What is going to happen with the Sky/Solstice architecture?

[Cortez]

GM employees have the ability to post questions to GM Mgt via an internal website process. The following question was asked earlier today at GM. While I did NOT ask this question myself I am willing to bet that someone on this forum did (GM employee lurking in the shadows). To that individual: I hope you don't mind that I have taken the liberty of sharing your question with the rest of the folks here.

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Full Question: What is going to happen with the Sky/Solstice architecture now that both Pontiac and Saturn are going away? Seems a shame to just let it fade away. Both vehicles are terrific to drive, affordable, economical and are visually stunning. I have to imagine they do well in sales considering the market they are in, I see an awful lot of them. Any chance Chevrolet and Buick will have a car each off of it.


Answer: Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky, along with Opel GT, were beautiful image building vehicles, however they will not be continued nor rebadged as other brands. The significant expenses to maintain the unique vehicle architecture, assembly facility as well as specific vehicle development and marketing could not be justified financially.

[Fergy]

Sad to hear, though not really surprising. Hope fades away now.

[TomatoSoup]

Given the reports that GM 'lost' $10K on every kappa vehicle built, who could ever expect them to continue building them - see: Next Solstice CANCELLED?

Anyone have any real (non-rumor) information whether this 'loss' amount was actually correct and if so, why?

[DaveOC]

Originally Posted by TomatoSoup Given the reports that GM 'lost' $10K on every kappa vehicle built, who could ever expect them to continue building them - see: Next Solstice CANCELLED? Anyone have any real (non-rumor) information whether this 'loss' amount was actually correct and if so, why?

Let's see, $10K times 65K Solstices and 35K Skys and 7.5K Opels . . .

10K times 107K = a bit over $1Billion loss?

I doubt it.

[Kappster]

Whats the name of that little fiberglass car with the hi-po toyota motor in it?
Oh yea, Lotus. They make and sell what... 6000 units a year. They are still in business.. Granted they cost way more money, But they are a way different build then the Kappa.

Kappa uses basicly already availible parts, standard material. Nothing exotic. The Frame and body parts have dies, molds what have you, already.

Look at the Lotus, is has all kinds of weight saving exotic,specialty materials, the expensive stuff.
GM makes millions of ecotec motors. The transmission is bought from a supplyer, the rear end, Caddy. Plastic interier parts are cheap.
The front hubs... I think are from the cobalt, it not there from another front wheel drive car. If you haven't looked they have splines cut in the middle of the hub for an axel.
The most labor intensive part is most likely the top.
So I'd have to hear more data to believe their resoning

[normsf]

Originally Posted by DaveOC Let's see, $10K times 65K Solstices and 35K Skys and 7.5K Opels . . . 10K times 107K = a bit over $1Billion loss? I doubt it.

Hello yes $10,000 per car Never made any sense to me either! Thanks Norm

[sandan03]

Originally Posted by Kappster Whats the name of that little fiberglass car with the hi-po toyota motor in it? Oh yea, Lotus. They make and sell what... 6000 units a year. They are still in business.. Granted they cost way more money, But they are a way different build then the Kappa. Look at the Lotus, is has all kinds of weight saving exotic,specialty materials, the expensive stuff.

Lotus MIGHT sell 6000 cars world wide, but I doubt it. They're down now to selling maybe 100 new cars a year in the US. That'll jump to maybe 1000 or so when the Evora hits, but that will hold only for a year or so.

The 05 Elise sold about 2500, with a waiting list.
The 06 Elise, maybe 1500. The 06 Exige, maybe 300
The 07 Elise, maybe 750. The 07 Exige S (they discontinued the N/A Exige), about 300.
08 Elise, a couple hundred. 08 Exige, less than 100.
09 Elise, a handful, mostly SC. 09 Exige. About 15.

Exotic material? Aluminum and fiberglass. Nothing exotic there. The most exotic thing is the glue that holds everything together. The new S260 Exige (15 or so sold in the US...er...most are still on the dealer lots) have a carbon fiber roof, engine hatch, and front access panels.

How exotic is that, when every other Civic and Evo is clad in CF body panels and interior veneer?

