I have been a fan of Duran Duran since elementary school in the 1980s. This was not the same kind of fandom I’d observe from the girls in my classroom who would put pictures of their favorite band member on the cover of their Trapper Keeper binders as cut out from teenage fan magazines, while they debated which one they thought was the “cutest”. I remember most of them going gaga over Simon LeBon, but whatever. I thought the guys of Duran Duran were the epitome of cool.
My family didn’t have cable television when I was growing up. In fact, when my family had lived abroad in Liberia for a year, the friends we had rented our house to while we were overseas had a wall outlet for cable installed in our living room. I can see in my mind’s eye as vividly as something I had seen just last month what it was like to be standing there, watching as my mother took a knife and sawed through and completely severed the newish cable connector cord sticking out of the wall. Not only did she not want us to have cable service, she wanted to make sure it wasn’t ever going to happen even if we kids had been able to get through to Dad.
What this meant was that it was only at my friends’ houses that I’d be able to watch Double Dare on Nickelodeon or music videos on MTV. (This was in the years when adult-oriented VH1 was considered largely unwatchable by youths.) Three of my best friends in the neighborhood around our fifth grade year were Fred, Rachel, and Raul. I don’t remember Fred’s or Rachel’s families having cable, but Raul’s did. I remember riding my Raleigh ten-speed bicycle the two neighborhood blocks to Raul’s house, a distance that seemed much longer then to a kid than it actually was, and us hanging out while we would watch music videos. Raul was my homie, with both of us being first-generation Americans, in part or fully.
The mid-1980s, and specifically 1984, have long seemed to me like some sort of pinnacle for pop music in general, and the videos from this time were pretty much all memorable. From Michael Jackson’s light-up sidewalk in the video for “Billie Jean”, to Madonna’s interracial romance and brief modeling gig in the video for the bouncy “Borderline”, to Tina Turner’s iconic fishnets and leather mini-skirt (I had thought then that she was a new artist!), to anything Cyndi Lauper acted out, I would be positively transfixed while watching music videos at Raul’s house. I can even remember him sometimes trying to say something to me while I was watching, and I’d respond along the lines of, “Shut up for a minute…I’m trying to watch this.” Thinking about it now, I’m actually surprised he never asked me to leave. It’s possible that he did and I simply didn’t hear him, lost as I was in the magic of what I was watching and hearing in their TV room in the basement.
To be clear, I did not use Raul just to watch cable. He and I discussed this (amid gut laughter) a couple of summers ago, which was the last time he and I got to hang out. It’s just that the music of that time, the personal styles of the artists, and the images in their videos all left an indelible impression on me and instilled a hunger for all I could absorb. Duran Duran was a big part of that. “The Reflex” was one of the very first music videos I had ever seen. While that video was mainly of a concert performance and not all that memorable, it was the “gateway drug” to the rest of their canon of hits and videos, my favorite of which was probably “Hungry Like The Wolf”.
They had been out of the limelight for about four years before the release of one of many of their career “comeback” albums, 2004’s Astronaut, which was special in that it was a reunion of all five original members: Simon LeBon, Nick Rhodes, Andy Taylor, John Taylor, and Roger Taylor (none of whom were related). The first single, “(Reach Up For The) Sunrise”, seemed like a thrilling update of their ’80s new wave sound. One track from that album that I had on repeat for a while, however, was not released as a single: “Taste The Summer”. Maybe it was also because that time of my life seemed really exciting, as I had somewhat recently relocated to Chicago within a couple years of this album’s release. “Taste The Summer” found itself on multiple mix-CDs (remember those?) I would make both for myself and my friends. It’s still my jam.
The Pontiac Solstice holds more than a few parallels in my mind to this chapter of Duran Duran’s recording history. When it first arrived in 2005 as an ’06 model, I thought it was positively stunning. This two-seater is the kind of car I had often told myself I might be able to own once I no longer needed the utility of a hatchback or even a back seat, both of which were indispensable during my college years. I had taken notice when Pontiac’s image had seemed to start to flounder around the mid-’90s with criticism of its widespread use of plastic body cladding, which was considered tacky. To me, this feature was one of Pontiac’s calling cards and one of its most identifiable traits to a kid who grew up in the ’80s, along with its split front grille. It was like criticizing Kenny G. for having too much hair, or criticizing George Hamilton for being too tan. This seemed like an unfair criticism of an easy target and obvious identity trait.
