Last Light

Let's get this out of the way first, because there is no use pretending otherwise. The Mazda MX-5 Miata is the king of the roadsters. End of story. Mazda took the brilliance of the small British roadsters of the 1960s — the light weight, the short-throw shifter, the sky for a roof and the feeling that the car was built around you rather than around a focus group — left the oil leaks and the temperamental wiring behind in England, and brought the whole idea back to life in 1989. It has never looked back, and nobody who has driven one wonders why.

But like any monopoly, you saturate the market, and sooner or later people want something different. Something new. Something that does not look like every other Miata in the canyon turnout on a Sunday morning.

In 2005, of all companies, General Motors handed America that something. Two of them, in fact: the Pontiac Solstice and the Saturn Sky. Great names, and they suit cars this good-looking — one is named for the longest day of the year, the other for the thing you see when you drop the top. They were handsome and they were inexpensive, and once the turbocharged Solstice GXP and Sky Red Line arrived, they were seriously quick. Then, almost before anyone noticed, they were gone, and they took the two brands that built them along for the ride.

They deserve better than to be the answer to a trivia question. These are two of the most overlooked fun-in-the-sun convertibles of this century, they cost a fraction today of what they cost new, and they should be on everyone's radar. Let me make the case.

Like any monopoly, you saturate the market, and sooner or later people want something different.

What, You Say?

There is a story that follows these two cars around, and it is one I believed: the Solstice and the Sky were born from the Lotus Elise, or at the very least carry a strand of its DNA. What, you say? Well, back in the day GM had a stake in Lotus, and even though the two companies eventually went their separate ways, no one really leaves a relationship 100 percent — especially companies.

That last part is true. The first part is not. And the real story is better.

GM did own Lotus. It took a majority stake in January 1986, held 91 percent by that October and kept the company until August 1993, when it sold Lotus to Romano Artioli, the Italian businessman who also owned Bugatti. During the GM years, Hethel did plenty of work for its parent — most famously engineering the LT5 V8 that powered the C4 Corvette ZR-1. The Elise was not one of those jobs. Lotus started on it in early 1994, after GM had gone, showed it at Frankfurt in September 1995 and put it on sale in 1996 under Artioli, who named it after his granddaughter, Elisa. It was built on a bonded, extruded aluminum chassis, and the whole car weighed 725 kg (1,598 lb).

Here is where the breakup gets complicated. GM came back — not as an owner, but as a customer. It helped pay for development of the Series 2 Elise, and in return Lotus built GM a roadster of its own on that chassis. Those are the two brilliant cousins of this story: the Opel Speedster and the Vauxhall VX220. Lotus assembled them at Hethel from July 2000 to July 2005 on an Elise-derived tub with a wheelbase stretched 30 mm (1.2 in). The early cars used GM's 2.2-liter Ecotec four with 145 hp, and a 200 hp turbo followed. Only 7,207 were built, and at 870 kg (1,918 lb), they were every bit the featherweights their parentage promised.

The Solstice and the Sky are something else entirely. They ride on GM's own Kappa platform, a front-engine, rear-drive design made of steel — full-length hydroformed frame rails and a stamped-steel center tunnel that works as a backbone — engineered in-house under chief engineer Doug Parks. GM's team had a drivable prototype running in about 100 days, raiding the corporate parts bins along the way, from the Chevrolet Cobalt's platform to the Cadillac CTS and even the Hummer H3. I could not find a single source that puts a Lotus engineer anywhere near it. A Solstice weighs 1,297 kg (2,860 lb). Mid-engine aluminum against front-engine steel: these are not siblings. They are barely the same species.

Curb weight

Not the same species

LotusOpel / VauxhallMazda MX-5Pontiac Solstice

So where did the myth come from? Two places, and both are real. The first is the showroom. When the Speedster bowed out in 2005, the next roadster to take its place in Opel showrooms, in 2007, was the Opel GT — which was a Saturn Sky, built in Delaware, wearing an Opel face. The Lotus-built car and the Kappa car stood on the same spot in the same European showrooms, one after the other, and it does not take much for a family resemblance to become a family tree.

The second is the Sky's face. In May 2003, to mark Vauxhall's 100th birthday, GM Europe's advanced design studio in the English Midlands, led by Martin Smith and Simon Cox, built a concept called the VX Lightning in 5 months, on the platform of the Solstice concept. When Saturn needed a roadster, the Sky's styling was based on it. Which means the prettier of the two American cars has a British face. Not the chassis. The face.

No Lotus in the metal, then. A little Lotus in the family tree, a lot of England in the Sky's looks, and a European showroom where one roadster quietly handed the keys to the next. No one really leaves a relationship 100 percent.

