(first posted 7/11/2016) There is nothing quite like the rapid cadence, quiet rumble and murmur of tires rolling on a brick street. This is a sound I grew up with. It is the sound of the main, downtown thoroughfare of my hometown of Flint, Michigan – South Saginaw Street. It was, and still is, often accompanied in summer months by the wail of guitar and/or the low, soft thump of bass emanating from car speakers. These sounds help to remind me of exactly who I am and where I come from. This ’79 Grand Prix left me both drooling and feeling kinship with the Vehicle City.
This generation of Grand Prix may be regarded by many as the (RWD) low-point of its storied name, but I feel this example shows exactly how special one of these downsized GP’s could look with the right options and in the right color(s). It was an absolute vision in two-tone Medium Red and Dark Claret Metallic, riding on those Pontiac cast-aluminum wheels with red center caps. The raised, white-letter Uniroyal Tiger Paws were the icing on this delicious, red velvet cake. 1979 GP sales dipped only slightly (8%) from the first-year downsized ’78s (from 228,000 to 210,000), and this example was one of just over 61,000 LJ submodels produced for the model year.
Who wouldn’t want to experience this sumptuous interior with the t-tops off (and the a/c on)? Gorgeously stock, I’m sure this car comes out of the garage only in summer months. Much like the same-year Delta 88 Royale I profiled earlier this year, I imagine this car as belonging to a GM retiree. In the specific configuration of our subject car, I see less of a glorified LeMans than a mini-’77 Buick Riviera – and much bigger and better than the sum of its downsized parts.
Downtown Flint, Michigan.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013.
Related reading:
- From Perry Shoar: Vintage Review: 1979 Pontiac Grand Prix SJ – She’s No Fun, My Three-Oh-One; and
- From Paul Niedermeyer: Curbside Classic: 1978 Pontiac Grand Prix – GM’s Deadly Sin #14.
What a great-looking Grand Prix! I still haven’t fully embraced the styling of these GP’s but with the two-tone, T-tops, and those wheels, it does make an appealing package. And your writing never fails to skillfully evoke a time and a place…well done.
Yes, I love the look of this car as well. Nice to see it so well-preserved and not subjected to the ghetto-tastic ‘donk’ treatment.
Hmmm…
LOL. Sorry, but you should see the smurf blue metallic ’79 Monte Carlo with the boomin’ system and hydraulics in the open trunk right in the lobby of the Chicago History Museum. It’s giving props to “Mexican Heritage”.
I saw plenty of those style rides when I lived in TX, usually with that horrible coarse-grain metal flake paint. Blech.
Ghetto-tastic? What, is it in Warsaw or something?
This version of the GP was mondo-ugly, just like her sister the Monte Carlo.
No, places like Detroit, Chicago and LA. It’s really popular among inner-city denizens in the US to take GM products of this vintage and make all sorts of tasteless modifications like 22″ rims, spinners and weird jack-knife doors (G-Specials and B-Cars are especially popular for these sorts of mods).
Hard to explain it to someone outside the US, but Americans who live near any major urban area have seen rides like that. This car is right in their wheelhouse – being from Flint, I’m amazed it survived intact.
You must have missed my Friday post.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1966-oldsmobile-dynamic-88-celebrity-ones-dynamic-expression/
That’s actually a relatively mild example, fixed rims only,
I still hate those oversized rims though – cars of that vintage were designed for tires with a substantial sidewall, so the steering must tramline like hell on uneven or rutted pavement.
Sort of like the old Ford trucks in the white welfare ghettos of the rural south.
Well, here’s my story on G-Bodies and why I have every right to ridicule what they do to them. ’84 Cutlass Calais special ordered (Calais was basically the 2-door Supreme but with buckets, gages, sport model). Stolen within 6 months and recovered. The front clip was hangin’ when I viewed it at the towing yard, wheels gone propped up on a hill of snow, gas tank even stripped off and every component worth more than $10 was stripped from the engine compartment). Insurance “repaired” it but I knew I was getting rid of it pronto anyway BUT, it was stolen AGAIN and recovered. A guy bought it anyway. My advice is, if a car like this is stolen, report it the next day to make sure it’s gone. If it’s been gone for more than 10 minutes, you don’t want to ever see it again. I then ordered an ’87 Cutlass Salon (equivalent of the Calais). Had it for 10 years with only 27K, stored winters.. Numerous theft attempts (one across the street and a block away from Detroit Police Headquarters near Greektown) but they FINALLY got it in 1997. Expensive alarm/security system, and the ever popular iron collar with a padlock around the steering column. I’m sure it was picked up with a flat-bed. The “security guard” said “they got your car?”. I said, “Yeah, you were standing right there and watched with your arms crossed”. It was parked right in front of the business he was “guarding”. I was FOLLOWED by hoodrats in that car. It was rather rare, I ordered even ordered it with the lamp monitors on the hood as available on Cadillacs. It’s out there somewhere…..painted metallic turquoise with spinners.