Like the reunion of Duran Duran’s original lineup, the introduction of the Solstice seemed to solidify that Pontiac was here to stay, and its arrival also sparked hope in me that more exciting products were on the way. Pontiac had long been one of my favorite divisions of GM, as well a favorite make in its own right, marketed as it was toward youth with the proclamation that they built “excitement”! It didn’t even matter so much to me that this model’s cousin, the Sky, was for sale over at Saturn. The two cars looked differentiated enough from each other to have identities as separate from one another as could be the case for two cars based on the same GM Kappa platform. In fact, the other two variants, the Opel GT and Daewoo G2X, looked just like the Saturn Sky, while the Pontiac Solstice had the most unique appearance with styling not shared with the other cars. Its name also seemed like a stroke of genius, with thoughts of the summer solstice jelling perfectly with the appearance of this sleek, two-seat convertible.
It wasn’t long before reviews surfaced that were less than stellar, for both the Solstice and Astronaut. After what had seemed like strong initial interest in the United States for Duran Duran’s eleventh studio album, which was their first top-20 hit on the Billboard 200 album chart (No. 17) in over a decade, and after the relatively low chart peak of “Sunrise” on the Hot 100 singles chart (No. 89), the album sort of came and went. It didn’t even go RIAA Gold in the U.S., selling only around 260,000 copies in the U.S., to date.
The Pontiac was cited as being a bit too large and heavy to instill the kind of spirited driving that other vehicles of its type, like the Mazda MX-5 Miata, were capable of. With a curb weight of about 2,900 pounds, it was powered by a 2.4L four-cylinder engine with 173 horsepower. By contrast, the same-year Miata weighed about 400 pounds less and gave up very little in horsepower, with 166 hp coming from its 2.0L four-cylinder.
Curiously, the two cars were almost exactly the same length (157.2″ long for the Solstice, with the Miata being just 0.1″ longer), but the Solstice was significantly wider at 71.3″ versus the Miata’s 67.7″ width. Perhaps this could be a metaphor for the 2004-era physical shape of LeBon and, say, Brandon Flowers of The Killers, who were also on the radio at the time of the release of Astronaut. Sales figures of the Solstice and the MX-5 Miata were similar over the same period from between 2005 and 2010: 65,700 for the Pontiac, versus 67,000 for the Mazda.
Just like Pontiac would vanish after 2010, the original five-person lineup of Duran Duran would disband (again) after Astronaut, and while I do have and enjoy their 2010 release All You Need Is Now, it’s no Astronaut. Nostalgia plays a large role in the enjoyment of both popular music and automobiles, so I fully understand how my like of both the artistry of this band and also this Pontiac may be tied to who, where, and what I was when I had first discovered them. Those things are special and have value, in and of themselves, but I can say that I also genuinely like both car and album as taken on their own merits. The latter-day efforts of Duran Duran and Pontiac may not have set the world on fire, but they certainly left enough of a positive impression on me to inspire me to write this paean to both. With Memorial Day in the U.S. and with it, the unofficial start of the warmest season coming up in less than a week, may you taste summer 2021 like it will never end.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, November 1, 2015.
Really enjoyed this writeup, Joseph. I was also a big fan of the Solstice when it came out. Although it and the Saturn Sky allegedly had some shortcomings as compared with the Miata, I think the Solstice is one of the best looking cars from the noughties. This particular car looks ok in silver, but roadsters like this really should be painted a color, like red or yellow.
In reading this article, I’m realizing that I’ve never driven any 2-seater…except for a Hyundai H100 van.
Thanks, Corey! I’m trying to remember if I have ever driven a two-seater, even on a test drive. I honestly don’t think I have, but it is Tuesday evening after a work day. haha
I do like these in yellow, but I think silver works with the round lines of the car – kind of like a drop of mercury.
I live in a fairly small Florida town yet there are 2 or 3 of these Solstice ” in residence “. I noticed one currently sitting on the lot of our only used car lot with a price just under $4K, while the other 1 that I see regularly (driven by a middle-aged man) I see sports a black ” moustache ” looking paint job on its white body…or maybe that’s a very large nose mask?
