Everybody wants slinky little cars like this — except, it seems, the people who are supposed to buy them. We're going to make a bold statement here: Small cars with modest performance and immodest looks are doomed to painful death. Or, phrased as a question: Upon how many graves must the Mazda MX-5 Miata dance before other automakers realize that this is a battle best avoided?

Let's take a brief look at casualties: In 1991, Ford rolled out an Australia-made Capri convertible, which was marketed as a Mercury in the US (talk about the kiss of death). To the surprise of no one, it died in less than three years. Toyota had the unpretty MR2 Spyder. Dead. Honda had the S2000. Excellent car; dead. BMW had a 4-cylinder Z3 that even James Bond couldn't sell. Dead. Mini had a Cooper Roadster and Coupe. Dead and dead. And General Motors had a pile of Kappa* cars — the Saturn Sky, Pontiac Solstice and Opel/Vauxhall GT. Dead, dead and dead/dead. Are there others? Probably.

But perhaps more notable than Miata's slain roadster rivals — and certainly more relevant to GM's Geneva-bound GT Concept — is the case of the Toyota/Subaru GT86/BR-Z, aka the Walking Dead. Sales of these small-engine, rear-wheel-drive sports coupes have never lived up to their glowing reviews, and the snuffing of Toyota's North American Scion brand, and along with it a rebadged GT86 called the FR-S, isn't helping matters any. The end is near. Trouble is, cars like this are live in a kind of purgatory. They're too expensive to buy and insure for the fanboys who sing their praises, but too small and impractical for those in the family way, and too wimpy and childish for those who finally have the means to buy and insure an actual performance car. It's an unwinnable war. Just ask the Smart Roadster.

The original Opel GT was an adorable if mostly ineffective bauble. Designed by Erhard Schnell and introduced as a concept car in 1965 and a production model in 1968, the GT had a piddling 67 horsepower and pop-up headlamps that opened and closed with a hand lever on the centre console. The motoring press promptly dubbed the car "the poor man's Corvette" — a back-handed compliment if ever there was one. GM brought a few of them to the US, sold by hapless Buick salesmen with Brylcreem hair and double-knit blazers (guys whose equally hapless successors were tasked with unloading the misbegotten Buick Reatta 20 years later). It didn't last long.

To its credit (or not), the new GT concept follows the brief of the original to the letter, minus the hand-operated pop-ups. It is diminutive, rear-wheel-drive and powered by an economy car's engine — in this case, the 1-litre in-line three-cylinder engine from Opel's Corsa and Astra, tuned to a pleasant 145 horsepower. But there are issues. It has a fixed roof (strike one), an automatic transmission (strike two) and though it looks very quick, it isn't (strike three). GM claims the car will run from zero to 62mph in 8 seconds, about seven-tenths slower than a top-spec MX-5 with its top down.

None of this is to suggest that the GT Concept does not brim with clever concept-car touches. The shape is beautifully proportioned and the cockpit is downright visionary in its use of colour and materials, and in its deft handling of retro forms (the steering wheel, for instance, is a genuinely inspired reference to the 1968 car). We are less fond of the non-opening side windows, the complete lack of storage space and the garish red front tyres. But maybe we're just getting old.

The new Opel/Vauxhall GT is, once again, a poor-man's Corvette, and should GM be foolish enough to push the concept into production, we predict that faint phrase will prove damning all over again. Because, let's be honest, a poor-man's Corvette is a used Corvette.

(BBC)