In my opinion, General Motors didn't introduce anything remotely as cool looking as the Pontiac Grand Am after 1973. This '73 Gran Am sedan popped up on Facebook Marketplace recently for sale near my triple-wide west of Cleveland, Ohio. Asking price was $8,000. Don't spit up your morning Metamucil.
I'm not a sedan girl but this is a four-door a dyed-in-the-wool coupe lover could get their arms around. Bucket seats and a console on a 1973 Pontiac sedan? Giddy up! A four-speed manual was offered but they're rare - especially on the sedans. I want to marry that steering wheel and while there's no shortage of cheapie plastic baubles and bits on this interior, that's real wood trim on the dash and console. Imagine that.
The Gran Am coupes were the lookers; no wagon or convertible was offered. Pontiac sculptors did their best to keep as much of the coupe ethos intact with the four-door versions.
I think they succeeded for the most part although, as with all of GM's A-body four-door sedans and wagons of this vintage, the back seat was a cozy affair. This despite the A-body four-door sedans and wagons were built on a 116-inch-long wheelbase whereas the coupes were on 112-inch wheelbases. So, if you think things are tight back here, imagine shoehorning into the back seat of a Grand Am coupe.
'73 Grand Am's were powered by either Pontiac's 400-cubic inch V-8, in 170-horsepower, two-barrel guise or with four-barrel carburetor making 185-horsepower. There was also a four-barrel, Pontiac 455 making 250-horsepower on the option list but those are rare; I've never seen one. Brochures claim Pontiac's "Super Duty" 455 was available, even with a four-speed manual; legend has it there may have been one of those built. Our Marketplace gem here has an aftermarket four-barrel on its 400 engine; no idea if this a 2- or 4-bbl car from the factory. Does it matter? Contemporary road testers clocked a 455-cu. in. Grand Am coupe with an automatic going from zero-to-sixty in 7.7 seconds. Pretty good for a smog era Pontiac that wasn't a Firebiird or Trans Am.
Those same road testers were unimpressed with the Grand Am's handling despite it having the firmest and beefiest suspension set up of any GM "A-body" at the time. They also lamented the cramped interiors particularly in relation to how large the exterior of the car is. I test drove a Grand Am coupe back in the mid-eighties and, frankly, I was perplexed by how mediocre it was. I thought it was slow, the engine hemmed and hawed, the steering was numb, the brakes were horrible, but they probably needed replacing. Didn't dissuade me from thinking it was cooler than Elvis, though. Just wish it was a better car. I passed on it.
The clumsy handling was a real head scratcher since these cars were supposedly Pontiac's answer to sharp handling imports washing ashore from Germany. I know, as if. But that's what they portended to be. Fun facts, the Grand Am started out as the 1973 GTO but seeing the market for performance cars waning, GM opted to make the Grand Am first and foremost a "luxury" car. In the 1970's, what defined a luxury car was literally quite grand.
For eight-thousand-dollars, you get a '73 Grand Am sedan here that's far from perfect. There's no radio, this had factory A/C but the guts of it are missing, there are a number of ouchies on the body too; look closely at that rubberized nose cone. That won't be cheap to fix or replace. At least the title is clean. Who would buy this and why?
The Grand Am sedans sold terribly; the comelier coupes outsold them significantly not that they sold well either. What's more, all GM "A-bodies" were moving to square or rectangular headlights for 1976 that would have meant a costly redesign for the Grand Am's "Endura" front fascia. Thus, Pontiac pulled the plug on them after 1975. The Grand Am nameplate was resuscitated from 1978 through 1980 on GM's downsized A-body chassis. After a four-year hiatus, they brought it back again in 1985 festooning it to a front-wheel-drive, GM "N-body" that, ahem, was not so "Grand".
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