I kind of like these cars but what turns me off about this car and its Saturn ” sister ” car is the very flimsy look to the erected soft top. When I see one with the top up it puts me in mind of a tent with loose rigging, and/ or missing a support pole or two.
Howard, your mention of how the convertible top fits caused me to reexamine these pictures, and you reminded me of the one irksome thing I can remember about the Solstice from a visual perspective.
The trailing edge of the top where the buttresses meet the deck lid has those puckers in the fabric, making the top look homemade. Certainly there must have been a workaround for that in the engineering phase.
A part of me wanted to like the Solstice. It had been a long time since my run of abysmal Pontiacs in the 1980s (1984 and 1986 6000’s, and a 1987 Grand Am) so maybe it was time to give them another shot.
But one look at that top design and “Not f’n happenin'” After the ghastly Pontiac trio was a Mercury Capri (THAT one) and I swore never again was I getting a convertible that required existing the car to raise and lower there roof. You can flip and fold a Miatatop barely lifting a cheek from your seat.
And THEN Mazda came out with a hardtop AND a place to store it. Still my daily driver.
I never warmed to the Solstice convertible. And I liked its cousin, the Saturn Sky, even less. They, like any two-seater GM produced, suffered from ‘Corvette-itis’, i.e., Chevrolet was rabidly jealous of any vehicle that came even remotely close to encroaching on the Corvette’s sports car market. So, they ended up with mediocre two-seaters like the Fiero, Reatta, and Solstice.
On top of that, I just never much liked the look, the seating position relative to the beltline (felt like sitting in a hole), and the gimmicky buttresses which, I guess, were supposed to be some kind of retro throwback to the tunnelback rear window on the ’66-’67 intermediates. While the look was just okay, it definitely did not justify the process of having to exit the vehicle to retract or raise the top.
But there was one Solstice that was rather endearing, and that was the rare coupe. Unfortunately, it was a last gasp with few being built at the end of the Solstice’s run. And then there was, yet again, a problem with the coupe’s targa top. The base car had a one-piece, solid targa panel that would ‘not’ fit into the trunk when removed. For that, you had to pony-up some extra dough for a special folding cloth panel. A real pity because the coupe was attractive enough that it might have had a chance if they’d have kept it in production. But, by then, I suspect that the decision had been made that the Pontiac division, as a whole, was a goner.
I had one, for a year and a half. I actually test drove an identical year Miata back to back with it, and, to my surprise, bought the Solstice.
I stupidly traded in my Porsche 924S as part of the transaction. Eight years later, I still regret having done so, considering it the single dumbest move I’ve made in fifty plus years of car ownership.
Pontiac Solstice: A really neat car for an afternoon’s drive. Living with it (and it was reliable) 24/7/365? Well, I understand why GM went thru bankruptcy. Definitely less than the sum of its parts-bin parts.
That got me thinking – what could Toyota have done with the GM parts bin?
Your last paragraph recalls something I had read about the pedals being very close together, where one driver had trouble getting used to their placement. I feel I really need to test drive a Solstice to satisfy my curiosity.
Like Duran Duran with their reunion, the Solstice was just more of what their buyers liked. Problem was, it really wasn’t new. It was Duran Duran. It was a Pontiac. If you spent time with either before, both were a rerun.
Looking at the Solstice, it is obviously a Pontiac. All the Pontiac clichés are there, but in a pill form. The Saturn Sky looked like an updated 1962 Corvette – better, in my opinion, and in the opinion of GM’s Asian and European markets. Both Opel and Daewoo could have used the Solstice, but passed. It wasn’t visually interesting.
I spent time with a Sky and I spent a lot of time with a Miata. These GM cars weren’t a Miata. They were fat, chunky and felt far heavier than the little red car I wore one summer, (especially with the top up, I felt like I was wearing a hood.) The first generation Miata was not meant for tall guys, even the skinny ones like me.
