Saturn makes its first convertible

Saturn is getting sexy. Just look at its newest car, the 2007 Sky.

It's a two-seat, rear-wheel drive convertible -- Saturn's first open-top car -- and has boffo styling, good road manners and agreeable base power.

The sporty interior, in particular, looks far upscale compared with other Saturn vehicles, especially when the $750 optional premium trim package that includes leather seat inserts is added.

No doubt the Sky is going to help change Saturn's image of a car brand that caters to buyers but whose vehicle designs have been tired of late and whose product offerings have been limited.

Launched in spring as an early 2007 model, the Sky has a starting manufacturer's suggested retail price, including destination charge, of $23,115. This is for the base model with 177-horsepower, 2.4-liter, four-cylinder engine and five-speed manual transmission.

A performance Sky Red Line with 260-horsepower, turbocharged four cylinder is due out this summer.

All Sky cars come standard with a manual cloth top with glass rear window.

Competitors include the front-wheel drive 2006 Mazda Miata MX-5, which starts at $20,995 with 166-horsepower, four-cylinder engine and five-speed manual transmission, and the rear-wheel drive 2006 Honda S2000, which starts at $34,600 with 237-horsepower, four-cylinder engine and six-speed manual transmission.

Soft tops on the Miata go up and down manually, but the base Miata has a cheaper vinyl, not cloth, roof. The S2000, on the other hand, has an electrically powered fabric roof.

Another obvious competitor is the car that the Sky is based on -- the 2006 Pontiac Solstice two-seat convertible that has a starting MSRP, including destination charge, of $20,490.

The Solstice and Sky are built at the same Wilmington, Del., assembly plant and share the same rear-wheel drive platform, engines and transmissions, roof mechanism and other major components.

Both cars feature long hoods and short rear ends which epitomize roadsters. But every body panel on the outside of the two cars is different.

Thus, where the Solstice is a lighter-weight car with bold styling that exudes a raw roadster personality like that of roadsters of the past, the Sky comes across as a less macho car with more contemporary styling.

The base Sky also comes standard with more creature comforts. For example, remote keyless entry, cruise control and anti-lock brakes are standard on the Sky but optional on the base Solstice.

While the Sky has the same basic, independent, short/long arm suspension in the front and back as the Solstice, it has different tuning. This explains why the test Sky felt so comfortable to drive.

I was surprised at how many road bumps the car absorbed so passengers weren't jarred or jiggled incessantly, even though they sit quite low to the ground. A few big road shakes came only on major potholes and old railroad track crossings.

Yet, the Sky tester stuck easily to the pavement on curves, and the power rack-and-pinion steering had good on-center feel so I didn't have to keep adjusting the steering wheel to stay on track.

The Sky wears standard, sizable 18-inch tires compared with 16-inchers in the base Miata.

The Sky's roof has additional acoustic isolation over the Solstice's, so the Sky tester seemed to be a bit quieter than the Solstice with the roof up.

Unfortunately, both the Sky and Solstice force drivers to get out of their vehicles to put the tops down and back up. A driver must push a button inside to spring the rear clamshell cover and rear roof buttresses, then unlatch the roof from the top of the windshield and climb out of the car to push the folding roof into the rear, shallow holding area.

After this, the driver must slam down the clamshell cover. I noticed that a General Motors official who demonstrated this maneuver stood at the back of the car to position himself centrally over the clamshell as it went down. This seems to help get the clamshell hook in the right position for the latch that's behind and right between the two seats.

I couldn't stretch myself easily over the metal clamshell for this maneuver -- and it got my clothes dirty. So I stood at the side of the car, in front of the tires, and pushed the clamshell down. I often had to repeat this once or twice before the hook and latch would catch.

The base Sky engine was mated to a five-speed automatic in the test car and performed with good spirit. I could keep up with city traffic easily and had decent power for passing on highways.

Torque peaks at 166 foot-pounds at 4,800 rpm.

There is some noisiness from this engine, and I wished that this sporty-looking car had an automatic with a shift-it-yourself function, but it does not.

The only air bags in the Sky are the two frontal bags that deploy in front crashes.

There are no pop-up rollbars in the Sky, and the windshield pillars provide only "a degree of rollbar" protection during rollover crashes, according to a Saturn official who noted that "in the real world, roadsters are exempt from (government) roof crush standards."

These safety rollbars are found in some pricier roadsters from Mercedes-Benz.

And the Saturn, like the Solstice, does not offer electronic stability control that can help a driver regain or maintain directional stability. This feature is standard in Honda's S2000.