How GM Tried (And Failed) To Beat The Miata

For over three decades, the Mazda Miata has been the gold standard for affordable, lightweight roadsters. It’s a car that perfectly balances simplicity, handling, and driving enjoyment with a price tag that makes it affordable for just about anyone. While it doesn't always sell in droves, it proves that Mazda cares about performance and driving pleasure, something that stretches to the rest of the vehicles in the brand's lineup. Over the years, many automakers have attempted to copy Mazda's success, and few has gotten closer than General Motors.

• 2025 Mazda MX-5 Miata 35th Anniversary Edition

  2025 Mazda MX-5 Miata

  Base MSRP  $29,330

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  2008 Pontiac Solstice Convertible

  Base MSRP  $22,455

In the mid-2000s, GM took its shot with not one, but two roadsters it hoped would attract two new buyers to its Saturn and Pontiac brands. The Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky were stylish alternatives to the Miata, boasting more power and affordable prices. On paper, they seemed like worthy competitors, but just a few years later the models and the brands they were sold under were gone. This is the history of GM's Kappa platform twins and the pitfalls that doomed them from the beginning.

GM’s Ambitious Plan to Challenge the Miata

2007 Saturn Sky Redline Dark Blue Roof Down Front High Angled View

The idea for the roadsters can be mostly traced back to a single man: Bob Lutz. A legend whose career spans each of the Big Three and beyond, he arrived at GM in 2001 as the head of Global Product Development after he realized his time at DaimlerChrysler (RIP) was up. He arrived at 69 years old, four years past GM's mandatory retirement age, but CEO Rick Wagoner realized the company needed a spark, a genuinely passionate individual that would bring excitement to its brands again, and Lutz was just the man to do it.

bob lutz main image

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When he arrived, he took the lay of the land and found a whole lot of nothing. The company was bursting at the seams with car brands, but the only excitement to be found was in the Corvette and Camaro, and the latter was on the way out. Always a fan of Pontiac, he saw potential in turning it into a performance brand, and performance brands need sports cars. He had been dreaming up a small roadster for some time now, and one of his very first acts was approaching the engineers at the division to see his dream through.

Designed by Franz von Holzhausen, the concept arrived just a few months after it was greenlit at the 2002 North American International Auto Show, and immediately it was the talk of the town. The media fell in love, and the warm reception gave GM the confidence it needed to put it into production. As GM loves to do, one model wasn't enough (worldwide it was sold under at least four brands); however, and a Saturn version based on the Vauxhall VX Lightning concept with a more premium feel.

Both were built on the new RWD Kappa platform, and parts sharing was encouraged to keep pricing as low as possible. The company believed that if the cars looked great, drove well, and kept affordability a top priority, buyers wouldn't mind the fact it shared switches and lights with ten other cars in GM's lineup. The company was right, and both models were quickly a hit.

The Pontiac Solstice vs. The Saturn Sky

2007-2010 Saturn Sky Roof Down Silver Front Angled View Driving

The Pontiac Solstice arrived first in late 2005 as a 2006 model. From concept to production vehicle, it looked nearly identical and was immediately hailed as a design success, featuring sensual, curved Italian-like lines, a small Pontiac-staple kidney grille, and just enough retro flair to get buyers dreaming of the Pontiacs of their youth.

Under the hood was a 2.4-liter Ecotec inline-four engine that had previously been used in models like the Chevy Cobalt, which was mated to either a five-speed manual or automatic. It produced a respectable 177 horsepower and 166 lb-ft of torque, which beat out the 170 hp and 140 lb-ft newly redesigned Miata at the time. However, the Solstice weighed around 2,900 lbs, which was about 400 more than the Japanese competitor.

2025 Mazda MX-5 Miata Top Down

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However, GM had a solution - the Pontiac GXP. This performance variant arrived in 2007 with a turbocharged 2.0-liter version of the Ecotec that made a much healthier 260 horsepower and 260 lb-ft of torque, making it one of the most power-dense motors GM has ever made. It also added goodies like traction control, ABS, a limited-slip differential, a retuned suspension, and more to ensure the driving experience was much more buttoned-down than before. The company even offered a dealer-installed package in 2009 that increased its outputs substantially to 290 and 325 lb-ft, and we can only imagine the levels of boost necessary to hit those numbers.