What the Sky felt like to me, and this is a guy who spent a lot of time in Corvettes as well, was a smaller Corvette. Not a Miata. It was an appealing car for someone without kids, or wife, or pet. Or groceries, beer, or large Subway sandwich. Then there is the top down experience. In a Miata, you feel out there. In the Sky or Solstice, you didn’t. Those cars felt more like they had a Sunroof. Finally, the “buttresses” in the top were just unnecessary. It added a bit of unexpected style, but wasn’t practical. Convertible tops need to be serious, well engineered and designed. I recall the frustrating and cheesy folding top on the Mercury Capri two seater, and the GM cars seemed little better to me.
Love the 1980s music, but love the 1990s far more. Duran Duran thrived in the frivolous fun summer sounds of the Reagan years, but didn’t have the teeth required to match Grunge or Trip Hop note for note. Chris Cornell was hairy male power to Simon LeBon’s golden locks and Spanish sun kissed skin. The Solstice could have been a big seller over the Fiero during that time, but by 2008 the market demanded muscle, not harmony.
I do actually like the idea of a smaller Corvette, as you put it, in a different way that I think I would appreciate a Miata. That the Solstice looked like a Pontiac was part of its appeal for me. It didn’t feel like some of the Europe-sourced designs (like Opels rebadged as Buicks) that were also new at the time, even if the Kappa platform the Solstice was based on was shared.
Recently, I’ve come to appreciate ’90s music more (which I always liked), but in a different way than music from the ’80s. In that earlier decade, I had just started to listen to the radio and buy cassettes, which all seemed so novel and just plain cool.
I still love the looks of the Solstice and have been tempted to pick up a used one as you can still find really nice ones at great prices. The problem is they have about 1/3 the storage space of my Triumph Spitfire! Utterly useless even for fun long weekend getaways.
Gosh – that trunk situation on the Solstice would definitely be a downer. There’s a part of me that would feel like even if I was buying a two-seater, it should have at least a few practical qualities that I could cite when defending my choice to make such a purchase. Makes me think of the Fiero a little bit.
Read the whole piece.
Coolest person found: your mom!
This really underestimates my plight.
Ah, Summer. It was the Spring of 1983 when my father had a friend install the Next (literally) Big Thing in our yard: A monstrous 8′ wide satellite dish.
It was followed shortly thereafter by a monstrous rear-projection TV with a row of booming speakers all across the bottom, and MTV was on full volume blast all through that Summer. It was a golden moment for 16 year old me. It quickly became completely irrelevant that our former 3 channel TV could now pick up HBO, Cinemax and all the stuff we had longed for. I wanted my MTV. And my brother and I soon figured out how to plug our giant Fisher stereo speakers into the back of the TV to bring the tunes out onto the deck for all the neighborhood to hear while we hung with friends by the pool. Of course this arrangement had to be dismantled by 5PM. Mom would let it slide as long as it didn’t get too crazy, but Dad would have none of “That Obnoxious Noise”. Fun times.
Two decades later when the Solstice and Sky came out they very quickly also became The Next Big Thing in my then neighborhood in Wilton Manors, FL. They were what to be seen in while making the 6 block trip from home to Happy Hour, for about a year or so. I never much cared for the styling personally. Just as MTV and Duran Duran lost relevance as the 80’s waned, these bubbly little cars seemed kinda silly as the aughts passed by. The Next Big Thing only ever tends to be relevant until the NEXT Big Thing comes along. For the Sky and Solstice in my little corner of the world it was the Mini Cooper convertible that eclipsed them for a time. Now when I go back to the old neighborhood it’s all about the Audis, Bentleys and Benzes. Sigh.
Was it hard to unhook the stereo speaker equipment from the TV on a regular basis? I imagine you and your brother had it down to a science.
All that ’80s technology reminds me of how big equipment used to be – big projection TVs, speakers… it was like the more powerful the thing, the bigger it had to be in order to properly represent what it could do.
I wanted one badly until I sat in one at a car show. The windshield frame was about level with my eyes and the wheel blocked the speedo.
I don’t understand why they put black interiors in convertibles. Five minutes in the summer sun and you can’t touch anything.
With the black top and a black interior, I can imagine it would get miserable if parked out of the shade with all windows up.
I was a young adult in the late 70’s, so the eighties vibe was a bit of a mystery to me – all those synths and English pop groups taking themselves so seriously! I agree 1984 was the peak – Reach the Beach by the Fixx, for example. As for Duran Duran, I was mostly just jealous of them; I particularly wished I looked remotely like J.T.!
