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Magrath: Okay, by training you're a scholar of religion, and I'm a journalist. So let's dive headfirst into a heated, highly sensitive, incredibly difficult business topic: Detroit.
Magrath: You cannot be relevant with a headquarters in the midwest. You can't be impartial and forward-thinking when 8/10ths of the people in your area depend upon you and buy your products.
Yesterday marked the official end of our long-term test of the Pontiac Solstice. With 17,530 miles on the odometer, we're preparing the final wrap-up story, and the Solstice is at the test track today for its last round of instrumented performance testing. It'll likely be a few weeks before the wrap-up goes live.
Also ending in October, the Hyundai Sonata...
Solstice assumed the role of redheaded stepchild in our long-term car family long ago, but whether it deserves that title or not is still up for some debate. What can't be argued is that it received enough attention to reach its 15,000-mile scheduled service.
We chose Boulevard Buick/Pontiac/GMC in Long Beach for its location. We pulled into the service drive on time for our scheduled 7am appointment and were pleased to see we were the only car in line. The optimist in us saw this as the line half-empty and was looking forward to the service finishing quickly and being on our way. It turns out that the line was really half-full because it wasn't until 9:30 that the keys were back in our hand and we were paying the bill...
I've spent the last couple days in the Solstice and a couple more annoyances have cropped up. For one thing, I dislike the seatbelts. Now, I've driven many convertibles (and even owned one) so I know you can't expect the seatbelt fit to be perfect in a car where they're not height-adjustable...
I hadn’t spoken to my dad in three weeks. He’d normally phone me up every couple days for an update, to rouse me, or to talk about the upcoming ski season. He lives in Woodland, I live in Santa Monica, and every year I fly up to Sacramento several times, he picks me up, and we ski at Squaw Valley. I wondered if those days had come to an end. He was in the hospital, ICU, not doing well. Then my mom called.
7 a.m. and a foggy coastal Saturday morning. With the Solstice top down, sunblock applied, ear plugs in, and the radio blasting, I tore off down the highway with wind in my hair.
The car was loud, there was no place to put my phone or iPod other than the passenger seat, and it was nearly impossible to reach my arm back to hit the window down switch, but I was having fun.
In the Golden Gate lot, I took this shot, but it wouldn’t do.
So I headed up into the headlands, toward the old coastal gun batteries, and got an amazing view of the bridge, the bay, the city. I set up my tripod for the shot, but it was in the road. Not going to work. Then a girl in biking gear got out of her black VW Jetta and snapped this pic for me.
Kelly, it’s for you. It was time to head to Santa Rosa, to the birthday event, but I decided to take in this dramatic view a few minutes longer…and called my mom for an update on my dad. It was not a good day for him.
The Santa Rosa morning was chilly, and after eating some leftover cake for breakfast, I shot down the 101 to the 37 to the 80 to the 113 and into Woodland where the air was warm and thick like the cake frosting from the night before. I pulled up in front of my house; a 19th century haunted Victorian, took a deep breath and wondered…how would my dad be?
The Solstice gets a raw deal from most reviewers for many reasons...the most common complaint being a lack of usable storage space. But GM has a few tricks up its sleeve in this car and included a few spots most reviewers, including this one, didn't count.
It hit me after I started losing things in it over the weekend. And whenever I thought, "Where is my..." the answer was always "in the cracks between the seats of the Solstice."
Watch...
During a 60-mph freeway run last night, I noticed the Solstice seemed to be fidgeting more than usual over grooves and joints. So this morning when the tires were cold, I checked the pressure and found that they were all a couple psi over spec. As I was resetting them to the correct pressure, I couldn't help but notice all the damage to our long-termer's right front wheel. That polished 18-inch five-spoke still looks great from a distance, but look close and it's a mess...
When I fueled up the Solstice this morning, I decided to check the oil. Easier said than done. Ordinarily, GM's 2.4-liter engine is transverse-mounted, but to make it work on the rear-drive Solstice, engineers flipped it around. That puts the dipstick at the back of the Solstice's engine bay underneath a couple of hoses...
Driving our 2006 Pontiac Solstice around town on a cool, late summer evening can be quite pleasurable. There are no seat heaters in this car, but cranking the fan speed dial to setting 2 turns the cockpit into a personal convection oven. These two large vents on the center stack channel torrents of warm air directly at the driver. I think this may be my favorite thing about Pontiac's roadster...
Years ago, I used to hand wash each press car I recieved in an effort to connect with the car - to learn something about it or see some detail that wasn't obvious at first glance. It was also a great way to force myself into noticing things like excessive panel gaps, paint quality and tacked on logos and/or body cladding.
This weekend I went back to my old hand washing trick with the Pontiac Solstice. In some ways it paid off as my appreciation for the roadster's slippery shape and flowing bodywork grew. But for every positive, it seems as if there's a negative or two.
When the top is down, it squeaks horribly and the whine from the transmission isn't getting better with age...
Here's one advantage our long-term Pontiac Solstice does have over our Miata: It has a trunk light. Instead of fumbling around the in the dark to retrieve bags, I can see exactly what I'm looking for.
That said, it would be a big problem if the Solstice's trunk didn't have a light given its narrow alley of storage space, especially with the top down. And to be truthful, the only time I put things back here is when I have a passenger, and there's no room for my purse and CD case up front...
After spending the weekend in our long-term Miata, I've spent the last two days with the Solstice. It hasn't been the easiest transition, and not just because of the difference in their personalities. It's also the Pontiac's inconsistent fit and finish that's getting me down. Many of the Solstice's plastic dash panels are misaligned, and several have flashing on the edges left over from the molding process (as you can see above)...
After I took the Solstice to the carwash today, I did a walk around to see how it was holding up. Being a low-slung sports car, I figured there might be some chin scrapes from parking blocks. Sure enough, there were, as you can see in the photo. The black spoiler flexes, so it doesn't suffer the minor injuries the chin is exposed to.
And this has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time -- why aren't those darn things a standard height? I know other drivers of sports car have experienced this: pulling up to these buggers, sometimes the chin clears them by an inch or so, where in other instances it's a clearance of millimeters. And obviously, at other times it makes contact -- ouch! In this ultra-standardized world we live in, it baffles me that these parking blocks are not all one agreed-upon height so that the car makers can design their car's chins accordingly.
If you drive a car like this, I advise not pulling up all the way -- obviously the simple solution. But some of the parking lots around L.A. are so small and jammed that you don't have much choice if you want to keep the car's butt out of harm's way...
Ever see a German Shepherd puppy? I'm sure other breeds exhibit this trait, but these young 'uns have huge paws for such little animals. Kinda like the Solstice's big tires and wheels. These babies are big -- 245/45/18...
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