Read about the guy in Chicago (poor thing) that took is ’83 442 to a recommended repair shop who farmed out the work to Pep Boys and it came up missing overnight. All involved had plans for that car the minute it was dropped off.
My only revenge is seeing these guys with the wheels that flew off of them stranded on the Southfield Freeway in Detroit because they’re using those $14.95 spacers to offset the wheels.
And yeah, I’m surprised this one is still alive in Flint. I’m sure the guy is packin’. Coincidentally, the ’87 I mentioned above was broken into in Flint. Minimal damage to the chrome around the frameless window. I decided a party was too boring, left, heard the alarm going off and ran to it…..just in time I’m sure.
I hate that the comments on this post start off with all this talk of “us” and “they” and who has what right to deck out (or not deck out) their cars the way they want to.
This post was just about a (probably really nice) guy with a beautiful GP on the main brick thoroughfare of my hometown. That’s it.
Well since you brought it up, yes, unfortunately it is an “us” and “they” thing. I could kill the F’rs that stole that ’87 mentioned above. Go try getting that guys car who’s driving the subject GP. See what happens.
I’ve always loved these – I want mine in blue with white interior and T Tops.
These GP’s are likely some of the most bipolar cars GM ever made – or at least during this time period.
Joe, you’ve hit the nail on the head regarding this example as it does manage to quicken the pulse and warrant a second look. Then there is the green one Jim Grey wrote about and you linked to… plus the abomination Paul found. Two ends of a very large spectrum.
Thinking about it, the GP was bipolar for the rest of its existence although it did enter that third dimension of rental car special when it was plopped on the W-body.
I once hankered for a black ’78 or ’79, looking identical to this one other than color, back in the late ’80s. It was sitting on a used car lot in Cape Girardeau….I can still see it and it looked great then, one of the few of these that I ever liked. The one you found is in this rarified company.
Paul’s strippo green one with the dog dishes – Jason, I have never seen a more unappealing example of one of these! He couldn’t have used a better car for the “Deadly Sin” write-up.
And to your point, I agree these GP’s were bi-polar. They were either lookers, or unattractive (like that “Gwen” character from “Seinfeld” if you’ve seen the episode) with little middle ground.
Nice picture Joseph. I always liked that color combination and t-tops on that generation. My Dad had one of the next generation, an ’85 in dark blue over silver two tone. It was a real pretty car. Sadly, he did not have the t-tops on his. It’s great that the subject car was left stock. I’ve always liked leaving cars all original, but then most of us on this site tend to be purists.
I don’t know Jason, my W-Body Grand Prix didn’t look like a ‘rental car special’…
Here’s the rear 3/4 view…
By no means – yours is at one far end of the spectrum.
On the other hand, one could also get this…it’s the bi-polar thing on these.
Yeah, that generation as a sedan really looked like a rental car, but its GTP coupe sibling looked pretty cool. Mine was a ’97, the first year for the next generation. The base model 4-door stripper in my year, especially in that bland beige that they came in, screamed Avis counter special. ;o)
I’ve always thought these were fine cars for their time, but unfortunately saddled with a storied name to which they couldn’t live up.
And brick streets! I love ’em! Well — I didn’t as a kid; my hometown, South Bend, has the rumbliest brick streets I’ve ever been on and as a boy the noise of driving on one was super annoying. I don’t mind them at all now! Photo from Cushing St. in South Bend attached.
Also, thanks to my road hobby, I’ve photographed a ton of old brick highways. Link to a set on Flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mobilene/sets/72157670831110816
Those are great pictures!