The myth, on a timeline

Who was where, and when

Lotus (reference)Opel / VauxhallPontiac SolsticeSaturn Sky

No one really leaves a relationship 100 percent — especially companies.

Pontiac Was on a Roll

To understand why these cars happened at all, you have to remember what Pontiac was doing in the mid-2000s, because it was on a roll. GM's Australian arm, Holden, was essentially supplying Pontiac with all sorts of great material. First came the GTO, a Holden Monaro shipped from Elizabeth, South Australia, with 350 hp at its 2004 launch and 400 hp by 2005. Then came the G8, a Holden Commodore with a split grille — a four-door sedan that was really a hot rod, and could kill rear tires and lap times with equal enthusiasm. The 2009 G8 GXP carried the Corvette's 6.2-liter LS3 with 415 hp, and only 1,829 were built. Chevrolet would get its own slice of Australia years later with the SS. And yes, there were rumors — and then an actual show car — of the Aussie ute coming to America as the long-departed El Camino reborn.

Unfortunately, the collapse of 2008 meant that not only did that not happen, but Pontiac — the BMW of the GM divisions, the brand that once promised on every billboard that it built excitement — was lost forever. On April 27, 2009, GM announced that Pontiac would be phased out by the end of 2010. The last one, a G6, was built on January 4, 2010, and the dealer franchises expired that October 31.

However, not before it gave us three great going-away presents: the G8 GXP, the Solstice coupe at the very last minute and, the one that matters most here, the Solstice GXP.

Saturn was on its own death march. Penske Automotive agreed to buy the brand in June 2009, then walked away on September 30 when it could not line up a manufacturer to build its cars, and Saturn production stopped a week later. It, too, left a parting gift: the Sky Red Line, and in my opinion the prettier of the two.

Two Faces, One Heart

The Solstice came first, and it came from the top. Bob Lutz joined GM as vice chairman of product development on September 1, 2001, and the first concept he asked for was a roadster. A sketch by a young designer named Franz von Holzhausen, from GM's California studio, jumped out of the pile, and with the Detroit auto show barely 4 months away, the car was built in a sprint. In January 2002, Lutz drove it onto the stage himself. If von Holzhausen's name rings a bell, it should: he has been Tesla's chief designer since 2008, and the Model S and Model 3 are his. In August 2026, he turned up on Jay Leno's Garage in his own Solstice, a 2006 with a V8 swapped in. Designers move on. They do not always let go.

Production began at GM's Wilmington, Delaware, plant in mid-2005, at a leisurely 7 cars an hour, and the first customer car was delivered on August 5. Pontiac had already done the marketing in the most 2005 way imaginable. An episode of The Apprentice on April 14 had the contestants marketing the Solstice, and when orders for the "First 1,000" cars opened at dealers the next afternoon, all 1,000 were gone in 41 minutes.

The Sky followed. It debuted as a concept in Detroit in January 2005 and went into production alongside the Solstice in Wilmington the next year, as a 2007 model. Underneath, they are the same car — the same 2,416 mm (95.1 in) wheelbase, the same engines and the same everything that matters to the way they drive. Saturn's version is 99 mm (3.9 in) longer, wears projector headlights, forward-canted side vents and a fistful of chrome, and in base form came with air conditioning, ABS, cruise control, power windows and keyless entry already on the bill. That is why it cost $23,690 (about $38,300 today) against the stripped-out base Solstice's $19,995 (about $33,200 today). Saturn softened it, too, with longer suspension travel, more insulation in the top and a quieter exhaust. The Solstice was the purer of the two, a smooth pebble of a shape. The Sky was the one in the tailored jacket.

Both started with GM's 2.4-liter Ecotec four, rated at 177 hp: adequate, but harsh and lazy to rev. The real story arrived in 2006 with the Solstice GXP and Sky Red Line and their turbocharged 2.0-liter Ecotec, the LNF. It was GM's first direct-injected gasoline engine in America and the highest specific output the company had ever built: 260 hp at 5,300 rpm and 260 lb-ft of torque flat from 2,500 to 5,250 rpm, on 18 psi of boost through a twin-scroll turbo. Volkswagen's direct-injected 2.0T of the day made 200 hp. GM was not supposed to beat the Germans at anything that clever. It did.

The European Cousin

Here is something I will happily argue with anyone: the American versions outclassed the European one in beauty and aggression. It is not even close, because Europe only ever got one of the two faces.

