The Pontiac Solstice GXP Coupe Is A Hyper-Rare Version Of GM’s Most Underrated Sports Car And Here’s One That’s Basically New

For just half of a decade, General Motors produced a set of twins that could almost be described as magical. The Pontiac Solstice and its Saturn Sky sibling packed tons of fun into striking packages, giving car enthusiasts about the closest thing they could buy to a GM equivalent of a Mazda Miata. But those cars are long gone and GM itself is in another era. If you’re sad you missed out on all of the fun, I have good news. The rarest, most “holy grail” version of the Pontiac Solstice GXP has surfaced for sale with barely over 6,000 miles. How can you say no to a small 260 HP coupe with a manual transmission?

How rare are we talking about here? While Pontiac and Saturn made plenty of these cars in roadster form, the coupes are pretty rare. Even rarer is the Pontiac Solstice GXP coupe, of which just 781 copies were built before the whole thing went bust. These cars had so much going for them. General Motors built these cars like it built Corvettes, but at a more affordable price. Their top trim levels include a turbocharged 2.0-liter four making 260 HP and 260 lb-ft of torque. Add in a manual transmission and you’re looking at a deeply underrated blast.

Yet, these cars have been slipping from minds perhaps just as much as their departed automakers. I’m not surprised someone loved their 2009 Pontiac Solstice GXP so much that they tried to keep the miles down. Who knows when will be the next time you could buy a car like this from General Motors? If you have enough cash and missed out when these cars were new, maybe that time is now.

It’s no secret that we’re huge fans of the GM Kappa platform here. I own a 2008 Saturn Sky Red Line — one of my teenage dream cars — and it’s impossible to frown while driving it. The engine produces more than enough, the car grips the road surprisingly well, and the design is so fresh I bet GM could put it back on sale today without any changes.

Why The Solstice Is Great

We’ve somewhat recently sung the praises of the Kappa cars, but I’ll let Thomas remind you why these cars were so cool:

From the turn of the millennium until about 2008, sports car buyers were spoiled for choice. In addition to the archetypal Mazda MX-5, Honda had the S2000, Nissan had the 350Z, and Toyota had the MR2 Spyder … and that’s before we even move upmarket. Small roadsters were a big deal in the 2000s, and GM wasn’t about to miss out on this sub-Corvette market. Well, specifically, one man wasn’t about to miss out: then-chairman of GM North America, Bob Lutz.

Lutz had a dream of an affordable American sports car, a dream that didn’t quite go places when he was previously at Ford and Chrysler. The Ghia Barchetta ended up becoming the milquetoast front-wheel-drive Mercury Capri, and the Dodge Copperhead concept was a brilliant show car that just didn’t make the transition to production.

A plan was set for the Solstice to feature a hydroformed chassis built using Corvette expertise to compensate for the reduction in structural rigidity convertibles normally see over coupes; short-long-arm independent suspension at all four corners; a longitudinal layout with rear-wheel-drive; and a price tag less than half of what the Chevrolet Corvette commanded. Sounds like quite the product to pull out of thin air, especially on a relatively shoestring budget of $250 million.

What Thomas didn’t note above is why GM had to go through the work to develop the Kappa platform. At the time, it was quite limited on rear-wheel-drive platforms. Sure, it had the Corvette, but its last compact rear-wheel-drive platform underpinned the Chevette. So, the only way forward was to make a new platform.

Now, you’d think it would be risky for GM to make an entirely new platform for what would almost certainly be relatively low-volume cars — at least compared to trucks and crossovers. GM must have known this, too, because it found fantastic ways to save development costs by raiding its parts bins. The base version of the Pontiac Solstice and the Saturn Sky have a 2.4-liter Ecotec four lifted straight from the Chevrolet Cobalt. The Aisin AR5 five-speed manual transmission comes from the Chevrolet Colorado, itself an evolution of the Aisin R154 from the Mk3 Toyota Supra Turbo. Heck, the Aisin AR5 is still out there being used in the Polaris Slingshot, too. Have you ever seen a transmission used in such a wide variety of vehicles?

It gets even more silly from there. The Kappa cars have axle shafts from the Cadillac STS, a storage bin from the Cadillac XLR, HVAC controls shared with the Hummer H3, brake calipers from the Chevrolet Malibu, the vapor canister from the Buick Lacrosse, and amazingly, the vapor canister vent valve is from the Chevrolet HHR.

But wait, there’s more! The side mirrors come from the Fiat Barchetta, the rearview mirror comes from the Oldsmobile Intrigue, and the instrument cluster is right out of a Chevrolet Cobalt. If you ordered your Kappa car with an automatic transmission, that was sourced from the Cadillac CTS. The same transmission was also used in the BMW E39 5 Series.

Specific to the Solstice — because the Sky had a more bespoke body — is the addition of reverse lights from the GMC Envoy and fog lights from a Pontiac Grand Prix. The Sky’s body has a reverse light shared with the Chevrolet Volt. Honestly, this list is probably only a fraction of the parts GM found to put into the Kappa platform.

Now, you might think that so much part sharing would ruin the experience, but I don’t think so. My Saturn Sky Red Line is perhaps the most memorable GM car I’ve ever driven.

