By the late ’80s, many youthful car buyers had no memory of the classic muscle car age, and manufacturers rebranded “excitement” as something related to style and image rather than metrics like acceleration. Against that backdrop, this 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix SE delivered plenty of pizazz: a steering wheel full of buttons, a futuristic-looking center console, jet-fighter-red gauge illumination, and a hooded instrument cluster putting many controls just a finger’s stretch from the driver’s fingertips. This example from Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania looks almost showroom fresh, as it should after covering a mere 48,100 miles since new, according to the seller. This slice of ’80s exhilaration can be yours for $7800. Check out more pictures and details here on Craigslist. Thanks to reader T.J. for spotting this Keystone State classic.
Pontiac (and few others) saw itself as a trendy German car alternative, referencing European driving experiences across its suite of underpowered front-wheel-drive vehicles. Even the name, an Americanized perversion of the French “Gran Prix,” hinted at the thrills of continental competition. Offering an array of square buttons marks a decidedly Germanic trait, well-copied in this Grand Prix. Check out that nifty briefcase lock on the glove compartment. Who thinks it’s set to 007?
For a slightly offensive and sadly accurate tour of a very similar car, check out the video review at RegularCars. This one is probably as good as they come. Check out the B-pillar mounted door handle! Is that not how you might enter your personal space craft? Thanks, Pontiac!
Ah, yes, the GM 2.8L V6, common as blades of grass back then, inhabiting the corporate engine compartments of everything from the Chevrolet Cavalier to Pontiac’s own Firebird. The V6 snarl told everyone in traffic this was no smogged-out four-banger, but a genuine six-cylinder powerhouse making 130 HP at a time when anything above 100 could be considered “sporty.” Jokes aside, Pontiac did offer a 205 HP turbo Grand Prix for ’89.
Rear bucket seats underscore the jet-fighter seriousness of this Grand Prix, with a center console perfect for stashing that jumbo diameter McDonald’s straw and your eight-ball of coke. You can almost smell the mixture of Winstons and Drakar Noir wafting about the cabin. GM vehicles upholstered in this ubiquitous light gray mouse fur populated the parking lots of 1980s America like stars in the desert sky. Does this snort of Pontiac excitement make you want to re-live the ’80s?
Ha, fantastic write-up, Todd, and nice find as always, T.J.!
And thus came the day when the once majestic Grand Prix had sadly morphed into…..a Lumina. Let us please observe a moment of silence.
My nephew was riding with his friend in one of these things the tire caught the edge of the road its estimated they were above 110mph the car he over corrected and slid across the road and hit the embankment the car tumbled end over end for several hundred yards before being kicked back across the road into the front yard of a home both boys were taken to hospital as a precaution but walked away from it.
Nice find and a fair price….45% ish of full retail in 1989. Similar seating to the Cutlass Supreme international. I had a new 88 Cutlass Supreme 2dr 2.8, then a 92 Grand Prix 4 Dr 3.1 and finally a 96 Buick Regal GS 4dr 3.8. All three were good but the 3.8 was best.
Great write up? Hardly. A write up full of snark and ignorance. Most likely written by someone who thought a vw rabbit was “cool” at some point in their life.
These were excellent cars. Friend had one in white with the white wheels. Sold it with 237000 miles and everything functioning perfectly. Product of their time. Their time being when many Americans were learning the Krauts were sell cars here as luxury cars which were TAXI CABS in West Germany.
Amen
They were good cars. I had an 89 “LE” with the pentagon rims made by Enkei (logo inside the rim). Mine went to my nephew when I replaced it with a G6 and it was on the road for 21 years 167K miles before he got rear ended and the car was totaled.
The local Sheriff’s department bought a couple as covert speedtrap cars and vice/narcotics cars taken to the drug deals along with the Bonneville.
It’s a little known fact that the FBI, DEA, and US MARSHALLS had a Regal version with the 3.8 single turbocharged engine in it to catch the high speed interstate drug traffickers. Many got detuned when sold while very few made it to auction intact.
