Question for Pontiac folks

[old5.0]

I have a question that's been nagging me for quite some time, and maybe someone here can give some insight. In the 80's, GM was basically alone in attempting to maintain some semblance of midsize performance. Ford had the T-Bird Turbo Coupe which, while it was a good road car/grand touring rig, was definitely not a musclecar (although, to be fair, it never pretended to be one, either). Olds did the H/O's in 83-84 and offered a G-body 442 throughout the 80's, as well as being continuously involved in NHRA Stock during this period (I've heard they even delivered a handful of special "lightweight" G-body Cutlasses to certain loyal Olds drivers back in the mid-80's, but I don't know the details). Chevy had the Monte SS, which wasn't a barnstormer in stock form, although I think the 305 HO had more potential than most people give it credit for. Of course the Turbo Regals speak for themselves.


My question is, where was Pontiac? It still sold itself as the Enthusiast division of GM, so why no hot rod Grand Prix? The 2+2 was interesting, but was saddled with a boat anchor of a 305. Did the powers that be at Pontiac feel the Firebird was sufficient for attracting the straightline crowd? Was there interference from on high at GM headquarters? Were any hot GP's ever discussed or planned? There were plenty of performance-oriented GP's to come, seemingly almost as soon as the front-drive GM-10 hit the scene in 88, so why were the last of the rear-drivers abandoned right in the middle of a massive resurgence in factory performance?

[ds1]

You are right in pointing out the absence of Pontiac. And you are right about Olds. I know Steve Sweitzer and Joe Scott they both ran Olds 442's. Joe had a 442 pilot car with out a title he put one on and drove it. He has been trying to sell some of those cars.

[ds1]

You are right in pointing out the absence of Pontiac. And you are right about Olds. I know Steve Sweitzer and Joe Scott they both ran Olds 442's. Joe had a 442 pilot car with out a title he put one on and drove it. He has been trying to sell some of those cars. The answer seems to be in the fact that Pontiac and Chevy pushed the Camaro and Firebird. Olds did not have an offering like that. The Monte Carlo was not often seen then. The Grand Prix and Monte Carlo SS were Nascar products. Buick was in Nascar and the Olds Calais offering was not a G body, but they offered a Cup car also. At that time all parts on the cars had to have factory part numbers. A joke, all cars ran MSD ignition but the systems all had the makers name, color and a factory part number on them. The beginning of dumb politics and what I called the sterilization of a manly sport.

[Tracker1]

Pontiac did not have a performance V8 or V6 platform to call their own, at least not one that responded to factory engineered, emissions-passing modifications. Chevrolet still had a small-block which became a "corporate" engine for every division, but they put their own touch on it (L69). Olds had a 307 and Buick as you pointed out, had their V6 version of My Pet Monster. You cannot under-estimate how losing the V8 programs in 1979 (400) and then 1981 (301HO) killed company self-esteem at Pontiac division. They seemed happy to coast on Chevy's engine for the T/A and leave the GP as a luxury GT car with no teeth - as it had been since about 1972 anyway. None of the round-port hi-perf Pontiac engines of the early '70s were ever offered in a GP, so the car's "persona" was set.

[RAIIIT/A]

With Pontiac you could get a TPI motor in the GTA.. Trans Am and Formula Firebirds. In 1989 you could get the turbo GN V6 in a Firebird. Pontiac was more focused on F-bodies than G-bodies.
Chevy only offered the TPI in the Corvette and Z/28.....no other Camaros were offered with the TPI. Too bad you couldn't get the TPI in a G-body

[ds1]

You could not get TPI in a G body. It is funny though that I have had several people tell me they or their buddy had one. I have had 2 85 Monte SS over the years. The Carburated engines out ran fuel injected cars in stock form. They did well at what I call " the grand illusion". Making you feel like you had power. With OD transmissions and gearing they did a good job of fooling people.

