I'm sure General Motors didn't mean to make a mockery of their lovely 1973-1975 Grand Am but these 1978-1980 models came up as either half-baked if not half half-hearted attempts to emulate one of my favorite cars of all time. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Our subject here is a 1980.
Although contemporary reviews lambasted its overt, excessive styling and middling performance, puckish, impish, eight-year-old me was struck by lightning when I first saw one at the New York Auto Show in the long since demolished New York Coliseum in the fall of 1972. First impressions can indeed be lasting. Even time spent with several in the early to mid-eighties couldn't dissuade me.
Based on this overwritten 1978 magazine ad copy, clearly someone at Pontiac (or their ad agency) had intentions of connecting the old Grand Am with the, ahem, new one. Even if there were few buyers for the originals. Feisty 301 cubic-inch 2bbl\V-8. Truth in advertising? Please.
Same crew that drew up the original Grand Am probably had a hand in another 1970's Pontiac oddity, the spectacular, one year only, 1977 Can Am. Did Pontiac show that crew the door when it came time to bake up the 1978 Grand Am? Oh, and why this mashup of a Trans Am and Grand LeMans (of all things) works so well, much like love, defies logic or reason.
In fairness, the problem with the 1978-1980 Grand Am wasn't the car itself but what it based on. That being the new for 1978, freshly downsized, Pontiac Grand LeMans. Itself part of a gaggle of impossibly mediocre looking makes and models that included the slanty-back, hatchback Oldsmobile Cutlass\Buick Century and of course the belle of the ugly duckling ball, the Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
When we understand that the Grand Am was a trim level of the Luxury\Grand LeMans, we can also appreciate the Grand Am, well, at least the original ones, as a separate model from Pontiac's less sporty, more luxurious two-door, the Grand Prix. Why have two if not three cars all targeting the same buyer? Sign of the times. And what a time it was to be a coupe lover.
I might be splitting hairs or attempting to distinguish varying shades of grey, but Pontiac sufficiently disguised the 1973 Grand Prix from the Luxury LeMans\Grand Am to make one at least think they were succinctly different models. At least through my foggy goggles. And Pontiac never made the Grand Prix out to be a performance model like they portended to make the Gran Am. The Cam Am too. Did I say it was a great time to be a coupe lover?
Since I have no use for any downsized GM intermediate, any pretense of the Grand Prix and Grand Am being different went out the rear window (that wouldn't roll down). Best I can say about this vintage of Grand Prix is that at least it's not a Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Nice "snowflake" rims too. Swap the front facia and lose the hood ornament and what do you have? A Grand LeMans. The prior Grand Am and Grand Prix had enough separate body stampings to, again, construe they were different cars. Which, in reality, they really weren't.
Personal luxury car buyers turned out to be a fickle bunch. Despite strong sales at first, GM's new-for-'78 models helped grease the skids for the demise of a once healthy market segment. One that seems all but impossible to fathom in this day of do-everything-well crossovers. Just like the original Grand Am's, the downsized 1978-1980 models didn't sell well; big sporty cars have never sold well and the "imitation" Grand Am's questionable looks, from certain angles, didn't help. Pontiac pulled the plug on the model line for good, well, technically, after 1980. Apparently, whomever at car company's names cars had plum run out of ideas since starting in 1985 they festooned "GRAND AM" to a new front-wheel-drive compact no one in their right mind could construe as an imitation of anything.
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