Turbocharged 4 cylinder, manual transmission and rear wheel drive makes for a great combination in any car, especially when it comes like that stock from the factory. Although GM finally introduced a car that they thought would appeal to the “sport compact” or “tuner” market, they still needed help in creating a cool image car that their target market would embrace and aspire to own.

Although I don't normally see Pontiac Solstices rolling around the freeways in Los Angeles, GM certainly made a big push to promote this car, giving near-free cars away to key people in the automotive industry who they thought would be good representatives for promoting their brand and connecting it with the younger, MTV demographic.

Possibly the most successful campaign promoting the Solstice would be Rhys Millen's... his RMR/RedBull Solstice proved to be quite a powerful force in the Formula Drift Series, especially with Rhys as the driver. The combination of RMR's race car engineering prowess and Rhys's precision driving abilities are certainly hard to beat. 

However, not everyone immediately thinks of drifting when they see a Pontiac Solstice. Many people just think, "hey, with a turbocharged 4-cylinder rear wheel drive, a Solstice just might be a pretty fun, open air car to drive around on weekends or on track days." With this in mind, GM worked with designer Mark Arcenal from San Francisco, who has a pretty diverse background in doing graphic design for companies like Fatlace, The Gap, and Nike (and he even did the design of our own Speedhunters logo).

These photos are actually from my archives, as I shot this car exactly two years ago -  I drove to SF on my Christmas break with my brother and drove around with Mark on New Year's Day to find suitable locations for shooting this car. See, I really wanted to have the city in the background - I've known Mark for years, since we're both car guys from the SF Bay Area. Back when I met him, he was the co-founder of Mecca Graphics, a popular vinyl sticker company, based in Mark's garage in Daly City, CA. Therefore, it would only be fitting that we put the city of San Francisco as the backdrop for his car. This was no easy task! As with any big metropolitan city, most of San Francisco's city streets are busy and littered with cars (and litter). It took us quite a while, but we finally found a small 1-bridge that went over the freeway, and as we drove on it to check it out, I immediately yelled "STOP! Right here! Right now! I wanna shoot real quick!"

Mark was a little hesitant about my choice of shooting location, like "What? Here? For real? I dunno, we're blocking traffic dude... what if a car comes? It's only one lane, we'll be screwed!"

"True... but it'll look sick," was my response as I rationalized with him. "Get out of the car, hurry up, dude..."

"Oh yeah," I added, "hold this strobe, will you?" (haha!)

Again, for a back side shot of the car, I wanted a different view of SF... so after driving around even more, we got a phone call from our good friend Calvin Wan, who decided to meet up with us during the shoot. With Calvin's help (and by help, I mean we illegally parked his Armada in the middle of the intersection so cars wouldn't pass through the frame), we were able to snap off just enough shots for me to get the proper exposure for this photo... and right as I was shooting the last shot, the cops arrived to harrass us. Well, with good reason though... we were blocking the intersection, for crying out loud. But at least we got the shot I wanted! Worth it, in my opinion.

I like that rear wing on this Solstice. I think if the car looked a bit more normal (without all the stickers), it would be something you could totally drive around San Francisco; the open top would be cool so you could look up at all the buildings and take in the fresh Bay Area air, and I think the gold metallic color on the car was a pretty good choice... the only difficult thing is, I think this car would probably get stuck going up or down a steep SF street! (The car really is pretty low to the ground).

Here we are again, parked over near Pier 39... at the time Mark received the Solstice from GM, there was virtually no aftermarket support for this brand new car.  After envisioning of how he’d want his Solstice to look, Mark had to call in the help of several well known companies to build parts from scratch to for this Solstice.

One of the most important things when styling a car is getting wheels with good offset. This Solstice definitely doesn't disappoint in this department, rocking those shiny new AME wheels. To be honest, I wish the car was just a bit lower to get rid of the fender gap, but Mark kept telling me he was trying to lower it more, but experienced many problems dealing with the car's body being too low, even though the fenders still had room for wheel clearance. That's pretty difficult to deal with... I personally think the AME wheels fit the car very well, but if somehow the car could go a but lower, the wheel fitment would be completely on point. If the car is too low, maybe removal of the aero kit is in order...? Well the underside would still scrape, but at least the fenders would come right up to the tires... haha!

DGR Performance welded in a roll cage for the extra safety and rigidity that a convertible can definitely use.  It is done right with the cage going cleanly right through the dash.  Continuing with the race car theme are the Sparco seats and steering wheel, along with about a million gauges to keep an eye on the vitals. That fire extinguisher mounting location is kind of an odd choice though.

For the engine mods, Hahn Racecraft was enlisted to install a different turbo, and also to fabricate some new piping. Not sure how much extra power that resulted in, as we don't have access to the car's dyno figures, but let's just say it feels faster with the classic "seat of your pants" dyno.

Here's the a view of the KW coilover springs and threaded coilover shocks... the 60 printed on the spring means that it's a 6kg spring, and the 200 printed after it tells you the spring is 200mm long.

KW Suspension is pretty well known for its high quality in European car circles, so Mark contacted George Ciordas from KW Suspension to make a set of KW Variant 3 coilovers for this project car. These coilovers are 2-way independently adjustable for rebound and compression, which results in much improved tuning in the suspension setup. These coilovers allow the driver to independently adjust rebound and compression, so they can make progress when tuning the suspension of the car much faster - George from KW tells us that most other coilover companies that have adjustable suspension don't allow you to adjust the compression and rebound independently; on lower end suspension systems, apparently the driver can only adjust it stiffer or softer in general; not a combination of stiffer compression and softer rebound.

The green swaybar visible on the bottom is made by Suspension Techniques.

These AME FX wheels were custom made for this application to ensure that the wheels would come out to the fenders, even with the big brakes. Behind the front wheels are a set of bright red big brakes from Rotora. Not only do these large brakes attract attention from their red color, they also greatly prevent brake fade. 

Here's the Solstice in Mark's old garage - damn that guy is always glued to his Macbook! See all the toys in there... BMW wagon, Ruckus, fixies, skateboards...

-Antonio Alvendia