Hot and BotheredPrepare yourself. Okay, I'm being melodramatic. You should already
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| Hardtop convertibles are easier to live with; a principle GM built the G6 Convertible on. (Photo: Jonathan Yarkony, Canadian Auto Press) |
be ready for this. Finally a convertible for the Great White North. I don't mean a convertible you can drive with the top down in a Winnipeg winter. I do mean a convertible you won't even realize is a convertible when the top is up--as it will be most of the time anyway. No penalty, no $200K supercar with a flipping glass roof, no scalp-scratching fabric with a roof that threatens cranial damage on exit, just an easy-to-live-with coupe or convertible, whatever the weather and your mood dictate.
I'm talking about Pontiac's latest edition of their all-conquering G6.
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| Two-piece folding roof actually has very good rearwards visibility. (Photo: Jonathan Yarkony, Canadian Auto Press) |
What first appeared little more than a year ago as a sedan that marked a new era for Pontiac, then shortly thereafter as a Coupe, is now ready to enter stage left and demurely raise and fold its metal roof at the touch of a single, roof-mounted button. That button is your ticket out of the infamous commuter's tan (you know the one--when one side of your face and one arm get way darker than the other side). Yep, I've been guilty of left-side exposure on many occasions, but the G6 Convertible is your summer solution, and it's the kind of solution that will keep you happy all year long, and not just because it's a convertible.
When the top is up, you'll barely even realize you're in a convertible--
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| How's that for contrast: red barn, blue car. (Photo: Jonathan Yarkony, Canadian Auto Press) |
the roof is high and solid, lined with a light, cream colour fabric--at least in my tester it was cream. Visibility is also impressive and probably even better than the coupe thanks to a slim B-pillar and a C-pillar that is actually skinnier than the coupe's. But it's still a convertible and we all know that convertibles want to run around with their tops down, and this one was even sexy as it lifted its trunk rearward and folded its two-piece roof into the generous trunk. Well, it was generous when the top is up; when the top is down, storage is acceptale, but complicating things is the fact that you can't access the usable trunk space when the roof is down because the roof itself completely blocks it.
Before we get to this convertible's smokin' performance, I need to
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| GTP's seats are supportive and very comfortable. They're also trimmed in two-tone perforated leather for a classy, expensive look. (Photo: Jonathan Yarkony, Canadian Auto Press) |
cover all the basics, and those basics start with the new look of Pontiac: clean, sleek, and sophisticated. Yeah, I'm talking about Pontiac. Gone are the days of big, rude Bonnevilles and tacked-on, faux-fast bodywork. Instead Pontiac designers penned an incredibly simple, efficient shape and tucked in all the corners with well proportioned overhangs--mind you, it's not the most ideal shape in the world from the rear three-quarter view, but it makes the awkward, goofy-assed hardtop convertibles proliferating in Europe look like love children of belugas and armadillos. Even with the notoriously difficult to manage rear end of a tin-top convertible resolved, the G6 Convertible doesn't have the sleek, liquid line of the Coupe's C-pillar meeting the rear fender shoulder and flowing into the trunklid spoiler and bumpers, but its shape when the top is down is like a torpedo rippling through the water, and with the top up it retains the signature Coupe line of the rear window visually sliding into the bottom of the taillight cluster.
The details complete the look with impeccable taste, twin exhaust
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| Standing still or on the move, the G6 is a sight. (Photo: Jonathan Yarkony, Canadian Auto Press) |
tips poking out under the rear bumper, a couple of accent lines and rub strips breaking the monotony of the smooth sides, preempting any slab-sided knocks after years of busy body work. The wheels on my tester were another example of simple brilliance: eighteen inches with five wide, flat spokes of pale, painted aluminum alloy that really leap out at you in contrast with the shockingly deep blue metallic paint (Electric Blue, according to Pontiac) my G6 was sporting. It's a tour de force of attention to detail and a complete balance and vision maintained throughout the design, engineering and production process.
Of course, its stunning looks are only part of the package that makes the G6 Convertible a hot ticket. The yin to its gorgeous yang is the disappointing and tepid performance to sweat out on some of the stickiest days of the year that we experienced a couple short weeks ago. With temperatures climbing high into the 30s and the humidex pushing 40, the only way to suffer the sun in a convertible is to keep moving and to regularly reapply sunscreen. Keep moving and the moving air will suck the sweat right off your brow and the G6, at least in GTP trim, will get you moving in a hurry for that cooling breeze when you put its 3.9L V6 to work.
While it gets the job done, GTP's 3.9 maxes out at 227 hp, 13 fewer
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| Though it's got the same engine, it has less power than its fixed-roof brother. (Photo: Jonathan Yarkony, Canadian Auto Press) |
than the GTP Coupe's 240, but it's enough to easily and frequently overwhelm the 225/50R18 rubber, which was plenty wide, but not near sticky enough to prevent all sorts of screeching mayhem when taking off from streetlights with, shall we say, youthful exuberance. In truth, I would take decent summer rubber and forego the audio effects and then keep a set of throwaway winters on hand for top-up season; my theory, and many others', all season tires = lousy grip all year long. Then again, screeching rubber is a good antidote to the horribly artificial engine note, and as Justin (Couture) jokingly commented, "It sounds like a recording of a BMW played through a set of $10 PC speakers." The engine sounds tinny at the best of times and occasionally descends into a vortex of raccoons scratching wildly inside a garbage can while making their hideous mating noises, and you sense that the engineers wanted to make it sound like an inline six, but that's the best they could do with this painfully dull V6.
Once underway, the G6 is surefooted and steady enough thanks to a long wheelbase and suspension engineering honed on a range of world-class sedans in the GM group. The nature of the convertible means that Pontiac has dialed in extra travel to accommodate lower body-structure rigidity, but using the same suspension components as the sedan and coupe: front struts, multilink rear with monotube shocks and anti-roll bars front and rear. You don't get the same kind of nimble response or crispness in side-to-side maneuvers as you'd get in the coupe, but it's able to absorb this city's disastrous road renovations in stride while sacrificing level in-corner attitude. Personally, I'd prefer flat cornering in a performance model. My other big complaint here is that you hear every inch of suspension response, particularly with the top up, which made bumpy roads clattery and irritating to travel because of endless chattering seemingly coming from all corners.
GM likes to parade the ability to manually dial down a gear as a
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| Center console encloses many of the G6's faults: shifter, buttons and knobs, etc. (Photo: Jonathan Yarkony, Canadian Auto Press) |
marketing point, but if you ask me, any attention brought to this car's transmission is a mistake. The archaic 4-spot auto is a bit of a disaster. GM needs to get their new six-speed auto to market, and fast! It's coming first in the Saturn Aura, and in many others soon, but in the meantime, the G6 GTP convertible suffers along with the lurchy, jerky 4-speed automatic that GM has been trotting out seemingly since the dawn of time (or at least the '80s). Sadly, the G6 drop-top is not available with the Coupe's reportedly excellent six-speed manual, eve