There’s something very compelling about the pictures of the Grand Prix driving on a brick street… one unlikely survivor meets another.
Last week I was in western Ohio and stopped by Bellefontaine to see the oldest concrete street in the US, which is in front of the County courthouse and dates from 1892 (see photo). No cars were on the street then, but a 1987 Firebird was parked on the next block — battle-scarred like a typical 30-year-old Midwestern car — and it got me thinking about what a great write-up it would have been had the Firebird been parked on the 100+ year-old road.
And before I forget, that’s a great Grand Prix. The two-tone paint really accentuates the positive aspects of the car’s design. In my opinion, this was one of the better designs from the late ’70s.
Eric, I like the “two survivors” aspect you pointed out. And I guess I never stopped to think of when concrete streets would have been introduced! Thanks for that food for thought and cool pic.
Great Flickr set, Jim!
Another thing about driving on brick streets – after it rains, you had better leave some distance in front of you in case you need to brake quickly!
Absolutely beautiful! I may be in a minority, but I always though Pontiac did a great job of pulling off the smoke and mirrors necessary to make their Brougham Era offerings simultaneously sporty, despite the well documented performance deficit. The GP is my favorite of the GM intermediate coupes, regardless of generation. Those two tone paint schemes were great too. This was an area where GM really did shine at the time. All of the big 3 offered multi tone paint schemes on their higher end offerings, but IMO GM really got them right.
I love it in this color!!
Also, fake wood or no, that is a gorgeous instrument panel.
I would love to have one of these.
I did not like these at all when they were new, at least the early ones. They seemed to be too small for their shapes and styling cues to really work themselves out, almost making the car look two dimensional instead of three dimensional. As the platform aged (and as other cars downsized and looked even worse) I came to at least a neutral place on them. For example, the 80-82 Thunderbird made these look positively elegant.
I will agree that this is one model that the right color, wheels and options can make or break it, and you found a really nice one. I would probably choose a Cutlass Supreme over one of these, but I have to admit that the dash and steering wheel is about as nice as you are likely to find from its era.
The Regal is my favorite of these, but I liked all of these coupes. One of the last gasps for GM in my book.
I never cared for the exterior appearance of this generation of GP, but the interior was a knockout and remains one of my all-time favorite interiors. Especially with the Valencia leather bucket seats, it was more private jet than car inside (love how the air vents look like gauges, adding to the aircraft aura). And the console makes a perfect 90 degree bend from the vertical face of the dash – it’s like a table in front there. The huge armrests on the door (unique to the GP whereas other GM mid-sizers got a generic shared inner door panel) complete the effect. Night and day difference from the plain, generic, plasticy Malibu and Monte Carlo interior.
I don’t get why the downsized, chiseled ’77 GM B bodies are so exalted here but the similarly-slimmed ’78 A bodies don’t get the same love.
Stay tuned. I have a piece about a ’77 Impala running in the near future. It was a real dud – I am stating that other than it having horrible paint, an inability to track a straight line, and a trunk that collected water like a cistern, it was a great car.
I’m not particularly a fan of all GM B-bodies.
Would agree, but might add that the exterior of these cars was already the beginning of the end for GMs styling influence. Just doesn’t grab me at all.
I think there’s a few reasons for it.
1. The Bs got downsized into proportions that are in a distinct sweetspot for aesthetics – they never looked downsized, they looked RIGHT sized – The A bodies to follow just never quite had that using the same formula.
2. Most had unattractive and cheap looking big square single headlights. The Malibu, The Monte Carlo, the LeMans, the Grand Am, the Century, the Regal, the Cutlass, the Cutlass Supreme. The Grand Prix was the only A body to escape it.
3. The new more upright proportions just never worked the way they did on the Bs, the A body sedans in particular have a very truncated appearance to them.
4. Chevy was the key standout and flag waver for the 77 Bs. Buick? Not too bad, certainly the LeSabre Sport Coupe was a looker until 1980, but the rest of the line looked basically like a slightly smaller 76, same with Oldsmobile for that matter, and Pontiac just looked like a rebadged Chevy. Pretty much anyone waxing poetic for 77 Bs is really talking about the Impala/Caprice, and anyone praising the BOP variants are probably citing their merits under the skin only.