The Solstice never crossed the Atlantic. Europe got the Sky's body as the Opel GT — built in Wilmington, shipped east, turbocharged only, with 264 PS (260 hp) and the Sky's lines wearing an Opel grille. It came only in left-hand drive, and because Wilmington had no tooling for right-hand drive, Britain never got a Vauxhall version at all. The country that drew the Sky's face could not buy one. The Opel GT cost €39,450 (about $54,000 at the time, or about $87,000 today), for essentially the same car a Saturn dealer in Ohio would sell you as a Red Line for $27,895 (about $45,100 today). Korea got its own version, the Daewoo G2X, and only 179 were delivered.

The name was a nice touch, borrowed from the original 1968 Opel GT, the little coupe Europeans called the Baby Corvette and Americans bought from Buick dealers — 103,463 of them were built. Now it was back as a Delaware-built car wearing the badge of a German car that Americans had bought from Buick. Global platforms get complicated.

The European press was split. A jury of 21 journalists at the Geneva show named it the 2007 Convertible of the Year. The British magazines were cooler. evo found the steering numb and the character missing, and Top Gear magazine's verdict was that it had been "thrashed by an MX-5 for pleasure, practicality and position of the steering wheel." Only 7,519 Opel GTs were built. The American cars outnumbered it 13 to 1.

Drop In

Forget the numbers for a minute. Here is what it is actually like.

You do not get into a Solstice or a Sky so much as drop into it. The seats sit deep in the body, the sills come up high at your sides and the dash wraps around you; Edmunds likened it to sitting in "the cockpit of a fighter jet," and that is not much of a stretch. It feels wide, because it is. At 1,811 mm (71.3 in), a Solstice is 91 mm (3.6 in) wider than an NC Miata, and you notice it the moment you look out over the hood. The front fenders rise on either side like a pair of shoulders, and the view down the long nose, with those two swells framing the road, is pure small Corvette. There is no V8 thunder behind it, but the picture is right.

Your hands find everything they need for driving and very little else. The wheel is close and upright. The stubby shifter sits just off your right knee and drops into each gate with a short, positive, slightly heavy action — the kind of shifter that makes you shift for the sake of it. The center tunnel is high enough to brace a knee against in a long corner, which is exactly what you will be doing.

Turn the key on a GXP or Red Line and the turbo engine settles into a gruff idle. Pull away and there is a beat, a second perhaps, while the turbo wakes up. Then it arrives. The full 260 lb-ft is there from 2,500 rpm, and second gear becomes a long, flat shove that keeps coming until you reach for third. It is not a screamer. By the top of third the pull tapers off and the engine note settles into a steady drone rather than a howl, so you learn to short-shift and ride the midrange the way you would in any good turbo car. The sound is the weak link, more moan than song, but with the top down and the wind coming over the windshield, you will not mind much.

The chassis is the surprise. The Kappa backbone is properly stiff, so the car sits flat through corners, the body does not shimmy over broken pavement and the suspension gets to do its job instead of holding the car together. MotorWeek called the GXP "both tossable and forgiving," and that pairing is the whole point. Turn in and the nose bites. Keep the throttle on and the car settles onto its outside rear tire. When the grip does run out, it goes gradually and from the rear, in proper sports-car fashion, and a little countersteer and a breath of throttle gather it back up. Push harder on a really tight road and the weight shows; the critics who preferred the Miata were not wrong about the extra 150 kg (333 lb) or more. But this is a car that flatters you rather than one that grades you.

This is a car that flatters you rather than one that grades you.

Then there is the part no spec sheet records. With the top down, the twin humps of the rear deck rise behind your head like fins, the sun comes over the windshield frame, and every gas-station attendant, every kid in a back seat and every Miata owner at the light turns to look. Saturn's own product people admitted at the time that styling was the No. 1 reason anyone bought a convertible. GM built these cars to be looked at, and 20 years on, they still are. Jalopnik's Mercedes Streeter bought a 2008 Red Line in 2022 for $8,700 (about $9,960 today) and put it simply: "A Red Line will have you breaking the speed limit in no time."

The Numbers, Briefly

I promised to keep the stats to a minimum, so here are the ones that matter, from the one outlet that tested all of these cars the same way. MotorWeek ran the base Solstice, the base Sky, both turbo cars and the 2006 MX-5 through its standard test, and the charts below use its numbers only, so nothing is being compared across different tracks, days or drivers.

