2007 Saturn Sky
Sunday, October 29th, 2006
GM product czar Bob Lutz smote the earth and up sprang the pipsqueak Kappa platform, a fascinating potpourri of hydroformed steel tubes and stampings, aluminum control arms, and GM-parts-bin bits. The Kappa is now experiencing cell mitosis. First it sired the Pontiac Solstice roadster (December 2005), and now it gives life to a Saturn cub-Vette. The Sky, assembled alongside the Solstice in Wilmington, Delaware, is 3.9 inches longer than the Pontiac but otherwise virtually identical dimensionally. It is the Sky that will sell in Europe as the Opel GT, having been styled in GM’s Coventry, England, studios by Simon Cox, the chief artiste behind Cadillac’s 2001 Cien show car.
The Sky takes up where the Solstice’s clean, orbicular shape leaves off. Extra design trinkets include forward-canted side vents, faux hood vents, multiple grille openings with dashes of chrome, and a rear undertray with incorporated backup light. The headlights and the taillights are busied with proliferating lenses — the Sky has projector-beam headlamps, the Solstice doesn’t — and chrome spears. The lonely “Sky” badge adrift on the rump looks like an afterthought.
If the Solstice strikes you as too unorthodox, too unembellished and original to be a GM design, the Sky is happy to restore your sense of normality.
Saturn intends the Sky to rise above the Solstice (don’t worry, the next cars, the Galileo and the Kepler, will explain everything), in that the Sky’s base price of $23,690 is $3200 higher than the stripper Solstice’s. The extra nip gets you air conditioning, ABS, cruise, power everything (except the top, which is manual in all Kappas), keyless entry, floor mats, an alarm, and OnStar for a year. Taken together these options cost $3355 on the Solstice, which also doesn’t have the Sky’s fancy swabs of “piano black” interior trim to spruce up what is otherwise a concerto in hard plastic.
The Sky has other differences. The exhaust is slightly quieter, the top insulated with another layer of acoustic material. A more Stay-Puft ride results from a longer suspension travel and shorter jounce bumpers. The refinement is turned up a notch over the Solstice, and it’s noticeable. Over pavement holes the Sky’s suspension lets the body down with softer landings. Lumps aren’t as obtrusive. Dig into the throttle, and the burring from the DOHC 16-valve 2.4-liter four is more muted, its 6900-rpm redline less of a raspy thrash than in the Solstice. GM’s Ecotec swings a big stroke and will never be confused with a zingy sports-car engine. In the Sky, the harshness is better hidden.
At 2940 pounds, our phone-book-yellow Sky was 63 pounds more massive than our last Solstice tester and 515 pounds more portly than our last Mazda MX-5. No shocker then that the Sky demanded 7.3 seconds to make 60 mph and wouldn’t be bullied to its 88-mph quarter-mile in less than 15.9 seconds.
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