“snark and ignorance”?
“Krauts and TAXI CABS”?
sigh . .
—————- and how about that atrocious misusage of English grammar?
“Cool” has a different meaning to everyone, FireAxeGXP. Nobody has a lock on what’s cool, it’s literally that simple. If you like the color blue and someone else likes red, does that mean that, without any question, blue is the better color? Or, that a Pontiac GXP is cool and a VW Rabbit isn’t cool? I don’t think so.
Todd has forgotten more about this era of GM’s V6 cars than most people have ever known or ever will know, having owned a gaggle of them and modified some of them into fire-breathing monsters. As you know by not having a “member” by your name, this is a free, family website and the writers aren’t exactly making a living here. We do it for fun, although it’s not fun when we get nailed by a commenter who replies by saying that a writer is full of “snark and ignorance” when Todd is literally anything but that.
Some of the best times of my youth were in a five-speed fuel-injected VW Rabbit sedan that smoked a ton of local cars including an ’82 Mustang GT. The Rabbit, and just about any German car, will gladly run all day with your foot on the floor, something that we tested occasionally when the opportunity presented itself. The best all-around car I ever owned was an L67 (supercharged) 2002 Buick Regal GS that I bought with 80k and drove until 292k miles, most of it with modifications by Tim King of TKO performance, making about 300 HP. If someone wanted to wax nostalgic about the 2.8L V6, though, that’s a stretch. Pontiac had their niche with the crazy features, arrays of buttons, red back-lighting, etc. perfect for the “Look at me” crowd. I hope whoever buys this GP appreciates this slice of the late ’80s and enjoys it thoroughly!
Sorry but that error of cars for GM is just embarrassing. Nothing but rattle traps. Too gimmicky in my opinion. The 2.8, though reliable was very rough around the edges and old tech compared to what imports offered. And this from a guy born GM guy that laughed at imports back in the end. Saw the light though.
And the 4-doors were two years late, just as the market shift away from coupes was getting underway in earnest.
“…eight-ball of coke” and “…the mixture of Winstons and Drakar Noir wafting about the cabin”?
LOL, that’s pure gold. Excellent write-up!
The steering wheels were wild. There was one Pontiac I recall that had even way more buttons than this one lol.
The SSE Bonneville. The buttons were great tho! They introduced forward thinking tech and led the way to what we have now. Only Lincoln has the seats with 30 way power adjustments nowadays. Respect where the tech came from.
My mom had this.Fully loaded. Bought Brand New in 89. I loved driving it it was asolid car road mint interior was very comfortable and a great stereo to crank the 80’s music..LOL
I love the styling of this era of Pontiac. They had too many gimmicks though and I am not a fan of the digital dash. I purchased new off the showroom floor a 1990 Grand Am with the Quad4 HO equipped with a 5-speed. It was a 4-Door to haul my two kids with back then. Sure was a fun car and I was not easy on it. Never had a problem with it. My ex rear ended someone and that spelled the end of it for me. Later I got a 2003 Grand Prix. It was also a fun car. However, I always wished that I would have gotten the supercharged version. I sure do miss Pontiac. They really did build excitement from a US Automaker standpoint.
I wanted one of these soooo badly when I was at Carnegie-Mellon studying engineering. Had I not gotten a job with Ford when I graduated, I probably would have had one, but mine would have had the 5-speed.
An observation: Age amplifies one of GM’s greatest shortcomings of the era – interior plastics. Different suppliers, different materials, different textures, and different aging patterns. There should be two shades of gray on the dash, not four.
Always wondered what would happened if you were in an accident and the driver side door flew open with the safety belt attached, what would happen to the driver? Never understood the theory/safety behind this configuration! My brother had one of these, drove great, never had any problems…
Seems like a great price for a car so well preserved and cared for.