Yeah, GM did themselves no favors by using the big, ungainly single, square headlights on the brand-new cars for ’78. Besides looking bad on the now smaller cars, they really smacked of cheapness. The quads on the ’80 cars were better, but they really got their mojo going with the refreshed ’81 cars. The quad headlights, alone, make the ’78 Grand Prix the best of the first year cars.
The Malibu coupe looked great.
Until the paint on the hood and the trunk got sun damaged, and the blackout trim flaked off the chrome.
Sweet… I have much lust for this Pontiac. It is the t-tops that put it over the top for me, although the guys of my Dad’s generation always told me that they never owned a car with t-tops that didn’t leak eventually.
Being a resident of Genesee county my whole life, I feel qualified to say that this county was saturated with these in their day.
My dad bought a 78 Malibu stripper (no A/C) 4 door with the horrific 200 CI V6 (two cylinders lopped off a 262 small block V8.) It also had the “standard” fixed (non-roll down) windows in the rear doors of a 4 door. A simply awful car. My dad also bought a 79 Pontiac Lemans wagon. This car was better but only because it had a 301 (which was still nothing to brag about.) These vehicles were one of the things that accelerated the demise of General Motors.
As soon as you go in any direction out of Genesee county you see a variety of everyday vehicles but in county it is still biased towards GM vehicles.
Tek, good to meet another Genesee County person. I’m always at a loss to try to explain to others unfamiliar to the area just what a large percentage and concentration of GM-branded cars there are in the Flint area, and relatively how few imports (though there are more now then when I lived there 24 years ago as a permanent resident).
When GM did the big downsizing of their midsizers in 78, most of the cars came out a bit odd and too flat and square. I think the Regal and Monte Carlo came out OK, the Pontiac in the middle, and the Cutlass the worst. Things got worst when they jammed the quad headlights into the Olds and Chevy. When they redid everything in 81, the Olds really came out well, the Buick too, Pontiac was a little awkward, but the Monte Carlo only recovered with the SS version.
My reaction was different from yours. I felt like Pontiac did the best with the ’81 reskin of the downsized A Specials.
The curving fenders make the ’78 Grand Prix look stubbier than its more linear-styled siblings. Or maybe it’s the slab sides that are to blame. Whatever it was, the ’81 reskin fixed that problem and gave the Poncho the best lines of the bunch.
The ’81 Cutlass, on the other hand, got an odd shovel-nosed grill i never warmed up to. The Olds also suffered in my eyes by it’s association with the cop show Jake and the Fat Man. I can’t imagine it helped sell Cutlasses to show a past-his-prime William Conrad waddling out of a Cutlass with a cow catcher on the front of it every week.
The Regal was the most frumpy of the 78s, the 81 restyle vastly improved it. The rest after 81 all ended up looking basically the same as the next – side by side quad headlights pulled right to the edges of the fenders, and sloping vertical taillights – yuck.
Count me among those who’ve liked these since day one. For me, the Monte Carlo was way overdone, the Regal too plain, and the Cutlass was somewhere in the middle. The GP was the looker of the lot. The clean flanks with the slight coke bottle swell remind me of the 63, the front looks like a modernized version of the 69-70, and the rear a cleaned up take on the 73. I’ve warmed up to the Monte, probably more out of nostalgia than anything else, as my sister owned a 78, a friend owned an 80, my Dad owned an 80, and I actually own an 80, that I bought in 1995. The only thing that has always puzzled me on the GP was that the taillights of these years were not in synch with the grille mesh. The 78 had vertical bars on the grille, horizontal on the taillights. In 79, the grille had more pronounced horizontal bars, and the taillights had vertical bars. In 80, the grille bars became closer set vertical bars, and the taillights had no bars, just the GP emblem. Maybe that one made the most sense?
Not my favorite generation of GP. However, in the right color(s) I would not refuse one. Mom loved her Rand Prixs. Drove them exclusively since 1963, her reaction to the dowmsized 78s was a decisive ”Meh”. However, she fell in love with the Regal and her 73 GP was traded on one. She did return to the GP in 81, though A tutone Blue Brougham. One thing that always annoyed me about this generation of P were the badly done narrow rub strips on both bumpers. Have seen so many of these with the rub strips falling off and looking like untied shoe strings, A single wider strip would have looked better, and likely held better.
