"Swayze Train GTi" (swayzetrain)
09/09/2015 at 02:32 • Filed to: None
12
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"Swayze Train GTi" (swayzetrain)
09/09/2015 at 02:32 • Filed to: None | 12
| 25 |
The Pontiac Grand Prix GTP is the best thing to come out of one of the worst debacles in all of GM’s laurel-sitting, government bribing, prostitute buying, competitor-murdering, unsafe at any speed-ing, Rick Wagoner-ing, loyalty without questions, “what are you gonna do about it, buy foreign like a traitor?” history. The $7 Billion GM10/W-Body.
HISTORY TIME OH YEAH
From the start, the development was plagued with problems. Engineers started working on the project in 1982 during GM’s major restructuring phase. Roger Smith had just taken over as CEO, and his plan was to consolidate GM’s unwieldy size, starting with design and engineering. All of the individual brands were now under the same roof making the same car. Theoretically, this would save money, at the expense of any brand individuality (commonly referred to as the Public School Method). In practice, the bureaucracy of the General was a maze with no answer, and the old-school business model, palms greasing palms in smoky Detroit bars over drinks and girls, had actually been the only thing keeping the behemoth up. Smith’s other ideas were good, he envisioned futuristic production, and the importance of electronics in upcoming cars, but they were ahead of their time. In the end, it looked as though he had the financial responsibility a 14 year old with a credit card, in charge of a South Florida real estate company right before the market collapse of 2008. In the end, GM spent $7 billion developing the W-body, a figure so large they lost $2000 on each one they sold in the first years. This explains why GM is STILL squeezing money out of the platform, with the Impala Limited still in production out of spite, purely for disappointing rental customers and punishing the Farvas of each police precinct.
I may have just thrown a ton of hate at this car, but that’s easy. It’s a product of 80s GM, and we all know the jokes that come with that. Shall we list them?
1. Plastic
2. Handling
3. Big engines that don’t make much power
4. Plastic
5. Interior trim falling off (plastic)
6. Badge engineering
7. Rust
8. Lower intake manifolds
9. Oldsmobile Diesel
10. Chevrolet Chevette
11. Cadillac Cimarron
12. Chevrolet Citation
13. Cadillac V8-6-4
What’s much harder to do, is look past all of the prejudice and see one of these cars for what they can be, and in this case it’s a fantastic straight line car for pennies. A GTP in good enough condition will cost you about 3000 dollars. For your money, you get a 260HP 3800 V6 blown by an Eaton M90, hooked up to a 4T65E-HD four speed automatic transmission. You also get four doors, a big trunk, a decent sound system, and it’s likely that you’ll end up with leather and a heated driver’s seat as well. But the best part, aside from the supercharger, is the Heads Up Display. In the 90s, GM saw fit to give us jet fighter technology in our meager sedans, projecting a small green display of your speed in the windshield. It’s a feature that seems fire chicken-ey, but if you don’t like it, you must have been one of those boring kids who never argued over who was Goose and who was Maverick at playtime. Adding to the 90s tech is a Driver Information Center (yes, GM did abbreviate this as DIC), which can display boost, oil life, and economy, among others.
Not as hard as you might think, actually. Note the smaller, silver, supercharger pulley, a very easy power modification.
This car isn’t a sports car. It’s not even a sports sedan, although it’s definitely pretending with it’s front splitter, dual exhausts coming out the back, center mounted shifter, and a modest wing on the rear. It’s handling is competent, but only. Push it past its cornering limit and you look like a Texan on snow. No, this car is a straight line machine, the cheap way to smoke F bodies and Mustangs alike. Everyone loves the pony cars for their V8s and RWD, but the SN-95s and Camaros are ugly, the F body cars are far harder to work on, and their interiors are more clumsy than the Nokia N-Gage. By comparison, the GTP comes well equipped and is quite easy to let out of it’s box. The stock boost level is a low 7-8 lbs, but they’ve left a lot on the table. Add an intercooler, drop a pulley size, maybe do some port and polishing, colder spark, and some exhaust work, get it tuned for your new setup, and you’ll be shredding the fronts with probably a bit more than 300 horsepower. When your tires do turn to smoke, you’ll be expecting torque steer to take you into a tree, but equal length half shafts keep most of the pull away. I know some of you will come at me with 1320 videos of Foxbodys sporting turbos bigger than their owner’s egos, and Firebirds with ominous sounding nicknames that were definitely given before they were earned. But the SLP Loudmouth on most rusted out, Disturbed blaring Camaro you see on the street every day is a representation of how the owner stuffs socks in his briefs. And with a bit of work on your GTP, his face of disappointment will provide an unnerving resemblance to the face made by all of his sexual partners upon discovering the truth.
