I recently read in a Pontiac magazine that the Solstice will only have a 5 speed manual transmission the 1st year. Has anybody heard if an automatic will be available?

Nope! In it's first year of production, "perception", at least in the publics mind, the General will want to get the cars out only with a manual at first. This will help cement the image that Pontiac is serious about this car as a true "sports car"! All kinds of critics think, that the car will be overweight, auto tranny, power everything. Lets hope Lutz can pull this off as a true contender to the new NC Miata that will hit the marketplace about the same time!! :thumbsup:

Nope! In it's first year of production, "perception", at least in the publics mind, the General will want to get the cars out only with a manual at first. This will help cement the image that Pontiac is serious about this car as a true "sports car"! All kinds of critics think, that the car will be overweight, auto tranny, power everything. Lets hope Lutz can pull this off as a true contender to the new NC Miata that will hit the marketplace about the same time!! :thumbsup:

IMO, I don't think that a manual is necessary for a sports car image, but it doesn't hurt. Most of the low to mid-range sports cars (Porsche, Corvette, 350Z to name a few) are available in both manual and auto. One of the only exceptions I can think of is S2000. My guess that it was more of a cost/target market decision, where they figured that they could sell out their entire low production run with just a manual (and probably could for several years) so the extra expense of providing an automatic option wasn't such a high priority. Now if they if they were making 50 or 100K number of cars instead of just 20K, maybe the thinking would be different.

-Andrew

Yes..... an automatic will be available with ESC....

The first poster lied...

Jorgy