General Motors

“This was said by Bob Lutz on GM’s FastLane blog. He said that the G8 is going to get a broader share in public buying, as a large number of owners are ecstatic about this coming vehicle and most of them are calling it the best ever sedan.

“ it’s too good to waste and we are looking for the feasibility to bring it in a Caprice for the public as well as for the law enforcement,” Bob added.

Source: autoweek

The car feels like a true offspring of C4 Corvette Coupe and a Dodge Viper. Though the car is not anyway near in size or in power as these two American giants, all the features and merits of these two cars is present in this little coupe and this makes it unique in its cadre.

This car was spanned during the Bob Luz era at the GM. Bob is a true leader and one who values others creativity and innovation. He always wanted some new ideas from his designers and the first task he assigned to his designers when he joined GM in 2001 was to create a new concept or idea for the Detroit Auto Show. This has resulted in this grand coupe, Solstice.

Now with the company struck hard by the recession, Lutz is winding down his time at the company and as a result Solstice and the entire Pontiac are also fading slowly. Solstice is undoubtedly a true symbol of what went right and what went wrong with GM and Pontiac.

The original designs of this coupe were made by Franz Von Holzhausen, a newbie in the General Motor’s design studio at that time. From then on, Von Holzhausen has had tenure at Mazda and currently he leads a design team at Tesla Motors which works on the Model S.electric sedan. The designs were created by Von in the early 2002 for Detroit and Chicago auto shows and it was only in 2008 New York Auto show the coupe went to its production version.

The interiors of the coupe are tightly fit but are comfortable enough to provide the right amount of space. The center tunnel in the coupe is tall and wide to accommodate the transmission and the drive shaft. Unlike other sports cars, the coupe lacks dozens of buttons on its dashboard controlling its features. The seating position and the comfort are not up to the mark and the gaps between the dashboard and the doors are also uneven.

There is also an issue of visibility in this solstice coupe. With the roof panel, looking out of the low windshield requires you to lean ahead to see the traffic lights. It is indeed a difficult thing to do when you ought to concentrate more on road and drive.

The side glasses placed also do not encourage much as the side view is also not quite clear. Though there where initial doubts about the poor top mechanism employed for this coupe, the Pontiac now comes with a fold-up soft top that can be packed and kept inside. But this does not come with the base price as it is an $1100 option.

Even the final nail wasn’t put in the coffin of Pontiac and lo!  GM didn’t have any intention at all to develop the newest Camaro based Trans-Am.

But if not GM, someone else would certainly do it and now ASC comes to accomplish that. ASC or American Specialty Cars is a subcontractor that is quite popular for its different convertibles that can be seen on the road these days like Toyota Camry, Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder and Solara Convertible.

These guys have been developing specialty cars for different automakers and for things like GMC Syclone, SSR, and Buick GNX. And now as DUB says that American Specialty Cars is going to transform the 2010 Camaro into the latest and hottest Tran-Am.

Complete details haven’t been rendered yet and all we know is that it looks great to watch the ification of the Pontiac in Camaro looks and you would definitely need to dig the tail spoiler of the duck.

ASC has been requested for more details of this recreation, and we have to wait for a while to find out all about this nice transformation. So, let see what it really houses under this transformation.

Source: DUB

In order to reduce its large number of debts, GM has planned to offer some of its stocks to its debt holders and it prefers not to file for a chapter 11 bankruptcies. GM intended to resolve the demise of Saturn this year, which is sooner than expected. In addition to that of cutting down Pontiac, GM desires to cut down its dealer count in U.S nearly 42% by the year 2010.

Pontiac is very famous for its affordable performance and it is considered as the third largest brand that trails Chevrolet and ford. Pontiac offered its enthusiasts with a great driving experience and so it was loved by many of enthusiasts around the world. GM has decided to demise the production of Pontiac mainly because in recent years, Pontiac sales reduced to a great extent which made GM face a huge loss.

Saturn could live if, it is taken by another company or it would also be shutdown by GM. GM has entered seriously into its cost-cutting plan and it even slashed the number of headcounts from 61,000 to 40,000 which will soon be reduced to 38,000 in the year 2011.