Practicality is another strong suit of the Grand Prix, here seen moving a couch, because trucks are expensive.
You might think that these cars are bad, and there certainly seems to be a lot of evidence for it. But anything that can actually last almost 30 years in constant production must be doing something right, and some of those $7 billion actually counted. The W-body provided the loyal bones for all of GM’s average sedans for decades, and the saying “A GM car will run like shit longer than most cars last” was likely born of it. A Cutlass Supreme rolled off the production line in ‘88, to be sold with the Tru-Coat oxidation protection to an octogenarian. He would fill it with the broken dreams of a thousand scratch off lottery tickets thrown in the American Legion dustbin before filling a hole in the ground and leaving the car to his daughter. But it smells of cigarettes and was maintained by a man with a memory less reliable than the 3 AM promises of a drunken ex girlfriend. Plus she has a Jetta now. And so it’s sold to an aspiring drug dealer who insists upon calling it a “cutty”, completely ignoring the fact that the only remotely cool person to drive a Cutlass from the 80s was Fox Mulder. In the last years of its life, after countless lighters are lost beneath its seats and the stale smell of joints permanently infused into the fabric, fate will catch up to our young dealer. And as the sun sets on the impound lot where the 30 year old car is finally laid to rest after too many community college parking tickets and too few oil changes, so it does on the W-bodys, as even rental companies will eventually thumb their noses at the Impala Limited.
(Insert another Fargo joke here)
The Grand Prix GTP isn’t a car anyone aspires to, it’s a step that you take on the way to where you’re going. Sure it’s reliable enough, and sure it’s pretty quick, but it can never be a member of that sports car club, no matter how much Pontiac insisted they were sporty at the time. But for the money, I doubt you’ll find anything faster and more reliable. Or you could make a car that’s more of a sleeper than anything short of a rusty 90s Maxima with a new VQ35 swap. The point is that no matter where you are in your car owning life, there’s always something out there for you. You might not get the complete package, but you can buy a car like this, with more power than it’s price would ever deem appropriate. Sure, your door panels might fall off every once in awhile. You may only get 25 MPG highway on premium gas. You might be driving the same car as some white trash guy who always wears the same Whitechapel hat and Tapout shirt. The kind of guy who’ll spend all night at a party calling a girl a slut, only to try (and fail) to get with her later. The kind of guy who makes memes about “fuckin ricer hondas”, and who honestly thinks his 90s four door sedan attracts women, even though supercharger whine sounds like a broken car to them. You can’t row your own gears either. But when you consider what you paid for you supercharger, heads up display, a decent sound system, and enough room to take a family on a 20 hour drive to Florida with two weeks of luggage (With the power to still have a bit of fun on the way), you don’t really care about any of that. Because while it may not be the car you deserve, it very well could be the car you need right now.
WarShrike
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 02:45 |
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Modular pulley, for all the boosts...and heat.
Firewrx234
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 06:24 |
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I had 2 of them (both coupes) and I loved them. Even though one of them tried to set me on fire via heated seat.
My only complaint with these cars was the transmission, but after it got a decent rebuild they were good to go. It just so happened that GM went chincy on the transmission and added slightly heavier duty parts to a transmission that was in the lesser variants. Unfortunately this was not enough and most transmissions will fail between 100-150k (maybe sooner if driven like a teenage boy in a race car)
Great write up and always fun looking back on that car. It did so many things right with such cheap materials! And it's still a shame they killed the 3800 motor as it was nigh indestructible. I heard a story of a lady who drove one into a service shop with no oil on the dipstick and it didn't hurt a thing. Great motors that could outlast many a cockroach.
desertdog5051
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 08:24 |
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That was a great post. It touched all my bases. (still chuckling) Thanks.
Snuze: Needs another Swede
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 08:31 |
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Great write up, it really had me laughing, and was a wonderful way to start my day.
I had a GT model when I was in high school - it wasn’t the car I wanted, but in retrospect it was perfect for a high school kid. Kind of fun, kind of sporty, but not too fast or crazy. And still practical.
Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 08:54 |
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#3 is the key to their durability. And/or sleeper potential with a couple small mods.
Milky
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 09:10 |
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You forgot one big complaint for the W bodies - Dexcool.