Had the ’78 and those black rub strips were very durable and never fell off. The discolored silver strips on the Monte Carlos that were always flappin’ in the breeze where the ones that bothered me.
Oh yes. The Monte Carlos rub strips were a horrid set up. The entire bumper, front and rear looked like afterhoughts.
My mother owned one of these when I was a young kid. I wanted to write a COAL about it, but I don’t have any pictures of it at all.
John, I wish I had taken more pictures to send you for your write-up! I photograph so many cars and don’t always have time for the research to write them up properly.
If you can’t find pictures, there are alternatives such as oldcarbrochures.com, advertisements (also found at oldcarbrochures.com), and something else you might see online.
While I can’t speak for him, Paul is very good about accepting submissions.
I just remembered that chase scene from the Steve McQueen movie “The Hunter”, where one of these ’79 Grand Prixes gets wrecked in the spiral parking garage of Marina City here in Chicago, before plummeting into the Chicago River.
I was a kid watching the movie on TV12 “Award Theater” and I remember thinking to myself, “What a waste!”
Did they run over a 79 Trans Am SE with a Combine in that same movie? I think I saw it too as a kid. Both elicited a loud “nooooooo” at the TV screen from me,
Although as a kid I hadn’t yet fully realized water wasn’t very soft from heights, so in Hollywood fashion I just assumed the Grand Prix was fine, just a little wet 🙂
The Trans Am! Matt, I had to check this out, and here’s the footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY_oixw_Yeg.
You were close!
“I remember thinking to myself, “What a waste!”
I don’t recall seeing that movie, but could have seen myself at that time rooting for them to go find three dozen more and do them too. But no, all the movies wanted to crash was Mopars. 🙂
Always a sure sign of an impending crash from 1970s and 1980s movies was if there was a Chrysler product seen onscreen.
I would love to find a 1971 to 1978 B-body or 1974 to 1977 C-body. But, well, that hasn’t happened.
Oh my gosh, Jason – when I was in Flint two weeks ago, I saw a c. ’77 Dodge Royal Monaco sedan for sale on somebody’s lawn! No dents, but very rusty – and advertised as having the police package. I wanted so badly to stop by and try to talk with the sellers and get some pictures, but I had a few concerns. I was trying to fit the most into 72 hours (including a car show) and I didn’t want to get the owner’s hopes up.
Sigh.
Oh well, they still exist which is reassuring.
I never understood why so many seem to find the 81 refresh an improvement over these. This headlight/marker layout is so much more unique, and that stylistic carryover was probably my favorite part of the Collonade version. The interiors are nice too, full gathering of round gauges, hands down the most attractive of the downsized 78 siblings.
I can understand someone preferring the earlier GP to the later ’81-up versions, simply because, of all the downsized A-bodies, the Grand Prix seemed to change the least in 1981 and, yeah, regarding the grille, not for the better.
But whether an early or late car, you definitely had to avoid the base cars. Paul’s earlier find of a über-plain, strippo 1978 version (with OEM dog-dish hubcaps, no less) is the pits, and really highlights how drab those cars could be unless they had upper-tier trim and the right paint scheme.
The A-bodies that improved exponentially were the Cutlass and Regal, not to mention that the Buick got that hotrod turbo V6, that many consider the last hurrah of a ‘true’ musclecar (a fast RWD coupe versus later fast RWD sedans like the ‘bubble’ Impala SS).
The Monte Carlo was kind of a wash.
My first car was a ’79 Grand Prix in Claret with tan Landau top and the fake wire wheels. It had been my mom’s and was in good shape and I always thought it had, by far, the best interior of this class of GM vehicles.
Those individual, rotating air vents were really good for directing the cool in specific directions.
My view is the ’79 was the most attractive of the three-year run of this series. The ’78 looked a bit cheap and the ’80 was too stuffy with the very formal grille and flat taillights. This one had deeper and more detailed rear lights and the egg crate grille worked well.
As was typical with GM cars of the era, it had a host of various issues, including power window motors that went out, broken a/c, and various trim that wouldn’t stay on, especially the black strip over the glove box, that constantly fell off.
That said, it was a nice car and I enjoyed it.