As for the Solstice – I thought it did the Saturn Skye thing a bit better, although I wondered if those twin cowls on the rear deck would leak through; the top did not seem fitted all that well. OTOH, my late brother (who passed much too young in 2010 at only fifty-six), took a sales job at a Saturn dealer in 2008 as a bridge job after losing his manufacturing career in the great recession, and immediately fell in love with the Skye. His precarious financial status at the time prevented him from pulling the trigger on that dream, but he did get to drive a few from one dealer to another, so he at least had that experience.
He never managed to get back into his chosen field before he passed, and I wonder how much that stress figured in his passing. To top it off, when I was cleaning his house out just weeks after he died, I heard a message on his answering machine which offered him a job in manufacturing. I was a few days getting over that particular irony.
There are still a few Skyes and Solstices around, and every time I see one go by, I think of him. Frustrated dreams all around I guess – for Saturn, Pontiac and my brother.
Thanks for the great story. PS – I’m sorry your mom prevented you from watching cable. Conscientious parenting can sometimes go too far, and it’s not as though she stopped you from watching MTV; she just deprived you (and herself) of the shared pleasure of watching all those great videos together at home.
Alan, thanks for sharing about your brother. That answering machine moment would have gutted me.
Also, thanks RE: the cable situation. I thought it was a ridiculous and over-the-top-wasteful gesture for my mom to cut the cord versus us simply not using it. I can’t remember if my parents had the cord replaced before they sold that house.
In most of your writing, the car speaks to me more loudly than the music. Today it is the opposite.
I pop/rock music had an amicable split around 1974 or so after I discovered the world of jazz that had pre-existed Elvis. I never developed a taste for the southern-flavored rock music of the Allman Brothers and their ilk and the things that flowed from that stream. When I began law school in the fall of 1982 I fell in with a group of friends who were fans of “new wave” music, and there was something about it that pulled me back to the present day and the constant flow of new sounds coming from the radio. And yes, I liked Duran Duran.
The 80s was kind of bipolar – you had the rock that was all about harsh, shredding guitars and overly loud amps. Then there was what might have been the last great era for pop music with everyone from Jackson to Bowie to Prince to Duran Duran serving up good times. I still love catching an “80s Weekend” on the station my wife keeps her car radio tuned to.
The Solstice? I liked that GM made the effort. After a never-ending parade of coupes and sedans that became ever less competent and less appealing, these looked like someone at GM was making an effort. As noted above, these never really found an audience because, well, GM. And like Duran Duran by the 2000s, I kind of wanted to like it, but I had moved on – back to my long dead jazz players. But thanks for your memories of that time.
That ‘someone’ at GM was Bob Lutz. The Solstice likely wouldn’t have seen production if not for him. And, although not terrific, at least he was trying.
JP, your third paragraph very nicely sums up why I think ’80s radio was (to reuse a word I had used earlier) magical. The range of sonic styles that were widely popular among so many audiences was what made it seem inclusive, unsegmented, and truly great. It felt less like listening to all one thing versus what was actually and truly great new music coming out at that time. All of those artists you mentioned are great examples.
Pop music after about 1976 or so is almost a total void for me. I just stopped listening. I would of course be exposed to it here and there, but it’s all a blur, with a few minor exceptions. Duran Duran? A name I read from time to time, but that’s it.
And the Solstice is almost as much of a void for me too. A classic Lutz-mobile,it was trying too hard to hit the emotional hot buttons, and not quite succeeding, especially for me.
It’s a funny thing about pop music. We discover it as early teens when the hormones start to rage, letting the music give voice to all these new thoughts and emotions we are experiencing but can’t explain, even to ourselves. We ride that wave until the music becomes the soundtrack of our lives, until our lives change – careers; marriage. We hang on for a little bit, if only to still feel like a part of what’s happening, and finally abandon the effort, saying “What’s the point?” In 1984 I could still name the artists on the top ten songs; a few years later I couldn’t name a single one.
Thanks Joseph, for another great cultural essay. I’m a generation older than, you I think, but Duran Duran and other ‘80’s music on the Punk/New Wave/Metal and Pop spectrum had a big influence on me. No DD in my playlists now but Def Leppard, Scorpions, Van Halen and their ilk have a place on my iPhone.
