The Roof! The Roof! The Roof doesn’t really matter that much.
Would you pay an extra ten grand for a fridge-sized piece of metal? GM says 'Oh Yeah!'

Pontiac’s G6 Convertible is here and it’s roof is hard. It’s not soft. It’s made out of metal. It’s not made out of canvas. It is, in fact, a retractable hardtop convertible. I have to think I’m not alone in saying ‘so what?’ Hard top convertibles are pretty neat. I still remember seeing the debut of the 3000GT Spyder from Mitsubishi in 1994. I was a kid and had never seen anything like it. Importantly, the 3000GT was already cool without the magic roof. That’s not the point. The Pontiac G6 is very much a Sunfire with a V6. It's front-wheel drive, not very big, and looks like a rental. That’s why pricing the G6 at the groin-grabbingly ridiculous amount of $28,490 - $3,755 more than the mustang rag-top is just not a good way to get rid of some.

With a bland name, nurse shoe design and crazy price - going against the Mustang, with its rear-wheel drive umph and boulevard cruiser style - GM's drop top is dropping trow.

The problem isn’t that there might not be car buyers out there to whom a retractable hard top isn’t worth an extra few bucks. After all, the SLK came out costing thousands more than the Z3 and surpassed the BMW roadster in popularity. The problem here is that the Mustang has tons more to offer overall while costing less. It’s roomier (G6 360 / Stang 360 [not direct link]), faster and prettier than the Pontiac.

It’s hard not to wonder why another hardtop (ssr dies) sounded like a good idea to the GM folk while the shockingly great Solstice is still hard to get in the sunny states due to limited production numbers. There's no other GM car like the Solstice. It's daring, it's got personality and the fun for money represents the very best of American cars. Why make the $30K dork-mobile while the Solstice is rationed? Dealer mark-ups don’t help pay those pensions.