A Sad Day For Detroit......
Written: Jul 23 '04
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Pros: I only had to drive this plastic piece of junk for 2 days.
Cons: I had to drive this plastic piece of junk for 2 days.
The Bottom Line: Avoid this car like the plague. This is one of those cheap plastic junkers created just for the rental car industry. Consider an Accord or Camry instead!
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| carnut2k4's Full Review: 2004 Pontiac Grand Am Sedan |
In the interest of fairness I will start by saying that this review is a "snapshot" review. I was given a 2004 Grand Am GT Coupe rental car while my car was being serviced by the dealer. I used the Pontiac for 2 days / 300 miles. So here goes.........
EXTERIOR
The first word that comes to mind is Vanilla. Plain Jane or Wallflower work as well. I understand that this is a continuing line since it's "overhaul" in '99. What overhaul - it looks just like it did in the eighties!
INTERIOR
How many varieties of plastic are there? Apparently a lot. The materials and workmanship of EVERYTHING inside this vehicle are shoddy. The seats offer absolutely no lumbar support. My back hurt after an hour - and I don't have a bad back. The doors are heavy - even for a coupe. My old 1994 T-Bird was much easier to get in and out of. The Monsoon stereo wasn't bad but wasn't anything to get excited about either. The shape of the interior almost seems to be mocking itself. Think giant plastic bubbles everywhere. Enormous guage cluster housings for no other reason than just because. You get the idea. The rearview mirror is located about 5 inches down the windshield from the front edge of the headliner and there is a thick black cable jutting out from the front of the headliner, dangling down and ultimately connecting to the mirror to power the incorporated map lights. Not exactly an engineering tour de force.
FIT & FINISH
Things fit together as well as crappy plastic stuff could I guess. The one major beef I have in this department is the fitment of the drivers door. At highway speeds the wind noise drowned out the stereo. With my fingers I was able to pull and hold in the top of the door frame and stop the wind noise. This car only had 10K miles on it. That's just low quality control standards back in Michigan.
PERFORMANCE
I thought this might be where I would give a nod to American steel. What are you people doing over there in Detroit? Or are these things actually produced in Pontiac, MI. Whichever it is, you guys need to take some engineering lessons from those axis countries. How is it that 60 years ago we decimated Germany and Japan and now our engineers can't figure out how to extract more than 50 HP per liter from a motor??? They're (axis) getting 70-80 HP per liter on their mild engines and over 100 per liter on performance cars. The Grand Am did reward with a pleasing growl when pushed but acceleration was simply acceptable, nothing more. The steering was numb at best. The brakes seemed fine and I must admit that the car was extremely stable cruising at 90 MPH. Another positive thing was the transmission. I didn't check the specs but I assume that the overdrive on this car is geared a lot lower than average. At 90 she was barely turning 2700 RPM which is quite comfortable.
OVERALL
A throw away car on it's best day. Don't buy one you'll hate it - just take it for a test drive and you'll see. The boys over at Chrysler teamed up with Benz and are now making the phattest cars they've ever offered. Maybe a scouting trip to Bavaria is in order? I hope this isn't representative of what the new GTO is like. That would be a national tragedy.............
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 000
Condition: Used
Model Year: 2004
Model and Options: 2004 Pontiac Grand Am GT Coupe Automatic
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Epinions.com ID:
carnut2k4
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Member: Jason
Location: in the wind
Reviews written: 99
Trusted by: 59 members
About Me:
Muscle Shoals has got The Swampers
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