[firstgenaddict]

As far as a performance program, Pontiac was doing twin turbo V8 Trans Ams in the late 80's early 90's as studies, They made Firebird 1LE's which are much rarer than the Camaro 1LE's.
The Firebirds may have been run in the Players Championship races in Canada or were they running the Camaros in that series as well?

[old5.0]

Well, Pontiac was on top of things with the F-Body. People have this perception of the Third Gen as being generally slow which was fed by the thousands of 305 throttle body powered stones GM pumped out of Van Nuys and Norwood every year. But people forget that you could buy a genuinely fast Third Gen by the late 80’s-early 90’s.


The 89 Turbo T/A is still one of the top three or four fastest production Firebirds ever made, the 91-92 Firehawks (even though they weren’t assembly line) made something like 370 honest net horsepower, and that was before you ordered the aluminum block 383 stroker option. And you could still order a pretty brutal “regular” Firebird back then, if you knew how to play the option list. Order a Formula with no comfort or convenience options, the TPI 305, 5-speed, N10, G80, G92, and all that car needed to crack a 13 second quarter mile was a driver not afraid of his own shadow.


There’s no doubt the boys at Pontiac played the F-body hustle like Minnesota Fats back then. But that’s why it’s so confusing that there was never a hot rod G-Body Grand Prix.

[old5.0]

Just a little addendum. I was talking to a guy the other day who told me that Myrtle Motors built a handful of hot rodded GP's in the mid-80's. Any truth to that?

[PxTx]

Got an idea on the basic mods on the GP?

Thought of you Tony when I read this thread here:

http://gearheads.org/why-you-should-appreciate-performance-cars-of-the-1980s/#.VN1jM6NOnFp

They fault the Fox body becasue Ford was intending to replace it with the Probe. Ha! Turbo TA gets all the glory.

[old5.0]

He didn't give me any details. I stopped by the guy's place to check out a 70 T/A he's restoring, and we got on the subject of G-bodies somehow. I mentioned that I'd heard a story about Olds giving out some sort of specially modded Cutlass to loyal Olds Stock and S/S racers back in the early-mid 80's, and he mentioned the Myrtle Motors deal, but didn't know anything other than they supposedly built them.

I'm not nearly as knowledgeable on the state of the aftermarket for GM back then as I am for Ford, so I'm not sure what might have been done to them in terms of heads or intakes or if they had blowers/nitrous or whatever. There was a dealership in Chicago selling supercharged Firebirds around that time period, but I don't know much about them, either. The Myrtle Motors deal could just be an old wive's tale.

That's an interesting article, although I see all the internet Einstein's are working their magic in the comments section. <<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/haha.gif A lot of people don't realize that the Fox was actually due to replaced by a front driver twice; once in 1983 or '84 and again in 87 by the Probe. It's hard to imagine what the performance world would look like today if that had happened.

[StealthBird]

They did have a limited edition Grand Prix in 1986 called the 2+2. While nothing too special under the hood, it had an aerodynamic package (along with the Monte Carlo SS Aerocoupe) designed and built for homologation into NASCAR. All the 1986 Pontiac 2+2's came with the 5.0 V8. The prototype for the 1986 Pontiac 2+2 (built on a 1985 model) is now at the Pontiac Museum, on loan from the Richard Petty collection. The prototype did not have a VIN#, and should not have been let out of engineering. Petty helped design the aero package for this car, and he said that when they were done, they gave Pontiac the results, and no one asked for the car back, so he kept it.

When they moved the Grand Prix from the G-Body to the W-body in 1988, it was Motor Trend's Car Of The Year. By 1989, Pontiac had 5.7 liter Formulas and Trans Ams, a nasty V6 Turbo Trans Am,, Turbo 2.0 Sunbirds (with serious torquesteer issues), Turbo Grand Am's, and a limited edition Turbo Grand Prix by ASC McLaren that put out a very respectable (for that time period) 205 hp.

I don't think Pontiac was concerned with making a performance G-body Grand Prix in the mid-1980's other than the 2+2. They already had a stable full of high performance (or sporty) models, and with the all-new 1988 Grand Prix in the works, they probably saw no need for another high-performance car in their lineup.