The Saturn Sky, launched in 2007, aimed for a more premium feel and came with essentially the same options. The looks on this model were radically different, much edgier and angular than the Pontiac, so mistaking the two was nearly impossible, from the front, at least. Performance was the same, and it even featured its own higher-performance Redline variant with extra power and performance enhancements.

Both models were cut from the same cloth, and buyers loved them, with the brands selling nearly 30,000 in the US in 2006 alone. There were even plans on the horizon for hardtop targa versions of the cars. Combined with the additional rejuvenation of their respective brand's lineups, it looked like these models were signaling a change of fortune for GM, but little did we know their time on the market was going to be drastically cut short.

Why the Kappa Twins Fell Short

2006-2009 Pontiac Solstice Convertible Yellow Roof Down Front Angled View

Despite their promise, the Solstice and Sky struggled to steal buyers away from the Miata. They were great in many ways, but they were also GM products from the 2000s, meaning there were a few glaring issues that held them back:

Practicality Issues

One of the biggest flaws in both cars was trunk space—or the lack thereof. The convertible featured a manual top that folded into the trunk for a cleaner look, and it severely ate up trunk space when folded down. While the Miata wasn’t a cargo hauler either, its trunk was at least functional for daily driving, and this cut down on the Kappa twins' usability.

Heavier and Less Balanced

While the Solstice and Sky had more power than the Miata, again, their weight was an issue. While this was helped by the higher-performance models, there was just no getting around the fact the driving experience just wasn't as polished as it could have been. Parts sharing left these badge-engineered models feeling a bit numb in terms of driver feedback, and the available transmissions didn't feel as well-suited as they should have been.

2008 Challenger

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Poor Interior Quality

However, the worst design choice GM made with the twins was their interiors. Again, a low price was considered paramount, and thus the interiors are full of cheap plastic, fake chrome, and chock-full of knobs and switches that could be found in a myriad of other GM products. While it made sense in context, most buyers didn't appreciate the effort and just saw it as a drawback.

GM’s Financial Crisis

The biggest blow to the Kappa roadsters wasn’t a mechanical flaw or a shared part, however, but GM’s extreme economic troubles. By the late 2000s, General Motors was facing bankruptcy thanks in part to the 2008 financial crisis. As part of their bailout from the US government, the brand needed to cut costs, and brands had to be axed. Both Saturn and Pontiac were on the chopping block, and to this day we're still not over the death of the latter.

Their Legacy and Collector Interest Today

2009 Pontiac Solstice Coupe Silver Front Angled View

Though they failed to dethrone the Miata, the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky have left a legacy of impressive performance and upstart American spirit in the sports-car market. This was yet another time an American automaker proved that it could produce vehicles with the same pedigree as its international rivals. We firmly believe that if the recession hadn't hit when it did, both of these roadsters would have lived much longer lives.

As it was, both models were discontinued in 2010 when their respective brands were put out to pasture, and really, only a handful of both models actually arrived that last year, with 2009 essentially serving as the defacto final year for both. Over those few short years of production, about 100,000 Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky models were produced for the US market in total. They retailed between $25,000 and $33,000 depending on the model and year, but today, they can be had for about half of this with reasonable miles:

Saturn Sky Models

Here are a few examples of good used models we could find:

A-Solstice-With-An-LS3-V8

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Pontiac Solstice Models

And used Solstices are similarly good value:

Using AutoTempest.com, you can see both models can be found with less than 50,000 miles in the mid-$10,000 price range, and there are plenty of Redline and GXP models to be found. The most highly coveted models are the Pontiac Targa Coupes, of which a little under 1,200 were produced. 781 of those were GXP models, and you'll quickly see these vehicles command $30,000 and up in the aftermarket.

Today, enthusiasts appreciate the vehicles for what they were: good-looking roadsters with decent power. Ask anyone who owns one, and they'll tell you how much they love it despite its flaws, and if you're lucky enough to meet someone with a V8 swapped version, you're in for a real treat. Will GM ever revive a model like this again, or will it just leave the small segment to its competitors? Only time will tell, but we firmly believe the company could do with a little more affordable excitement.