Unlike yesterday’s Capri, a Solstice is a car I wouldn’t mind owning. Brand new, a base model came with an MSRP of around $21,500. A base model is what we have today, even though it appears to have been outfitted with an aftermarket hood with scoops that would suggest it’s got a turbo or supercharger it needs to feed air into -it doesn’t. Of course, this one is no longer new. In fact, it’s a 2007 model. The used car lot I spotted it in has it priced at $16,995 with right around 15,000 on its odometer.
That price strikes me as a bit on the high end of things. Initially, I had assumed that this was a GPX model based on the price point, which would have made its price a really nice deal. However, it’s not a GPX, and it’s not a good price. We’ll get to the GPX designation in a moment. For now, let’s do a bit of comparison shopping, shall we? A quick online search yields a 2007 base Solstice with 38K miles, and an asking price of $12,995, another one with 25K miles for $12,575, or an ‘08 model with 19K miles for $14,995. I mean, that aftermarket hood looks cool and all, but I don’t think it boosts the car’s value that much. Well, $16,995 is just an asking price, and you could ASK for just about anything, I suppose. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.
I took my time looking at this Solstice, and I’ll admit, it’s in very good condition. It appears to have an aftermarket stereo that possibly has navigation in it, so that’s a nice feature… Still not nice enough to justify the pricing. The car lot may be into this thing for anywhere between $9,500-$13,000 depending on how crazy they went with the bidding at the auto auction, but that’s not the consumer’s problem when the competition is all priced thousands less. Of course, there’s always room to negotiate, and I hope whoever buys this Solstice does just that, or they’ll be overpaying.
By now, you may be wondering what this car’s buyer would be getting for their money. Clearly, this is a nice looking little roadster. It’s got a wonderfully aggressive road stance, all low and wide, and nice curves that still bear plenty of definition as if it’s flexing its muscles for you to behold. It’s little, but it thinks it’s mighty. At a curb weight of 2,860 lbs, the base Solstice features a 2.4L dual overhead cam inline 4 cylinder that has 173 HP and 167 lb-ft of torque to spin those rear wheels that propel the car forward along with up to two people inside.
Had this car been a Solstice GPX, a price like $16,995 would be fantastic. A GPX version has a 2.0L engine. I know, you’re thinking, wait, isn’t that actually smaller than the base model? Yes it is. That 2.0L inline 4 cylinder has a surprise for you though… a dual scroll supercharger that boosts output to 260 HP and 260 lb-ft of torque. That’s a huge amount of power to pull from an engine so itty bitty. To top it off, back when there were still Pontiac dealerships, you could take your new Solstice GPX in to one, and pay for a dealer installed tuning modification that adjusted the computer and added 2 more sensors to boost output to 290 HP and 340 lb-ft of torque!
Sure, the GPX weighs in at 2,976 lbs -over 100 more than the base model, but it’s also got nearly 100 HP to make up for that -more if it’s got that dealer mod. By the way, that dealer mod figure is huge on a HP per square inch of displacement basis. A new GPX had an MSRP of $26,515 to start. Used ones I found online range from around $18,000 on up to about $23,000 for the more recent model years. Considering the newest Solstice you can get nowadays is already 4 years old, that’s not too shabby for resale value.
The Solstice GPX sounds pretty sweet, and if I was going to buy a Solstice roadster, the GPX is what I’d choose. But, I’m not really a convertible person. I prefer coupes. Good thing then, that there just happens to be such an animal as a Solstice coupe. To be fair, it’s technically not a coupe, because the roof isn’t fixed in place. It’s actually a Targa with removable roof over the passenger and driver area. Of course, once you remove that roof, you’re kind of screwed unless you’re at home when you do it, because the panel is too big to fit in the trunk of the Solstice, and God knows there’s no room in the passenger compartment for it. Oh, those accursed logistics!
If I bought a Solstice, it would be a GPX coupe. These are actually quite hard to find and when you do, good luck getting the owner to want to sell it -any Solstice coupe, but especially the GPX coupe. I checked with the Pontiac Solstice Forum online, and according to an aficionado on that site, there were only 1,152 Solstice coupes built (with an additional 101 that have non sequential VINs, of which 781 were GPX’s. Of the overall number of coupes, 956 were sold in the US market, and I‘m not sure of the breakdown of GPX to regular, but I suspect it was heavy on the GPX‘s.
It‘s usually not common to see these coupes, but I used to see one nearly everyday along Plymouth Ave in Minneapolis. Somebody near the police precinct seems to own one, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same shade of blue that today’s roadster is. The GPX coupe also happens to be one I’d recommend to collectors and prospect buyers. Of course, they can’t be had cheap. The one I found -and I stress that I was only able to find ONE Solstice GPX coupe listed for sale online outside of Ebay (which also had only 1) was a 2009 model with 2,478 miles priced at $26,978 -so basically, the same as what a GPX roadster cost brand new back in 2009. The one on Ebay has under 2,000 miles and is priced at $35,000 to start. I think that’s one prospector who’s trying to strike a bit too early in the game. He ought to keep it garaged and only put a few miles on the odometer here and there while he gives it another couple years to appreciate before asking that kind of money for the car. Of course, they’re rare, but boosting the premium this soon just seems like price gouging if you ask me. Still, consider that the number of GPX coupes can only go down from however many are out in the world today. Consider also, that some of the GPX coupes are being used as track toys and racers, which tends to accelerate the rate at which they end up getting wrecked. The rarity will only increase with time, and compared to its mechanical twin, the Saturn Sky Roadster (Red Line instead of GPX), the Solstice should be the more valuable of the two in the long run regardless of which car’s aesthetic people might prefer. It will have the edge in value because of its heritage as a performance Pontiac.
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