines, suspensions, and have different options. All priced with in a few marks of eachother, with Chevy starting at the bottom, Pontiac in the middle and Buick twards the upper part.

Caddy is offering GREAT performance cars for the buck. CTS-V offers M5 power for 30k less. Great handling, fantastic engine power, and plenty of electro-goodies that make people freak. STS-V packs 470hp in a hand built 4.4 supercharged northstar engine mated to a world class 6spd automatic trans, tuned on the greatest track, and then you have the XLR-V that also offers great power and gives you everything MB and Jag offer in there 2dr super coupes. Caddy is going for a world market, and other people dont want soft riding Caddy's. I know I dont. I would NEVER buy a DTS, or any other old Caddy because of it. I would deffinatly buy any new Caddy, now that they have been properly done. This is on top of the already great cars Caddy offers. With Sigma II coming out, and the next gen CTS and CTS-V only months away, Caddy will step up there game, followed by upgraded STS and XLR as well as the new Escalade line.
Pontiac does not carry the name that Caddy does, and never will.

Your Image of GM being as they were in the 60's is outdated. It is what hurts GM today. GM is losing market share, not because of lack of product, its many other reasons such as cost of labor, legacy costs, and the fact that things change. The market share has nothing to do with chassis sharing or how they set there cars up. As I said before, the Sloan Ladder is no longer relevant. They are now going after segments.

Chevy- Bread and butter cars, affordable and fun
Pontiac- entry level sport performance
Buick- entry level American luxury
Saturn- Import Minded
Caddy- World Sport and Luxury

[NJSPEEDER]

if niche market chasing works so well you can explain where gm's overall market share is going.
bimmer and benz both manage to offer luxary/performance, pure luxary, and pure performance cars. where is caddy in that? hoping to sway some buyers with an image that only exists with in GM headquarters?
the sloan ladder applies if GM would let it. they eliminated it trying to follow other companies off in every direction. instead of adding to or tweaking the product line offered GM decided to scrap what work for 70 years completely and play follow the imports leaders.
following others isn't working, plain and simple. GM used to be the leader, the inovator in the market place. that is when they had the sales, that is when every car company in the world was somehow contracted to GM. because it is the leader that benefits from the spoils of war, not the followers.

later
tim

[jims69camaro]

what is pontiac doing?

the best thing buick could do is bring back the GN and GNX. Â*more people are aware of what those cars are all about and i am sure they would sell to more than just the niche market. Â*people are more savvy today then they were in the '60s and '70s. Â*how many AAR cudas were cut up for parts or "cut in half because it made getting the engine and trans easier to get out"? Â*people wouldn't do that today because they know the value of the special, low production cars. Â*

for an example of that, one only needs to look at the pontiac solstice "first 1000". Â*that program had a lot of flaws, because they had no idea SO MANY people would be interested in it. Â*there were only 1000 cars, but it was estimated that over 20,000 people wanted one. Â*it's rare to see a solstice on a dealer lot - they are selling that well.

i like the way caddy has reshaped their image. Â*they're not just for blue-hairs anymore.

i'm still waiting for chevy's response to the overwhelming success of the new mustang. Â*should i hold my breath? Â*pontiac isn't the answer.