Hey FireAxe GXP take a chill pill you’re crossing the line. This is a forum for the appreciation of cars good or bad. Not the place to spread your prejudice and poor attitude of the world and it’s peoples.
I could agree with you about Fireaxe gxp but nevertheless this is America 🇺🇸 free speech. And that’s all I have to say about that.
We had the 89’ in white, white wheels, grey leather seats. Loaded every option electric roof, luggage rack, equalizer, you name it. Only thing ours had 3.1 liter thought 88’ was last year for 2.8L. Anyway wife totaled it
My wife had a 92. It was not a fun car to drive. It had power but rode like a bus. The back brakes were crap which we found out one winter when it needed new Calipers. The drain for the AC would plug up and fill the passenger side footwell with water. I do not miss that POS.
I leased a new ’93 GP LE four-door with the 3.1/auto and the B4E package that included the dual exhaust tips, four-wheel disk brakes, special wheels, aero body cladding and bucket seats with a console. It was burgundy like this one but had a burgundy cloth interior.
Even though it was leased I couldn’t leave well enough alone and replaced the stock mufflers with turbo mufflers for a better sound. It was comfortable on long trips and IIRC, got 29 mpg on the highway. It also had a good-sized trunk.
I bought it at the end of the lease and drove it a few more months until I purchased a Subaru Outback and sold the GP.
I purchased a 1990 Grand Prix SE 2-Dr, White version brand new. I kept it for 17 years. One of the best cars I’ve owned. Living in Wisconsin, I never got stuck in snow, and it never ever failed me. Most comfortable 12 way seats EVER. Kinda “gimmicky”, but no one ever complained about riding with me in that car. RIP Pontiac.
The one guy……says bad write up……..yet he writes germans were sell cars ?? I dont get it…….this is to love cars and the staff here works hard to give us good write ups. I cant do it ……..but i know it is a talent that i am grateful to be able to read them. I LOVE BARN FINDS. Lots of keyboard warriors in this world nowdays. I just consider the source and move on. Keep up the good work yall.
Amen Scotty we appreciate what you professional writers do for us. Keep it up please. I know I speak for hundreds of us when I say those words. My son has been a contributing editor to Keith Martin’s magazines and I see the hard work it takes.
Wow these were some ugly years for the Grand Prix. This is either about or shortly after…..most all cars started resembling…jelly beans on wheels.
Barf-mobiles. There were a few exceptions….very few.
Dave D you are correct regarding free speech. I’m with you….
What’s with the mockery? GM tried to build something compatible with most of the world’s infrastructures – what they did – and what they got was scorn and derision. The previous made too long (big) and totally impractical cars with mostly small boots and inefficient (single cam V8, shure!?) and thirsty eight cylinders should have been better? America has never been the centre of the world, even if some where liked to make it so by force of arms. The only u.s. manufacturer who has learned this lesson is FORD.
These cars sold in Europe well but suffered from; (the W-Body Buick Regal, Chevrolet Lumina, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, Pontiac Grand Prix)
broken door handles,
sticking idlers,
leaking windshields,
broken locks and keys,
slack safety belts after a few years, poor pass.compartment heater,
rust on the inner sill and through rusted rear axles and again
inefficient engines – the elasticity of 80-120 km/h in 3rd (kickdown) or 4th gear is absolutely life-threatening if you want to overtake on a country road! The car did not accelerated any more but made only more engine noise..! Those idiots in Detroit, they still had OPÊL with better engines than these screaming V6’s that are mechanically worn out even with 300’000KM. There was also the quad -16V avail who suffered from blown head gaskets, burned ignition coils and oil consumption – a turbo Diesel, as especially asked from customers in many European countries, was never offered. The only thing improved is their impact resistance (crash zones, was a major sell argument then!) but still
behind Mercedes which was recognized as the standard.
Nice try GM but It didn’t work again. What else!
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/gm-north-americas-fwd-platform-proliferation-of-the-1980s-a-guide-to-all-15-platform-codes/