Let me start with the good things to say since it won't take long.
The power and attention it brings is a single child's dream. It is one of those cars that you always feel like to have to put your foot in it from every dead stop, 1st-2nd-3rd-4th shifts, and the occasional run unto 140. (I do not condone this behavior and it was only done once for a very short period of time)(The car starts to feel rather mushy at that speed - BUT I was only had just shifted into 5th . . .) It’s a good attention getter and good driving car if you get around the down time, bugs, and other things that I'll mention later.
As for gas consumption, #1 you don't buy this because it is an eco-friendly gas sipping machine. The sticker estimates are about 50% correct. The highway mileage I got was between 27-29MPG, but the inner city was 8-10MPG. Total rounded out I'm getting around 18-20MPH. Still very respectable for 350 horses all trying to get a drink from 8 cylinders. Now the "rest of the story" . . .
I bought my Yellow Jacket '04 POS, oops I mean GTO, in June of 2004. For the first 2 months it was the coolest thing out there. I bathed in the attention, stares, comments, questions and rumble of the car. People would question me what it was while sitting in traffic jams, while restaurant managers and wait people emptied a Shoney's leaving their customers staring out the windows to see where every one was going just to see it when I pulled in.
At first I didn't know if I would like the yellow color, but what is a sports car w/o drawing attention to yourself right? Then after those 2 months I fell in love with the yellow. Then that's when things started to go wrong, just like a bad marriage. I stared to notice 4 different shades of yellow in the pain finish (depending what type of light I was under), the front and rear bumpers, spoiler and the body panels are all slightly different yellows. In bright sun its fine, but at night, never never park under florescent lights or it looks like one of the cars patched together from the junk yard.
Then the real problems began. The doors leaked causing a good 1/4-1/2 of water to pool in my rear floor area. When that evaporated it rusted out the rear speaker covers (which are metal instead of plastic - good move GM). The paint was already beginning to flake off when I picked the car up but it looked more like dirt that flaky paint. Surprise, I was wrong. When I crawled into the back seats to further inspect them what do I find besides the rust? A BROKEN HEADLINER! The f'n thing was sagging down in the middle like a middle aged man's beer belly. (As a side note you have to take the ENTIRE rear seat out, the deck lid AND the 3rd brake light to get the covers off).
Ok, so maybe that wasn't too bad, I said to myself . . . new model, first year, yeah there will be problems. . . THEN the headlights started to work loose, a quick shop adjustment actually allowed me to see at night while driving since the fog lights were of more use than the low beams. What next you ask? There's plenty more.
NEXT, the transmission starts acting up. Clunks on shifts, clunks between 4th and 5th gears, then 3rd to 4th, then every one. Then the backlash started to get worse when tapping on the gas pedal. Now it sounds like the thing is going to twist right off the car. (This one they still haven't fixed after 4 trips to the dealer)(They say it’s normal, so when it falls off the engine we'll see what they say). The one thing they did do was tightened up some bolts somewhere and all that did was made it difficult to get it into gear now.
Surely that all you might say, NOPE, there's more. Perhaps you now begin to see a correlation with the yellow jacket color to a lemon.
The alarm light starts to flicker when you hits bumps and then just stays on. I.E. no more working alarm. Back to the dealer we go. They say GM recommends resetting the computer. OK fine, it works for two days and then, there's the light back flickering again. ANOTHER trip back in. Ok GM has a repair bulletin out now to replace a slip ring in the ignition. Fine. I drive it off the lot and what do my eyes see? Yep, the good old alarm light back on not 1 mile from the dealer. Also the backlight is now beginning to surge and flicker when you drive it at night.
Back in the next day we go. After two days of having the car they decide that since they have another GTO in for an instrument cluster problem and GM told them to replace the whole GD thing. SO that is where it is right now, having the front end of the insides ripped out now. So as for this fix, I do not have results yet but I will try to keep this updated as more and more problems surface.
Or until GM buys it back since there is now lemon law paper being prepared of my POS GTO(a.k.a. my Pontiac Obviously Sucks GTO)
Update 03/16/05- The last repair from abaove ended up being 8 days long. The good news is that 66% of the problems were fixed, still is a "D" in school though. The alarm system SEEMS to be functioning properly now. At least I haven't seen the alarm light come back on, and the headlights are again back pointed where they should be. As for the instrument panel backlight flicker that has not been rectified. I returned it to the garage which resulted in a "we don't see anything wrong with it" response. Gee, could it be because it's the BACKLIGHT and it's DAYTIME?!? So they have retained the vehicle yet again for who knows how long this time. I have showed them video tape of the flickering and they have no clue as to what is wrong. The GM technical center has no clue either. So I guess this will need another update shortly.
Oh yes and the interior has started to produce some rattles and squeaks. One could reasonable say it could be from the interior being dismantled to reach and replace just about everything but the door panels (oops, i prolly just jinxed those now too.)
(Only another 8 more days of out of service time and it will qualify for the PA lemon law on this aspect too, in addition to the already qualifying 4 trips in for electrical malfunctions, 4x's for the transmission, 2x's headlights, 1 water leak, and 1 saggy broken headliner. (. . .and a partridge in a pear tree . . .)
Well it is now 08/26/05 and the car has been in another 3 times and the lemon law arbitration date is 4 days away. The new problems . . . the exhaust is now rattling from somewhere everytime you start from a dead stop, just before you get to a dead stop the brakes give you that annoying chattering (just like you are letting it roll down a hill at the spot where the brakes full stop the rotor and where it would let it slide freely), the speaker cover paint has begun to flake and rust through again (yet another trip for the car in a few days to have its rear seat ripped out, decklid removed and 3rd brakelight detatched [I hope the head liner stays intact this time]). Also the instrument cluster has continued to peg the temperature to max (+set off all the alarms and bells) then go back to normal like it was just having a bad dream woke up and went back to sleep, plus now the engine light stays on from about a minute after shutting the car off.
So what's the semi-good news? GM made a lemon offer of reimbursing me $6500, extending the warranty for the electrical components to 7yr/100,000 and of course paying the attorney fees.
Payment and warranty have been received. And, I have also bailed on the car. I traded it in to a local dealer for an Acrua TL for my wife. I will wait a couple of months and go get the Chevy Corvette C6 that I SHOULD have bought a year ago instead of this thing.
If you buy one, I hope you don't have a similar love/hate relationship that I had to painfully endure.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 32000
Condition: New Model Year: 2004 Model and Options: 6-speed
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