One tester, one method

The turbo cars are a different league; the Miata still stops shorter

Pontiac SolsticeSaturn SkyMazda MX-5

0–60 mph  ·  quicker is better

Quarter mile  ·  quicker is better

Braking, 60–0 mph  ·  shorter is better

The base cars dead-heat with the Miata, at 7.2 seconds to 60 mph against 7.3. The turbo cars are a different league: 1.1 to 1.5 seconds quicker to 60 and a second or more quicker through the quarter mile. With a committed launch, Car and Driver got a Solstice GXP to 60 mph in 5.6 seconds and through the quarter mile a tenth of a second quicker than a Porsche Boxster, and its 2009 GXP coupe managed 5.2. Where the Miata claws it back is under braking — 116 ft from 60 mph against 123 and 124 — because there is less of it to stop. Lighter is still better, and that has always been the Miata's whole argument.

But look at what each horsepower has to carry.

Weight per horsepower  ·  less is better

What each horsepower has to carry

Pontiac SolsticeOpel GTMazda MX-5

A GXP asks each horsepower to haul 5.2 kg (11.4 lb). An NC Miata asks for 6.7 kg (14.9 lb). That gap is the GXP's entire personality.

Against the King

Let me be fair to the king, because the period press mostly was. When Car and Driver put a base Solstice against the new third-generation MX-5 in December 2005, the Mazda won. Edmunds reached the same verdict, with considerably more enthusiasm for the Mazda. MotorWeek gave the Miata the corners and the Solstice the open road. Even Grassroots Motorsports, which liked the Solstice, later wrote in its buyer's guide that the Kappa cars "weren't even in the same ballpark in handling and steering precision" as the Miata, the Honda S2000 or the Porsche Boxster. That is a fair hit. The Miata is a scalpel. These are not.

And yet. In February 2006, the same magazine took a Solstice, a new NC and an older NB Miata to an autocross, and the Solstice beat the new Miata, 38.898 seconds to 39.177. If the goal was an SCCA national championship in C Stock, the magazine concluded, it would order the Pontiac — and Solstice drivers went on to win C Stock national titles. The buying public voted too. In 2006, Americans bought 19,710 Solstices and 16,897 MX-5s. Mazda's North American chief shrugged it off, saying the company could have sold plenty more if it had wanted to and that the MX-5 "remains the No.1 selling roadster in the world." Both things were true. Add the Sky, and GM sold 28,381 Kappa roadsters in America that year, 1.7 times as many as Mazda sold Miatas.

U.S. sales by calendar year

In 2006, America picked the Pontiac

Pontiac SolsticeSaturn SkyMazda MX-5

That is the monopoly point in action. The Miata did not get worse in 2006. People simply wanted something different, and for a few years GM gave it to them. Then GM's own collapse took the cars away. In 2010, Pontiac and Saturn dealers sold 336 of them between them, clearing out the last stragglers. The Miata, as it always does, kept going.

The honest verdict is that these were never better Miatas. They were something the Miata was never trying to be: a small, beautiful, front-engine roadster with a big midrange punch and the presence of a car 3 times the price. Doug DeMuro has gone further and argued the GXP is the better car of the two. I would not go that far. I would say that if you already accept the Miata as king, the Solstice and Sky are the most fun you can have proving you are not one of its subjects.

Living With One

Now for the part GM would rather you skip. Picking holes in these cars is easy, and most of the holes are in the cabin.

Schematic · not to scale

The Twister map: where everything is

Gets it rightGets it wrong

1. 1Top latches on the windshield header. Release them, then get out to fold the top by hand.
2. 2Gauges set deep in their tubes, hard to read in sunlight.
3. 3The trunk release, which you need to stow the top, is a button in the glovebox.
4. 4The stubby shifter falls right to hand, just off your right knee.
5. 5A high center tunnel to brace your knee against in long corners.
6. 6Window switches and mirror control on the console, behind your elbow.
7. 7Cupholders, farther back still.
8. 8The storage bin between the seats: a twist-around, left-handed reach.

The trunk is the famous one. With the top up there are 153 liters (5.4 cu ft) back there, about what a Miata offers, but the folded top lives in the trunk, and with it down you are left with roughly 57 liters (2 cu ft) — room for a soft bag and a toothbrush. The Miata keeps its 150 liters (5.3 cu ft) whether the top is up or down. Then there is the top itself. In a Miata you unlatch it and flip it back over your shoulder without leaving your seat. In a Solstice or Sky you release the windshield latches, pop the rear deck with a button in the glovebox, get out, fold the top into the well, close the deck and climb back in. In a sudden shower, someone is getting wet.

The window switches and the mirror control sit on the console behind your elbow, the cupholders sit behind those, and the storage bin between the seats can really only be opened by twisting around and using your left hand. The gauges hide deep in their tubes, and the plastics are hard. None of it would survive a modern focus group.