Sure, you’re grasping at a steering wheel out of a Cobalt and checking your six in an Oldsmobile’s mirror, but these cars hug the road just as hard as their looks would have you believe. My Sky practically flew around the curves of the Ozarks in Missouri with grace and poise. I always felt in control and where the car’s limit was. Indeed, a Kappa car’s 2,860 pounds of weight makes it a bit porkier than the famed Miata, but if you can’t have fun in a Solstice or a Sky I would recommend seeing a doctor. Car and Driver seems to agree with me:

One needn’t be a sadist to flog the Solstice, but it never hurts to be a sadist. Getting up to highway speed is only a couple of redline shifts away. The 177 horsepower and 166 pound-feet of torque aren’t going to smoke the tires, but there’s a willingness to please that will keep you grinning. Drag racers might want to wait a year or so for the rumored turbocharged version, which should make more than 250 horsepower.

The Solstice might not have the power to kick out its tail at the exit of a corner, but entering a corner near the limit is easy because the steering offers crisp turn-in and the wide all-season 245/40R-18 Goodyear Eagle RS-As are predictable and easy to slide around. If you do carry too much speed into a corner, understeer will rear its shuddering head, but a slight lift off the accelerator will transfer enough weight off the rear tires to cause them to slip wide, which has the effect of tucking the car back into the corner. The wheelbase measures 95.1 inches, but start pushing the Solstice, and it feels like it Shrinky Dinks to about 80 inches.

Car and Driver concluded that, subjectively, the Kappas were better than the Miata. Yes, I know! “Solstice Is Always The Answer” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Mind you, Car and Driver’s test was limited to the slower 2.4-liter cars.

Later, the Solstice and the Sky would get the 2.0-liter Ecotec LNF turbo. That boosted mill bumped power up to 260 HP and 260 lb-ft of torque. That’s what my Sky Red Line has. In the hands of a capable driver, the faster Kappa cars hit 60 mph in 5.6 seconds.

That sounds sort of slow for this configuration. Apparently, it’s not the engine’s fault. The car buff mags just had such a hard time keeping the rear tires from lighting up. Amusingly, because of this quirk, the automatic is actually faster, taking 5.2 seconds to take the deed with less wheelspin. I can confirm that the rear tires like converting rubber into smoke. Maybe a performance tire would help that, but it’s so fun so I don’t care.

The Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky would be joined by the Opel GT, Daewoo G2X, and weirdly, the Tauro V8 Spider. Pontiac would go the extra mile and produce a coupe version of the Solstice with a slick fixed rear roof and a removable targa top. The cars were otherwise unchanged, but these are considered to be the holy grails of the Kappas. Well, so long as you’re not much into convertibles, anyway.

Pontiac built just over 66,000 Solstices between 2005 and 2010. Meanwhile, Saturn managed to punch out over 34,000 of its Sky between 2006 and 2009. So, these aren’t rare cars at all. But things get rare the second you start thinking about those coupes. Just 1,266 Pontiac Solstice coupes were built during 2009 and 2010. Of those, only 781 copies had the top-spec GXP trim and that speedy LNF turbo engine. Car and Driver notes that putting a hard roof on the Solstice didn’t really change the car’s performance.

This Solstice GXP Coupe

According to the history I could find on this 2008 Pontiac Solstice GXP coupe, it was purchased new in the summer of 2009 for $33,812. The car would later appear at a Hagerty auction in January 2024 with just 5,548 on its odometer.

During that auction, Hagerty noted that the seller of the vehicle was the person who bought it new in 2009. Like some collectors, it would appear that this person perhaps enjoyed looking at the car more than driving it. Hey, everyone enjoys cars differently. In the comments of the Hagerty auction the seller notes that they let the car sit for so long that they had to attach a battery tender to it to keep the battery from biting the dust. The car also failed multiple emissions inspections because it was rarely ever driven far enough to ready the vehicle’s systems. Ultimately, the seller says, they had too many cars and they decided to let this one go.

The vehicle would sell from that auction for the price of $28,000. I pulled the Carfax report and it looks like the second owner brought the car to Iowa, where they drove it about 500 miles over the course of 10 months. Now, as of January 19, 2025, the car is for sale here in Illinois, ready for a third owner to enjoy it.

Should you choose this car for your next adventure, you’re looking at a practically brand-new Pontiac Solstice GXP coupe with only 6,041 miles. The selling dealership didn’t bother taking many pictures of the rare car it has on hand. But the three images show a pretty ride. Allegedly, of the 1,266 Solstice coupes built, only 221 came in this color. So, who knows when will be the next time you see one of these with both ridiculously low miles and such a gorgeous color.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about the car’s price. The selling dealership, Chicago Auto Sports, is one of those places that makes you call to get a price and I haven’t heard anything back as of publishing. Update: The price is $39,800!

Regardless, it’s so cool to see such a perfect version of what’s almost certainly GM’s most underrated sports car. These cars came and went in such a short time and that’s sad because GM really had something with the Kappa cars. But hey, if you have enough money and missed these cars when they were new, maybe now is your chance to experience how fun these cars are.