Lotus actually makes most of it money with its engineering division, which is hq'd in Michigan. They design a lot of engineering that is found in many, many brands' cars around the world.

[NormSky]

Considering the Kappa platform is a minature C5/C6 Corvette that according to "All Corvettes Are Red" made almost $20K a pop, the investment needed to put parts on a scaled down Vette from GM other cars I'd say they were making $10K a pop!


Norm

Originally Posted by TomatoSoup Given the reports that GM 'lost' $10K on every kappa vehicle built, who could ever expect them to continue building them - see: Next Solstice CANCELLED? Anyone have any real (non-rumor) information whether this 'loss' amount was actually correct and if so, why?

[snaponbob]

Norm and Kappster - First the Lotus business model is positively TINY. They also do consulting work with other manufactures as a significant income generator. Lotus also failed and is owned by Proton. As for platforms, it does not matter what the Kappa was fashioned after because all the parts are different, the volume was low, it took a separate factory, and was labor intensive. There simply was NO benefits of scale or common platforms to create any cost savings.

[SolTul]

I have heard that the loss for each kappa was spread over too few cars, in other words the production numbers never got ramped up to offset the start up costs that was needed on the new platform. It is a numbers game and the numbers never got to where they had anticipated. If they had produced 250k a year the cost would have been much less per vehicle. They made so few of these cars I believe the loss per car would be enormous but I think 10k per car is a little much. I would have thought more like 3k to 5k. Of course the labor cost were just outragious on all cars. Seeing the numbers on GM and other makers it would appear they were losing money on most of their cars.

[Kappster]

If in fact that the owners of Lotus don't make money on their cars and support their production by "engineering" Maybe then they Just build cars as a hobby.
If we could interest them in the Kappa platform maybe they would build it for fun.
Of course to come up to their level of performance they would have to build the frame out of aluminum. And maybe put a Toyota motor in it.
It might work out for the Kappa.
If the Kappa weight was only 2200 then it would be even more fun.
GM could have had the Kappa assembled in Mexico to save money.
We don't really care about American jobs. Just the ability to buy toys, right?
As far as I'm concerned there is no excuse for GM to drop the Kappa.
They Needed to Refine it over time. There still is a market for this niche market group and they dropped they ball.
GM like other American based corporations only worry about short term, quarterly returns. Toyota on the other hand reinvests in their future for the long term.
Lotus employs 200 people to build lotus cars. You don't think they could assemble Kappa's too?

[WWI Flying Ace]

Thanks for posting this Cortez. Good to know, but sad that they are history.

Off topic:

Is there a thread anywhere that takes the following numbers down a couple more levels?

65K Solstices and 35K Skys and 7.5K Opels

Is there a breakdown anywhere of which are GXPs, which are Redlines, Coupes, etc., by model year? I'd love to see how many GXPs were made in 07 (in my case) and I'm sure others would be interested in their particulars too...thanks...thread hijack over, we now return you to you regularly scheduled thread...

[ccanepa50]

my 2¢.......they had a how many (142?) acre newly renovated facility with a private sewage treatment plant, state of the art paint shop, etc etc....they cancel every other car they might have produced there so not anywhere near production capability.....just a matter of way too big a nut to crack every month......the numbers didnt add up to keep it around.....So Fiskar buys the plant from the gov for what was it? 18mil........now thats a deal!..........
Saab (GM) rumored 5k a car.........

[summer_solstice]

GM may keep Opel GT alive as part of the restructuring of Opel.

[DaveOC]

Originally Posted by WWI Flying Ace Is there a thread anywhere that takes the following numbers down a couple more levels? 65K Solstices and 35K Skys and 7.5K Opels Is there a breakdown anywhere of which are GXPs, which are Redlines, Coupes, etc., by model year? I'd love to see how many GXPs were made in 07 (in my case) and I'm sure others would be interested in their particulars too...thanks...thread hijack over, we now return you to you regularly scheduled thread...

There are some details available for the coupe, but not for the convertibles. That is to say that nothing has been published. Flash's Owner has published the breakout for GXP vs NA and manual vs automatic for the limited run of the coupes, but I've never seen the breakout for the other cars.