There aren't any Pontiac Grand Prix models between 1969 and 1977 that I wouldn't want in my "Jay Leno Fantasy Garage". Sure, I prefer the lines of the pre-Colonnade 1969-1972 GP's but I have plenty-of-love for the over-sized 1973-1977's. I'm ambivalent about the first Grand Prix', those "full-sized sports cars" of 1962-1968. Not that I don't like them but the Grand Prix' of 1969-1977 are what I remember seeing in abundance when I was a kid and I loved them. Then the fall of 1977 came and my heart was broken by Pontiac's new-for-'78 Grand Prix. Our subject here is a 1979 but it's all but indistinguishable from a '78.
I row against the flow since GM's "smaller" 1977 "B and C (and D)" bodies have a multitude of fans; I'm generally ambivalent towards them although given a choice between, for instance, taking a 1976 Pontiac Catalina on a road-trip and a 1977, the '77's the much better choice. However, in the grand scheme of things, give me the barge-like '76'er simply because I think it's a better looking car. So, if I wasn't doing jumping-jacks over the downsizing GM did to their big cars in '77, imagine my horror when GM shrunk their intermediates. The Pontiac Grand Prix might not be be bad as as the Chevrolet Monte Carlo but it's right there with it in terms of inducing a "what the hell is that?" gut reaction.
The only thing vaguely similar between the 1978 Grand Prix and the model it replaced is it's front end and even that pales in comparison to what it supposedly emulates.
It's not the downsizing, per se, that I find so off-putting and it's not that I like "big-cars" for the sake of liking them either. Doesn't matter to me if the car is a block long or has three-wheels; I like what I like it. Size-wize, while the Grand Prix was shorter overall by more than eleven inches, had an eight-inch shorter wheelbase and was eight-hundred pounds lighter, at two-hundred and one inches stem-to-stern, they were dimension-ally in line with General Motors seminal 1955 B-bodies. In fact, the 1978 Pontiac Grand Prix is approximately five-inches longer than a '55 Chevrolet and all of two-inches less long than a '55 Pontiac.
Now, the '55 B-bodes did ride on a one-hundred and twenty-one inch long wheelbase and that went a long way towards helping designers create the "illusion" that their wares were larger than they actually were. That long wheelbase also helped give the '55's their remarkably airy interiors and tidy front and rear overhangs. The interiors of these "up-sized" compacts were not "cozy", they were cramped.
It's the stubby-ness of these cars, due in large part to the short wheel base and absurdly long overhangs, along with their questionable aesthetics that are the deal killers for me. Again, it's not that they're smaller that makes them off-putting; they're just simply ugly.
If these cars had anything going for them it's their favorable power-to-weight ratios. Our '79 here stuffed with Pontiac's 301 cubic-inch V-8 and a four-barrel carburetor. It's "turbo 200" (transmission) and lazy rear axle won't help you win any drag races but at least compared to a '77 Grand Prix with the same engine, you'll have an easier time with highway on ramps and passing eighteen-wheelers when need be. Bonus, you'll get fourteen-miles per gallon compared to nine to ten.
In a vacuum, I wonder what people think of this car. Ambivalence meeting necessity the essence of marketing, that might be the reason why the poster of the ad for this car on Facebook Marketplace is asking $10,500 for it. Wow. To the uninitiated, this might just be a "cool old car" but to me it's just an old car albeit one in pretty nice shape. There's only, allegedly, 33,000 on its ticker. But $10,500?
That sky-high asking price just another prime example of just how nuts the used car market has gotten. And that's for all used cars apparently as the chip-shortage that's supposedly driving the shortage of new cars and driving up the price of used is affecting old and dare I say "non-classic" stuff like this.
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