I was thought this was the best ‘personal luxury coupe ‘ ever when these came out, though I couldn’t drive. Car & Driver had a really positive review of one of these in 1979 -lioaded, with real wire wheels, it was closer to $9 or $10k than the $5700 base price.
I would’ve wanted one a painted solid roof–no vinyl or T-top
One comment–I believe those are styled STEEL wheels, that were seen on many Pontiacs. The snowflakes aluminum wheels were a costlier option, as were real wire wheels. The Brougjam ish wire wheel covers were popular on these cars too
Thanks for the memory!
Tom, you’re probably right about those wheels – thanks for pointing that out!
And $10,000 – wow. That would have been a $33,000 car in today’s money!
I had a few vehicles with the tru-spoke wires, one with the basket type wire wheel. I always hated those spoke hubcaps though and was so glad when they went out of style. First, they were always stolen left/right and second, were a nuisance to clean for not looking that great after all that work anyway. I know one guy that took those spoke hubcaps off his Seville and put them in the dishwasher on delicate cycle when his wife was out. My mother specifically bought the (horrid) Dodge Dynasty because it had an actual wheel with no caps or parts to be stolen.
I did own this 78 grand prix LJ, for a couple of years. I know it was original two-tone gray .
When I purchase the car they had it repainted in satin black, fine by me.
Fine car with 4.9l v8 , leather bucket seats, power seat,windows, A/C.It got positive reactions where ever it appeared.
My GP
My grand prix LJ resides now in france. I regret that I sold it afterall but I have two other cars…..a 87 pontiac grand am LE coupe V6, and a 78 buick riviera.
And to keep cars in general in the netherlands is quite expensive due various taxes and of course extremely high gas prices!
I added some striping that I expanded further later around the wheel arches en lower body.
This picture shows how it did look when I just purchased the.car…….less striping.
J.Klavers, you had a really cool ‘Prix! Your pride of (former) ownership is so apparent. I dig the matte finish and red pin stripes with that red interior. Thanks for posting those pictures!
Thank you Joseph for your comment.
The main reason I have let this car go was due the new tax rules that our country (Holland) liked to be introducing. And caused a double payment per month for owners with cars equipped with a LPG tank (liquid petrol gas) It could be driven on gasoline as well.Under the dash there was a switch to make the choice.I know that the next owner living in France have also a lot of troubles to register the car the LPG tank is removed and the GP rides now on gasoline only.
I’ve grown to like the way this generation of Grand Prix looks.
I was even more impressed when I rode in the one owned by a friend of my wife about 25 years ago. It was similar to this one, only in the 2-tone blue combination. It rode and drove well and had a great V-8 exhaust note, too!
Wow – there is a lot of dislike on CC for the downsized GP – I actually liked it more than the other A-bodies. The Regal was nice but blah to me, the Monte Carlo looked weird, and the Cutlass Supreme was nice but boring too. And I think any American car from the 70’s and 80’s optioned and/or loaded up makes a looker out of it. Lets face it, if you start spending money on options of course the car will look better than a basic, stripped counterpart.
Case in point, we had a neighbor with a loaded ’79 Catalina coupe – yes, Catalina – and I have to say it was the best looking Catalina I have ever seen! It had the Rallye II wheels, a power sunroof, 2-tone paint, sport mirrors and nearly every option you could put into that thing. They probably should have sprung for a Bonneville but either way that Catalina was a good looking car. Most Catalinas didn’t turn my head back then, that’s for sure!
The picture below is of a ’78 Catalina sedan with 2-tone, sport mirrors and Custom finned wheel covers – what a difference over a basic stripped Catalina!
Tom, that is a *looker*. I spotted and profiled a nice ’79 Catalina earlier this year: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-capsule/cc-capsule-1979-pontiac-catalina-coupe-please-pass-the-dressing/
And you make some valid points about options making or breaking a car’s attractiveness. I wonder just how much of GM’s making “base” cars look unattractive in this era was punitive and a play for the upsell. Probably a lot.
Absolutely. Compare any ’77-’85 Impala to a same-year Caprice Classic; the Impala’s details don’t just look plain, they look deliberately cheap and ugly.
Wow! Beautiful. Always liked that Grand Prix even as the Chevrolet Malibu was horrific and dumpy looking (though I did love the Monte Carlo). I think these were some of the last GM cars to be built that actually had styling. There is nothing since the late 1990’s that has any styling from this dreadful company that the taxpayers bailed out – and there are no beautiful cars mass produced that has Ed Well-bum’s hands on it.
