Rendered speculation: Chevrolet Sky-Volt?
by Sam Abuelsamid on May 1st 2009 at 12:43PM 
One of the many unfortunate casualties of the financial apocalypse that is General Motors 2009 is loss of the Kappa platform. Kappa, for those who don't recall, is the small rear wheel drive platform that sits under the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky. With both of those brands being discontinued and no plans to migrate any models over to the remaining brands, the slow-selling roadsters will simply disappear in the next few months.
Another disappointment to GM fans was the transformation of the Chevy Volt from concept to production form. The sporty, aggressive concept was to many eyes made too generic for production.
One of our readers came up with a novel solution to both problems. Just graft the Volt concept nose onto the Sky and install an adaptation of the Voltec powertrain and voila! you have a rival to the Dodge Circuit and Tesla Roadster. From a technical standpoint this is certainly possible. A battery pack could easily fit into the center tunnel with the drive motor mounted at the rear. Unfortunately there is almost no way this car will happen. GM is struggling to finance the development of volume models and a niche product like this just won't happen at this point. Perhaps if they can keep the tooling for the Kappas around for a couple of years it might be possible. One can dream, rightht? Thanks to reader Ryan for the tip and the rendering!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
omaticman 1:04PM (5/01/2009)
This may be slightly off topic, but I'd like to offer a two-word tangent. The words? "Amp" and "Sky"... http://www.ampmotorworks.com/
OK, it won't have a range extender, but it's a start!
BTW, IMHO, if they're not already, AMP should be looking into a real partnership with a (currently very weakened) GM to keep the Kappas coming. Relying on customer-supplied donor cars is kinda nutty. They may well be painting themselves into a corner if/when the supply dries up, or forced to adopt another platform pronto.
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Fox318 1:31PM (5/01/2009)
I have to say I think it looks good. But wasn't the Sky marketed as affordable?
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Speqtre 3:00PM (5/01/2009)
Yeah... sad about the Kappa platform... it's too bad they never put the engineering into it to ever make a decent car on it is the really sad part. All show with lousy go - I was so excited that GM might get it right with the Solstice and Sky, but they just couldn't get out of their own bloated way to make a car that could compete on other than looks.
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PeterG 4:19PM (5/01/2009)
Well that isn't as good looking as either the Sky or the Solstice.
Graft in a Voltec powertrain/battery. You have got to be kidding.
This is GM engineering. They didn't have room after storing the fabric top to actually have a trunk...
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RAN 7:24PM (5/01/2009)
The Amp was the 1st thing I thought about when I heard Saturn was going "Titus Upson," so I wondered if they'd have to switch to the Solstice. Now Pontiac is going the way of the T-Rex too.
Isn't the current Opel GT another Kappa variant of the Sky/Solstice? I haven't heard anything about Opel's future in the "new GM."
Personally, I'd rather see AMP work with a lighter car, with a better top and some kind of trunk you can actually put things in.
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Snoopy 10:26AM (5/04/2009)
I can certainly see how grafting the design elements of the Volt onto the Sky would look nice (as proven above), but I would hardly see such a car as a potential competitor for the Tesla Roadster or Dodge Circuit. An ER-EV vs. two EVs – grapefruits to oranges. Sure, they're both citrus fruits, but flavour is quite different.
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j 8:34PM (5/08/2009)
Weak... "Chevy Volt" should have been "Saturn Volt"; Chevy is just too damned boring (still dry humping 1950's era Americana). Now that Saturn and Pontiac are gone, there is really no reason to worry about purchasing GM again...
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diffrunt 7:07PM (5/12/2009)
Solstice /kappa rolling platform is a work of art, too bad the same engineer didn,t draw the trunkspace & the coupe body.
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