This is the time of year to buy a "classic car" as many owners would rather sell them than store them for the winter. That's the case here with this 1970 Pontiac Grand Prix for sale on Facebook Marketplace for what would appear to be, at first, a reasonable, $9,200. It's out in Olathe, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City about a half hour out. I've never been to KC, but Google Maps says I could make it there in under twelve-hours, pick up an hour on my way out there too. Bonus, "I understand they got some crazy little women there."
Pontiac came out with these cars in 1969 and unknowingly christened the personal luxury car craze of the 1970's. GM's first attempts at a personal luxury car similar in scope to Ford's 1958, four-passenger Thunderbird while handsome, missed the bullseye. Their best effort, the 1963-1965 Buick Riviera, was a more than worthy competitor, but its price point put it out of reach of potential buyers looking for a little something extra in what was an otherwise plebian, affordable offering. The Grand Prix offered all of that and more at a price that didn't break the bank.
Built on a longer wheelbase version of the two-door GM "A-body" intermediate chassis, the longer canvas enabled designers to give the GP it's extraordinarily long hood. Chevrolet would build their Monte Carlo starting in 1970 on the same chassis that was code-named internally, "G-body".
As were many cars from General Motors' "Golden Era" of 1949 to 1972, these cars were all form over function. Designed from the outside in, despite being enormous, their interiors were quite cramped. The back seat on a car of this size is atrociously tiny. Meanwhile, look at the amount of room in front of the engine purely for the sake of design. The size of that fan shroud!
Meant to emulate the "classics" of the Great Gatsby Era, which, incidentally, was about as long ago in 1970 as 1990 is now from 2025 (feel ancient, yet?), GM designers did such a wonderful job with these cars that it didn't matter if you "got that" or not. It's a transcendental design that was simultaneously retro and contemporary. Not an easy thing to do.
Although it's hard to tell from the pictures, iPhones tend to make things look better than they actually are, this car has some challenges.
It's a Grand Prix "J" and not an "SJ", so it's modestly equipped. Crank windows, no power driver's seat, seller says the original AM radio is in the trunk. Yes, a standard radio that was AM only. Hey, it's a 1970. The engine is Pontiac's 400 cubic-inch V-8 in 2-barrel guise making all of 250 gross horsepower, none of its purported previous three owners got anywhere quickly. This car came with factory air, but it's not hooked up. Rebuilding air conditioning systems in vintage cars can run big bucks. $2,500 if you're lucky, $4000 or more if you're unlucky.
Poster of the ad claims it's been repainted to its factory color meaning it was painted something else sometime over the past fifty-five years. There's some amateurish body filler work on it, apparently there's spots where you can tell someone with a spatula and a can of Bondo went at it. There's a hole in the trunk floor (noted above).
This is a literal barn find that was sitting for twenty-years. "Barn finds" sound romantic, but there's usually a pretty severe reason why something was stashed away. Rarely is a "barn find" even like this stuffed in a closet because someone couldn't part with it simply for sentimental reasons. In the case here, the tin worm got the best of fuel and brake lines. Rather than part with it on the cheap since it needed fairly costly repairs, it got pushed into Clippity Clop's old stall and forgotten about.
The tires hold air but they're more than twenty-years old and dry rotted. The car runs and moves on its own, but they say whoever buys it should have it towed away. Gosh, the cost of a tow from KC to CLE these days? Two-grand? Maybe more? They don't want to sell it but apparently their circumstances warrant their letting it go. Asking price is $9,200 but they are open to reasonable offers. Thing is, on a car that could use a frame off restoration, what's a "reasonable" offer? I wouldn't offer a third of the asking price for it. I'd rather pay more, a lot more in fact, for something that was more complete and didn't have the rust and body work issues this has.
Shame that within a decade, the Pontiac Grand Prix and the Chevrolet Monte Carlo would be parodies of themselves much like the endless Rocky, Jaws and Planet of the Apes sequels were. Terrible movies inspired by films that were actually excellent.
"Kansas City" is a rhythm and blues song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952. The most famous version of the song was performed by Wilbert Harrison in 1959.
