F250 Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 (edited) It's a used 2008 Saturn Sky. Stop laughing its a good looking fun car. Just an addition to the fleet it was a good deal, low mileage great condition find. This Kappa platform handles good! Too bad it was cut short. To me its sort of what the original 1953 Corvette was before performance went nuts. Just a fun 2 seat roadster. Edited April 14, 2015 by F250 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MY93SHO Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 Always liked the Sky better than the Solstice. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 I love those cars. Good luck with it! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Hatter Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 Always liked the Sky better than the Solstice. Really liked the Red Line. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJensen Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 I'm on the other side of that fence. I thought the Solstice looked a lot better. Enjoy the vehicle, but try to remember that it exists only because GM's management was almost criminally incompetent. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PREMiERdrum Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 It's a used 2008 Saturn Sky. Stop laughing its a good looking fun car. Just an addition to the fleet it was a good deal, low mileage great condition find. This Kappa platform handles good! Too bad it was cut short. To me its sort of what the original 1953 Corvette was before performance went nuts. Just a fun 2 seat roadster. The Kappas are great little cars and can be had for a great price. It wasn't completely cut short, though.. The Alpha program owes a great deal to Kappa. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OHV 16V Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 Congrats on your purchase, and may you have much good luck with it. A friend had a Solstice, and I remember driving it thinking what a surprisingly competent effort it was from GM, and I also wondered how much better it was going to get over time. (We all know how that worked out) You definitely got "the looker" between the two in my opinion. Color? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 Agreed on the Sky being the better looking of the twins. Should make it a real sports car bargain. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 14, 2015 Author Share Posted April 14, 2015 Congrats on your purchase, and may you have much good luck with it. A friend had a Solstice, and I remember driving it thinking what a surprisingly competent effort it was from GM, and I also wondered how much better it was going to get over time. (We all know how that worked out) You definitely got "the looker" between the two in my opinion. Color? White with black leather chrome wheels and rear spoiler options. All original no modifications. We took it for a little drive down the coast last Sunday. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 14, 2015 Author Share Posted April 14, 2015 I'm on the other side of that fence. I thought the Solstice looked a lot better. Enjoy the vehicle, but try to remember that it exists only because GM's management was almost criminally incompetent. "Criminally incompetent" is pretty strong. Regarding the Kappa platform? I assume you mean the business case for building such a fun vehicle. Well it was brilliantly successful compared to the first years of the Corvette which had astonishingly low sales: 1953 = 300 1954 = 3,640 1955 = 700 (first year for the v8 Personally I felt GM should have folded the Buick name and kept Saturn instead. But the Kappa lives on and is built in Spain now using GM V8 engines under the Tauro brand. http://www.tauro.eu/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJensen Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 "Criminally incompetent" is pretty strong. Imagine if they would've spent all that money making their sedans better! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danglin Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 White with black leather chrome wheels and rear spoiler options. All original no modifications. We took it for a little drive down the coast last Sunday. Nice looking Machine! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PREMiERdrum Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 "Criminally incompetent" is pretty strong. Regarding the Kappa platform? Hey man, don't get us wrong. They're great little roadsters. The business case, however? A dedicated plant making nothing but compact, 2 seat convertibles (save for the few stillborn Solstice coupes) on a bespoke platform? It was a monumentally stupid decision, rammed thru by Bob "the ego" Lutz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sullynd Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Always loved the sky, though I thought it should have been a Cheby. Congrats! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJensen Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Apparently I'm the only guy on the forum that preferred the Solstice. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blwnsmoke Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 I prefer the solstice as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