Im sure they are reliable and decently fast. My biggest complaint is for everyone okay example there are 10 clapped out or terribly modified ones.
crowmolly
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 09:11 |
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M90 cars were 240hp.
And
The supercharger doesn’t start doing it’s thing until you hit 2nd gear
Wat?
ceanderson920
> Firewrx234
09/09/2015 at 10:26 |
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The tranny on mine went out at around 120k then 100,000 miles later the engine started on fire and burned my parents garage and almost the whole house down. Other then that it was a good car!
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Firewrx234
> ceanderson920
09/09/2015 at 10:45 |
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Yeah they did have a knack for a minor oil leak (even from the factory they had a TSB on that in which it could leak onto the manifold and catch on fire)
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ceanderson920
> Firewrx234
09/09/2015 at 10:53 |
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That’s exactly what happened to mine. My dad got a new garage, tools and my mom got brand new wood floors and the whole house repainted and some new appliances all from the insurance company so really it worked out pretty good.
WiscoProud
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 12:31 |
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Good review. Personally I was partial to the Buick Regal GS, but the Pontiac was fine for what it was. And you're spot on with your description of its owner history.
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Swayze Train GTi
> crowmolly
09/09/2015 at 13:31 |
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240hp is the official story, but a lot of people like to say it was closer to 260. Maybe it’s just all the instant torque, but I’m inclined to believe it.
The supercharger doesn’t operate during first gear, I don’t know why. Could be to control wheelspin or to keep from blowing up the transmission.
RallyWrench
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 13:32 |
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In fairness, the Chevette isn’t a W-body. That would be an insult to Chevettes. Great piece, I enjoyed it!
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Swayze Train GTi
> Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer
09/09/2015 at 13:33 |
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Right, and what people don’t realize is that doesn’t necessarily mean the physical engine is larger, just the cylinder area. I’m sure we’ve all seen the picture of a turbo Mazda 4 cylinder engine next to a naturally aspirated LS, they’re actually about the same footprint.
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Swayze Train GTi
> Milky
09/09/2015 at 13:35 |
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Very true. I’m a member of a Facebook page for W-bodies and I swear to god the GTP is the most riced American car ever. I like to remind them of it every once in awhile so their heads don’t get too big.
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Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 13:35 |
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I haven't, but I believe it.
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Swayze Train GTi
> Firewrx234
09/09/2015 at 13:36 |
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Fun fact about that TSB: It only applied to the front VC gasket, because getting to the rear one requires 3-4 times as much work.
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Swayze Train GTi
> RallyWrench
09/09/2015 at 13:38 |
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Wait. are you trying to tell me the Chevette was better than the W-Body?
Honestly I wouldn’t know, none of the Chevettes sold in Michigan lasted longer than 4 winters before the salt and earth reclaimed them, I’ve never even so much as seen one.
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RallyWrench
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 14:00 |
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No, just having fun. I think they cancel each other out. I don’t remember the last time I saw one either, and I’m in CA.
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Swayze Train GTi
> RallyWrench
09/09/2015 at 14:07 |
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It really says something about how bad a car is when the world has unanimously rejected it’s existence so completely.
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Swayze Train GTi
> crowmolly
09/09/2015 at 15:50 |
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Actually I’ve been talking to buddy who owns this car, and for some reason his car doesn’t, while others usually do. It did have some tuning work done to it before he bought the car, which is probably why. My mistake, this is the only GTP I’ve spent real time driving. My personal one was a Maroon GT model, the one with the couch on it.
AMGtech - now with more recalls!
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 16:08 |
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Bro says “they’re not rice!”
My rebuttal “No, you’re right. They’re not from Asia. So let’s call them alfalfa instead. That’s just as silly.”
Bro replies “you better get to steppin’ son! Before I open a can of whoop ass!”
Me “why you mad bro?”
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crowmolly
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 16:30 |
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Yeah, I wasn’t trying to bust balls but owned one for ~13 years and had never heard of the 2nd gear thing. A good tune will really wake the car up too. And a 3000 stall converter. I could go on. Damn, I miss that car.
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CompG
> Swayze Train GTi
09/09/2015 at 17:56 |
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The Series 2 3800 with the Gen 3 M90 made 240 hp. The series 3 with the Gen 5 M90 made 260 hp.
YouSuckAtPosting
> Swayze Train GTi
09/10/2015 at 19:17 |
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Um. Negative. I can assure you that unless you’re in torque abuse mode, overspeed or catalyst overheat protection mode, the BBV is closed and it is boosting.