I love 1970s Pontiacs but these just don’t muster much enthusiasm from me, beautiful interior aside. The Grand Am was more my style, and I think both the Grand Am and LeMans coupe had a more flowing design with stronger hips. That being said, the ’78-80 Grand Prix looks MUCH better to my eyes than the ’81-87. The ’81 added a really dumpy front end and couldn’t balance the sporty/luxury balance anywhere near as well as the Monte, Regal and Cutlass Supreme.
Of course, I find the ’76-77 Grand Prix to be more attractive because it had more metal to apply its stylistic elements to. But the ’78 was an acceptable effort, just not as good as its A-Body coupe siblings.
Agreed with y’all on the two-tone paint combos though. That really made these pop. And I love the three-lights-each-side headlight set-up used on these and the ’80-81 Catalina/Bonneville and ’77 Grand Prix.
Still… Gimme a ’78-80 Grand Am instead.
Pontiac redesigned the Landau roof, pinstripe, and two tone paint on the 79 and 80 Grand Prix to give it more of a coke bottle look. On the 78 version, the Landau roof moldng went straight from the edge of the front window to where the deck lid started, and on the 79 and 80 model, it had a curve, which gave it a more coke bottle effect. Also the pin stripe and the two tone paint ended at the deck lid while on the 79 and 80 version, it entended to the end of the rear fender, again with a slight curve like a coke bottle.
The feature car in those beautiful red colors featured the standard two tone. But, there was also a two town treatment that had the accent color in the middle of the car only, with the main color showing on the top and the bottom. That was really nice and made the car look even better.
Ahh, the paradox of T-tops. They do make it look a lot more special than it would have otherwise, but I wouldn’t want to live with them. From a practical standpoint, my feeling about T-tops is that they offer most of the drawbacks of convertibles and sunroofs with few of their advantages other than looking kind of sporty.
It is ashamed that 70s Pontiac never got to putting together a 301 that could have given this attractive Grand Prix proper motivation. The 301 turbo was a failure but a nice basic 4 barrel dual exhaust of about 180hp would have made the best of the much lighter weight of this generation. The Monte Carlo SS and Hurst Olds eventually offered it, but not for 5 long years.
I really liked the looks of this era Grand Prix and Grand Am. A friend had a ’79 Grand Am with the 301 cu in, 4 bbl. It made 170 hp in Canadian trim, if I remember correctly. Great car.
Great photos of a car not often seen much around here, even at car shows.
As others have said, this particular car highlights how critical the paint, trim and wheel options were for this generation of Grand Prix. The base models of the prior two generations still looked special, but this Grand Prix really needed to be optioned right to achieve the same effect.
I thought that the heavily revised 1981 coupes were all improved over their predecessors, with the Chevrolet Monte Carlo showing the biggest improvement. The 1981 Grand Prix is also attractive, but I’d still prefer either an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme or Buick Regal.
I’d have replied directly underneath the comment (but it’s not giving me the option to)….NoDifferent, that certainly is terrible that your cars got stolen, but your huge story, coupled with mentioning of that the guy with the Grand Prix in the picture in this story must be packing, etc……you must have missed that the original detour into what people do to these cars, were in terms of modifications (huge rims, etc); not ever meant to be a paranoid, police state discussion about thefts, chop shops and whatnot.
I love this car, though would prefer it without the T top. It is one of the last of the personal; luxury coupes, and while not as impressive as the ’73-’77 models, it’s plenty nice. Pontiac got it right. Chevy screwed up on the ’78 Monte Carlo.
That’s a beauty! I wouldn’t mind a ride in that example at all!
SINISTER …..
Greenhouse…
Red…red…red
2022.” Grey,Grey n Grey!. Please car makers bring back some colour in to the b&w world of interiors.
V8 4.9l with the LPG equipment.
USA car show-meeting in the netherlands….
My parents got a very similar 79 GP in 83 or 84. It was silver with black leather, wire wheels, t tops and the 301. I thought my father had gone nuts as previous cars were Vega, lesabre, station wagons, etc. the car seemed quick as it held first gear forever. But 17 year old me was infatuated with the t tops.
