Today’s Nice Price or No Dice Solstice is one of two the seller is offering for sale, but it’s by far the more interesting of the pair. Let’s see if its price piques our interest.
Colin Chapman famously engineered his Lotus cars to go faster by “adding lightness.” The builder of yesterday’s homage 1964 Lotus Seven took a slightly different approach by adding a Lexus V8. Unfortunately for the seller, the car was burdened under the weight of a $20,000 asking price, something the majority of you felt was too much, handing the home-built a 60 percent No Dice loss.
A fun aspect of the kit car culture is sussing out where the builder sourced certain parts. Where did that windshield come from? How about those tail lamps? While far be it from a kit car, today’s 2008 Pontiac Solstice GXP T2 SCCA Championship Edition does share a slew of parts with other GM offerings of the time, and a good time can be had by all, pointing out things like the Chevy Cobalt instrument cluster, GMC Envoy backup lights, and Grand Prix front fog lamps. A lot more parts bin dumpster diving was involved in the creation of the Solstice and its sister car, the Saturn Sky (and the various Opel, Vauxhall, and Daewoo versions), but we’re here to discuss this particular car because it’s an edition that happens to be much more unique.
It starts out with this being a GXP model, which means it has the hotter, turbocharged edition of the GM corporate 2.0 Ecotec DOHC four under its hood. That’s good for 260 horsepower and the same number of torques. Here, that’s mated to the standard five-speed manual. That’s all well and good, but it’s not what makes this car unique. What does is the extremely long tag appended to the model’s name—“T2 SCCA Championship Edition.”
That means that this car celebrates Pontiac’s 2007 SCCA T2 Series Championship and makes this one of just 88 cars the company built for that self-aggrandizing. Along with the full name that requires two breaths to complete, the Championship Edition is identifiable by its yellow paint matched with silver strips, two-tone black and gray interior, and “SCCA T2 Champion” embroidery on the seat backs. If you’ve ever jonesed to own a Solstice, this is one of the best editions to buy.
But should anyone buy this particular one? According to the seller, it has 88,000 miles on the clock, nearly new Michelin tires, and is reportedly free of mechanical malfeasance. It also has a clean title and a passing grade from the state safety inspector. Aesthetically, it suffers only from a tear in the driver’s seat side bolster. Other than that, the car comes across in the pictures as being in perfectly acceptable shape.
It should be pointed out that this seller actually has two Solstices (Solsti?) up for grabs. Along with the SCCA car, they have a black GXP that looks just as good but suffers from having comparative ubiquity and an automatic transmission. That’s why we’re acknowledging but not engaging it.
Instead, let’s talk about this one of 88 Solstice and its $12,995 asking.
What’s your take on this rare bit of Pontiac history at that price? Does that seem fair, considering the model’s history and present state? Or, like the car’s full name, is that just too much?
You decide!
Dallas, Texas, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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