papilgee4evaeva Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 I liked both. It depended on the color though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmc523 Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Apparently I'm the only guy on the forum that preferred the Solstice. I preferred the Sky haha. In general, I typically prefer cleaner, more curvy/"smooth" designs (like the Model S for example) to more edgy vehicles (like the Cadillac lineup), but something about the Solstice was overly curved......bulbous isn't the right word, but I think they rounded off too many shapes in the design for my liking. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PREMiERdrum Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Apparently I'm the only guy on the forum that preferred the Solstice. At launch, I preferred the Solstice. I do think that the Sky has aged much more gracefully. The Sky's interior is laid out much better too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 Hey man, don't get us wrong. They're great little roadsters. The business case, however? A dedicated plant making nothing but compact, 2 seat convertibles (save for the few stillborn Solstice coupes) on a bespoke platform? It was a monumentally stupid decision, rammed thru by Bob "the ego" Lutz. Oh, I see the point but right out of the gate the Sky alone outsold the Mazda Miata MX5 not including the additional Solstice numbers and a few Opel GTs for Europe. I assume GM thought there was a place for an economical $20k-$25k & 28 MPG roadster. At least they did it right and built a great roadster and not something lame ...(I'm looking at you 3rd generation Mercury Capri). Kappas were good roadsters at the wrong time for GM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpd80 Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 (edited) Oh, I see the point but right out of the gate the Sky alone outsold the Mazda Miata MX5 not including the additional Solstice numbers and a few Opel GTs for Europe. I assume GM thought there was a place for an economical $20k-$25k & 28 MPG roadster. At least they did it right and built a great roadster and not something lame ...(I'm looking at you 3rd generation Mercury Capri). Kappas were good roadsters at the wrong time for GM. The Capri was based on Mazda 323 mechanicals and developed by Ford Australia, lovely cars but with a few glaring faults, mostly to do with leaky convertible roofs that most owners had fixed anyway...It was a low cost development done while FoA was still building the "Laser" locally (323 based like your NA Escort) I think this is why Ford never trusted FoA with another Import to the US, so sad because their Falcon ahd Territory showed real merit even though developed on the smell of an oil rag, they could have been developed into excellent vehicles for North America. Re Kappa, If Holden had gotten its way, their "Alpha" would have been far more cost effective due to using Kappa suspension, unfortunately, GMNA took over the project and decided to redo everything and not use Kappa. Edited April 15, 2015 by jpd80 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvrsvt Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 I always liked these cars but I could never own one because I'm too tall and the footwells where too small for my feet to fit comfortably in them...sat in one at the NYIAS when they first came out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 (edited) That was my point jpd80. GM I think tried to build a good roadster and saw no existing platform worked well so they designed the Kappa. And the vehicle was well regarded from the beginning. Very unlike GM kind of car. The 3rd gen Capri was "a good business decision" of using off the shelf front wheel drive platform parts to cobble up a roadster. In the U.S. the Capri was a complete failure. Style, design, certainly Handling and quality control not a "lovely car" at all. Funny, GM builds a good roadster and it's "Criminally negligent" Mazda builds one and it's a long running benchmark (according to the press). Edited April 15, 2015 by F250 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 I always liked these cars but I could never own one because I'm too tall and the footwells where too small for my feet to fit comfortably in them...sat in one at the NYIAS when they first came out. It' s not bad at all, more room than a Miata. I'm 6'1" tall and size 12 shoes. Not fat but not as thin as I used to be... But my wife drives the Sky mostly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Funny, GM builds a good roadster and it's "Criminally negligent" Mazda builds one and it's a long running benchmark (according to the press). GM spent a fortune to build a good roadster that they weren't able to sell in sufficient volume to make a profit. Initial volume was decent but quickly fell when the novelty wore off. Do you think it was "bad luck" or a coincidence that GM went bankrupt just 2 years after introducing them? Mazda sells the Miata worldwide. They've had decades to amortize the basic platform. GM chose to do 2 different tophats with 2 different brands on a bespoke new platform which likely didn't help sales - it only added cost to an expensive project. It's not about sales volume. It's about doing proper market research to understand how many you can reasonably expect to sell and at what price versus development and opportunity costs. If the company had been financially healthy and they chose to make a long term investment in a worldwide product knowing it would lose money for a few years that's fine. But that was certainly not the case at the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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