Saturn of Spartanburg

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• Summary

Walk Around

The Saturn Sky is an attractive sports car. The Saturn looks more aggressive than the mechanically similar Pontiac. While the Pontiac Solstice has a traditional Pontiac split grille and a nosepiece that rolls under gracefully, the Saturn Sky nosepiece is almost four inches longer and slathered with chrome above and below, part of the new design direction of Saturn that's consistent with the front-end design of the new Saturn Aura sedan and the revised Vue.

The Sky nose looks like a boxer leading with his chin, but the overall look is sporty, with peaked front fenders, big forward-leaning vents in the front fenders, and twin head nacelles like the Solstice's in the body just behind the cockpit, leading to a short rear end with small, tasty corner-mounted taillamps. With very few details changes, this design will be sold in Europe as the Opel GT roadster.

The Sky looks pretty cool with the top down, not so cool with the flying-buttress top up. Stowing the top requires popping the decklid with the key fob, which also unlocks the pins that hold down the rear section or buttresses. Then you have to get out of the car, fold the top down into the cargo bay, push it down a couple of times until it is fully nested, then walk around to the back of the car and slam the decklid down with a good amount of force from the center of the lid so that both sides will lock down. The Saturn top has more noise insulation than the Solstice top, so the interior is quieter, but in all three of the cars we tried, there were significant air leaks between window glass and top seals on both sides of the car.

Given the restrictions imposed by sharing the GM Kappa platform, we think it's a pretty successful execution of a new Saturn design, with only a few niggles, like the tiny SKY badge hung out there in left field instead of centered under the Saturn logo on the decklid where we think it belongs.

Interior

2007 Saturn Sky

The interior of the Sky is its Achilles heel. While the dashboard and deeply tunneled instrumentation are done well, set in hard-finished plastic with dramatic Piano Black shiny trim not made of ebony or any other natural material. The controls are all reachable and easy to use, but there is a lot of flash and reflection from the chrome rims on every knob and dial and the shiny black piece.

Storage inside the cabin is limited. The glovebox is small, and there are no door pockets. The storage bin between the seats has an awkward push/twist lock instead of a simple pushbutton, and that bin doesn't hold much either. There are storage pockets on the back side of the seat backs and storage nets on the rear wall, but the seatback latch is buried in the darkness and it's hard to use. In a new twist on cupholders, they are mounted between the seatbacks below the storage bin, which forces you to use your outside hand to park or retrieve your drink, reaching across your body. Weird, but it works.

The bucket seats are comfortable enough for short runs, and offer good lateral support but little thigh support for the long haul, and they don't have enough built-in adjustability for tall folks, limited by the short length of the cockpit. The seatback rake adjuster is a wheel, not a lever, and it is in a very tight space between the side of the seat and the door, nearly impossible to use with the doors closed.

The cargo room in the Sky is barely adequate for a single person's weekend getaway, let alone a fun couple's. There's only 5 cubic feet of space under the decklid with the top up, only 2 cubic feet with the top stowed, and the shape of the space is interrupted by a huge domed area in the center to accommodate the rear axle assembly, so the space isn't conducive to anything but soft, pliable luggage that can be squished around to fit. Maybe it's time for decklid-mounted luggage racks to make a comeback.

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