The man who designed the Pontiac Solstice drives a Mallett V8 Solstice. Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen brought his car to Jay Leno’s Garage, and the episode spends a good part of its runtime on the conversion we’ve been building since the Solstice first came out.
The designer behind the car
Before the Model S, Model X and Cybertruck, Franz was a designer at GM. He helped start GM’s North Hollywood design studio right as Bob Lutz arrived and pushed for an affordable, exciting rear-drive roadster. That car became the Pontiac Solstice and its sister, the Saturn Sky, built on GM’s new Kappa platform.
Franz and his wife owned an original Solstice with almost no miles on it. They lost it in a California wildfire. The car he replaced it with is a 2006 Mallett V8 Solstice.
What Jay and Franz said about the Mallett conversion
- The engine: a Corvette LS2 V8 making 400 horsepower, backed by a manual transmission. The stock four-cylinder made 177. Jay called it a Corvette’s “worst nightmare.”
- The rest of the package: upgraded radiator, suspension and brakes, so the car handles the power. It weighs roughly 2,800 pounds, a couple hundred less than a Corvette with the same motor.
- The warranty: Franz pointed out that Mallett backed the conversion with a 2-year, 24,000-mile warranty, on top of GM’s.
- The comparison: Jay likened Mallett’s Solstice and Sky builds to the Yenko cars, the dealer-built muscle cars from the ’60s.
Franz removed the Mallett badging for a cleaner look, so the only giveaway is the sound. As Jay says early in the episode, horsepower cures a lot.
We still build them
Mallett has been converting Solstices and Skys since the cars launched, and packages are still available. Today’s lineup starts with the Standard Package and its 525 HP LS3, and goes up to a 900 HP turbocharged LS7. Every package is engineered as a complete car, uses genuine GM parts, keeps the factory catalytic converters, ABS and OBD-II diagnostics, and comes with our 2-year, 24,000-mile warranty.
See the Mallett V8 Solstice packages and recent deliveries →
Want one built? Email [email protected] or call 216-905-0029 for pricing.