Mike

[PeteLeathersac]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: old5.0</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Just a little addendum. I was talking to a guy the other day who told me that Myrtle Motors built a handful of hot rodded GP's in the mid-80's. Any truth to that? </div></div>

Click here...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=et-M4cwWQLk

<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/beers.gif
~ Pete

[old5.0]

Awesome! Thanks for posting that, Pete! Now I really want to know more about them.

[StealthBird]

http://www.pontiacserver.com/gph3_gt.jpg

Another specialty GP offered at this time was the Grand Prix GT, from Myrtle Motors of Middle Village, N.Y. The GT featured a standard-issue 305 4-barrel hooked to a 4-speed automatic. It received a black exterior with matching blacked-out trim, rear deck spoiler and Rally II wheels shod with 215/65R-15 Goodyear Eagle GT radials. According to the Myrtle Motors sales department, they were not allowed to make any mechanical modifications due to emissions regulations. As it turned out, less than 20 GTs were sold.

[old5.0]

Thanks Mike. No mechanical mods is disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. It does look good wearing the Grand National clothes, though.

[StealthBird]

You're welcome! <<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/smile.gif

I think the GT emblems that Myrtle used on the GP may have come off the 1986 Sunbird, but I'm not sure. DKM (Mecham) had a run of 1985 Macho Trans Am's, and like Myrtle, they claimed no engine mods. I think they pumped out around 190 hp stock.

I'm not sure what changed with emission laws by 1991, but SLP created the first Firehawk that used a modified intake and a well built bottom end. Perhaps when all the engine mods were done, it still passed emissions.

[old5.0]

Like I said, I'm a long ways from an expert on 80's GM stuff, but I've heard that the Firehawk underwent separate emissions certification, as well as separate crash testing because SLP changed something structural in the car. I don't know if that's true, but I was told Ed Hamburger about went bankrupt after he had to crash three new Firehawks on his own dime. There were a couple of aluminum block 383 stroker cars built, I think. I'm not sure how they fit in the picture.

There weren't many emissions legal hard parts back then; not like today, where practically everything has a certification. I've heard of some blower Firebirds out of a dealership in Chicago, but I don't much about them. I know there were several Ford dealers doing modified &quot;package&quot; Mustangs back then that were even more illegal than usual since they were modded before sale. Most of them got away with it, but not all. There was a dealer in Kansas City that got popped pretty hard for illegal modifications. They'd been selling them with a notation on the sales contract that said something like &quot;This vehicle is intended for off road competition use only and is not legal for use on public highways.&quot; Shockingly, the feds didn't care about their note. <<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/hmmm.gif <<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/haha.gif

[KenMaisano]

I did a bunch of work on Pontiac hot rods in the 80S for Doug Goad back in my PAS days. Prototype Automotive Services. We ran Hard in the show room stock classes and built some serious twin turbo stuff. along with a couple prototype GTOs that I built some all Magnesium 3.0 iron duke and four valve Mosier headed engines. Along with building all the prototype and production Turbo Trans Am.
Very fun days with Many late hours.

Ken Maisano

[GTO_DON]

Always will be a worthless car in my opinion. Has no eyeball at all.

[old5.0]

Thanks for posting, Ken. I knew Pontiac was doing quite a bit back then with the four cylinders, but I don't know any details. I've never found a source that goes into it in depth.

[old5.0]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: GTO_DON</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Always will be a worthless car in my opinion. Has no eyeball at all. </div></div>

Eh, when I was younger I hated G-bodies, probably in part because you couldn't walk 10 feet without tripping over one. Now that I'm older and you don't see them everywhere, I kinda like 'em. I think that GP looks good in all black with the hood tach, I just wish it had come with a little more grunt under the hood. It's a shame the TPI engines never made it into the G's. For that matter, it's a shame the Pontiac V8 got killed off. I would have loved to see a 3rd gen 'Bird with an EFI, roller cammed Pontiac under the hood.