As for the Solstice, it and the Sky must have been launched at a time when work, family, motorcycles were distracting me from domestic cars, because I remember the first time I saw one of each and was unaware that either marque had a small two seater. And I’m even more amazed that sales matched the Miata briefly, as these GM twins were rare in California unlike the MX5. But in a typical CC Effect twist, a friend told me just last week that a friend of his whom I have met but not seen in years, just bought a Solstice to accompany his Fiat Abarth 500 (new style, not rear engined). My friend drove the Solstice turbo and enjoyed it. Thanks for a great morning read.
Thanks, Dman. I’ll confess to something: when I had originally started writing my first draft of this essay, my theory was going to be that Miata sales ran rings around those of the Solstice during their concurrent years on the market.
I was pretty shocked to find out that, cumulatively, they were pretty much neck-and-neck over that same span of time during the Solstice’s brief run. So my theory was shot and I had to rewrite that paragraph. No big deal. The things I’ve learned while writing at CC!
Mmm.. the Solstice has never been on my radar but your photos have piqued my interest. Depeche Mode, ABC, great times, thanks for a great read!!
Did you ever read Rob Sheffield’s book “Talking to Girls About Duran Duran”? (subtitled “One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut”)? I never have actually, but it’s about growing up in the 80s and with 80s music. I actually haven’t read it, but did read his previous book “Love is a Mix Tape” which is one of the best things I’ve ever read, part memoir, part tribute to his first wife Renee, part wonderful journey through the music of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, at turns terribly sad and roaringly hilarious. His experiences mesh with my own, as we were born only 8 months apart. Really, I’m not the only one who was called on to DJ a dance party, oblivious to how undanceable my record collection was? Now I know I’m not; thanks Rob!
I’m not a fan of 80s music though, at least what was popular at the time. I thought it was the nadir of post-WW2 music when I lived through it, and still do (obviously the pinnacle of popular music was 1967). Quite often when I was in high school, I’d hear some awful song on the radio and wonder how it could become such a big hit, only to learn it was because it had a cool video. I didn’t have cable TV either, and only got to watch videos on that broadcast Friday Night Videos show. Things started looking up late in the decade; when Nirvana bumped Michael Jackson off the top of the charts in 1991 that’s when I knew the ’80s were finally over.
The Solstice never made much of an impression on me though beyond failing to unseat the Miata as the most coveted affordable roadster. I did notice the new GTO, but it was the automotive equivalent of many a rock band’s reunion album that fails to capture the appeal of their original work. Probably like All You Need Is Now…
Read the book “High Fidelity”; based on your post, you’d enjoy it. It was also made into a decent movie starring John Cusack.
Thank you for this book recommendation – it sounds like something right up my alley. Rob Sheffield the author… I need to check out his work!
What you described about being confused about a song being a big hit at least partially due to a great video is something I experienced a lot of. Once I had regular access to cable, flashback shows and blocks of music videos (remember those?) on channels like VH1 cued me in.
One thing about videos I noticed immediately – if the first time you heard the song was as a video, that experience immediately freezes that song forever as the video creator’s vision. The song becomes a soundtrack rather than independent music to which you can add your own interpretation/mind movie. That can be either a good or bad thing, depending on the quality of the video.
Great points, Alan. I had created so many of my own “videos” in my mind for songs, and in some cases, I was let down by the actual video versus the one in my head. It is fun, though, to search out videos I had never seen before on YouTube for older songs that I remember.
Nice write-up! I considered one of these before buying a new 350Z in the Summer of ‘07.
And in the ‘80s, it was the Replacements that did it for me.
Duran Duran pretty much coincided with my back-to-college years, which also coincided with the birth of our two children. So I was kind of distracted; I wasn’t paying much attention to music just then. My kids discovered some cool stuff from those years in the back-catalog as they grew up, and though I remember the name and a song title or two, Duran Duran doesn’t really resonate with me. My mind was otherwise occupied at the time.
I remember reading about the Solstice, and wanting it to do well for Pontiac, but it was a GM, so…..
The saddest, most telling thing is how GM had at one point been the “go-to” brand for so much of America, but had later morphed into the brand of adverse selection for a lot of people by the ’80s. I’ll always be rooting for GM, having come from its birthplace city.