Always thought these were great, this one looks amazing.
Regarding the downsized As, I thought the ONLY ones that should have had the dual headlights were the Chevys (and they looked decent with them). The rest deserved quads. The shovel-nose Cutlass Supreme was the peak, for me. Ironically, it’s the Cutlass sedan that’s the pits.
The bigger cars? Gimme a C body Ninety Eight coupe, or a B body Pontiac coupe.
(Not my color choices necessarily, but I love the “giant Cutlass Supreme” look to this car)
At least the GP came with chrome metal bumpers. The Monte Carlo came with painted plastic bumpers with some really unfortunate simulated metal trim. Those trim pieces didn’t hold up as well as black plastic rub strips used on other models.
H’mmm. I don’t know that I find the phony metal trim on that bumper particularly ugly, but I also don’t think it improves the car any. Kind of ridiculous for GM to be so afraid people would reject a car without chrome bumpers that they’d resort to this artificial tart-up…kind of easy to imagine one GM executive overriding perfectly competent designers and insisting. With our hindsight aided by many years of painted plastic bumpers, we can clearly see they should’ve left off the artificial chrome.
The bumper itself was innovative.
I don’t much care for the exterior appearance of this GP, and the performance of most cars of this era is at best unexceptional, but the interior is an absolute knockout. One of my favorite ever. Looks more like a cockpit of an airplane (or how I imagine it to be anyway) than the dashboard and console of most cars – all those gauges and air vents made to look like gauges. Trivia – you could have either a tach or an analog clock in rightmost large round opening, but not both in the same car. If you wanted both a tach and a clock, you could get the digital clock on the passenger side (shown in the brochure photo). But if you didn’t get the tach, you could have both an analog clock and a digital clock in your car (C/D tested a GP so equipped, calling it “a Pontiac with time to spare”.
Yeah, from the driver’s seat (at least for the gauges), the A/G-Special Pontiac was the one to get.
Unfortunately, with the exception of the ’78-’80 cars (and only because Pontiac was the only one to have decent looking quad headlights), the 1981 refresh did the Grand Prix no favors. The other divisions finally caught up and left the forelorn, slab-sided, final RWD GP coupe in the dust, not only in styling, but performance, as well. A sad end to the car the began the mid-size PLC category and carried it so well, at least until the 1978 downsizing.
And the NASCAR special 2+2 ‘Aerocoupe’ version with it’s ginormous rear window (’64-’66 Barracuda, anybody?) was nothing to write home about, either, and Pontiac dealers had a tough time unloading those things, particularly with a price that was way out of line with what the purchaser got. Even the Monte Carlo version with the big rear window sold better.
The GP 2+2 rear window treatment had all the awkward looks of the first-gen Barracuda without any of the practicality/fun of a folding rear seatback or removable trunk separator panel. It also reduced the size of the trunk opening to mail-slot proportions; and unlike the Barracuda there was no access to the trunk from the passenger area. Same thing with the Monte Carlo NASCAR homologation special, although it had a slightly smaller rear window allowing for a slightly larger luggage opening
The 1981 GP was an attempt to graft the 1963 folds and creases (with a bit of influence from the ’73-77 colonnade models as well) onto the shrunken, boxy 1981 proportions. It didn’t work, and unless you have both cars side by side to compare, you probably wouldn’t make the connection. (the 1963 Grand Prix, like the 1981, was an extensive facelift of an existing body, in this case the 1961).
I’m not as bothered by the single rectangular headlamps as many others here are, but it’s interesting to note that every single A/G body model from all four divisions switched over to quad headlamps after a few years, for both the A/G “special” coupes and the sedans/wagons which had a completely different body.
“I don’t get why the downsized, chiseled ’77 B bodies are so exalted, but the similarly- slimmed ’78 A bodies don’t get the same love.”
The ’77 B bodies were based on an Italianate design which borrowed heavily from a Pininfarina Jaguar concept car. This Italinate design (used by all of the divisions), most closely resembles the eventual ’77 Caprice. An early Bonneville mock-up is actually a dead ringer for the ’78 Lemans intermediate. The April 2008 issue of Collectible Automobile has photos of this clay sedan. On a longer wheelbase it does lose the truncated appearance of the smaller-sized intermediate. Makes for a painful comparison.