And none of it matters much once you are moving. On the highway these cars track straight, ride well and are surprisingly quiet with the top up, and the seats are comfortable for a long day unless you are much over 6 ft (1.83 m), when headroom gets tight. Car and Driver averaged 26 mpg at 80 mph in a GXP. These are toys, and toys do not need trunks. Pack light, leave the cooler at home and enjoy the drive.

Manufacturer figures. Some period spec sheets list the Kappa trunk at 108 L (3.8 cu ft) with the top up.

How many were built

The rare ones are very rare

Pontiac SolsticeSaturn SkyOpel / VauxhallDaewoo (reference)

What They Cost Now

This is where the argument stops being emotional and becomes arithmetic.

A 2007 Solstice GXP cost $25,995 (about $42,000 today) new. Today a clean, low-mileage GXP roadster sells for somewhere between $13,000 and $19,000 at auction. A Sky Red Line, $27,895 (about $45,100 today) new, sells for roughly $9,000 to $17,000 in good order, and a tidy base Solstice with a manual and fewer than 20,000 miles has sold for $10,000 to $12,000 in the past couple of months. The coupes are the exception: a GXP coupe in the condition collectors want runs $28,000 to $33,000, and a 192-mile car sold for $86,500 (about $106,900 today) in 2021. That one was an outlier, but a telling one.

Then and now

What they cost new, in today's money, against what they sell for

Pontiac SolsticeSaturn Sky◆ New price, 2026 dollars

Hagerty has ranked the Solstice and Sky first on a list of undervalued cars, citing their "well-tuned chassis, handsome styling, and increasing obscurity." Sports Car Market called the GXP "the last great car to come from Pontiac." And the market suggests the window is still open: Classic.com's benchmark value for the NC Miata Grand Touring is rising, while its benchmark for the Solstice GXP is falling. The king is getting more expensive. The rebels are not.

Last Light

The end came quietly. On July 1, 2009, GM announced it would close the Wilmington plant, and late that month the last car down the line, a silver Solstice, rolled out the door. A year later the plant was sold to Fisker for $20 million (about $30.7 million today). Pontiac's last car was built the following January, Saturn had already stopped, and by the end of October 2010 both brands were gone.

There is something fitting about the names. A solstice is the longest day of the year, the moment the sun stops climbing and begins its slow way back down. The sky is where you watch it go. Pontiac and Saturn were setting when these cars arrived, and the Solstice and Sky were the last light they gave off — the final proof that a GM division could still build something you wanted rather than something you needed.

The Miata is still the king. It will be there next year, and the year after that, as good as it has ever been. These two will not. About 100,000 were built, there are fewer every year, and right now a good one costs around a third of its original price in today's money. For what you would pay for a sensible used commuter, you can have a turbocharged, rear-drive roadster that looks like a concept car, feels like a small Corvette and turns a trip to the grocery store into an event.

Put the top down. Find a road with some curves in it. Go chase the last of the light.

Sources & notes

Period road tests and reviews: Car and Driver (Dave VanderWerp, "2007 Pontiac Solstice GXP," October 2006; Tony Quiroga, "2007 Saturn Sky," 2006; Tony Swan, 2009 sports coupe comparison; December 2005 Solstice vs. MX-5 comparison); MotorWeek road tests of the 2006 Solstice, 2007 Sky, 2007 Solstice GXP, 2007 Sky Red Line and 2006 MX-5; Edmunds, 2007 Saturn Sky review; Top Gear magazine (Paul Horrell, Opel GT first drive, 2007); evo (Opel GT, 2007); Grassroots Motorsports (Per Schroeder, "Topless Two-Step," February 2006, and its Solstice and Sky buyer's guide); Jalopnik (Mercedes Streeter, 2022).

History and production: Hagerty; WardsAuto (Alisa Priddle, February 1, 2007, on 2006 sales); GM press releases via The Auto Channel; Autoblog; AutoGuide; GM Authority; CNN Money; Fleet News and Autocar on the Vauxhall VX Lightning; Wikipedia production tables for the Solstice, Sky, Opel GT, Opel Speedster and Lotus Elise; GoodCarBadCar for U.S. sales. Racing: SCCA, Formula Drift, Autoblog (Pikes Peak, July 2007), Motorsport.com.

Values: auction results from Bring a Trailer, Cars & Bids, Mecum, Barrett-Jackson and Hagerty Marketplace, compiled from Classic.com records, November 2025 to September 2026; Hagerty valuation articles; Sports Car Market (Jeff Zurschmeide, April 2024); NHTSA recall 07V589. Ownership costs are typical published repair ranges, not quotes.

Money: every historical price is shown with a 2026 equivalent, calculated with the U.S. Consumer Price Index and rounded. The Opel GT price is converted at the 2007 average euro exchange rate.