A pristine 1986 Pontiac Grand Am? Well, that’s not something you see every day, especially at a drag strip. Look closer, and then you realize this isn’t any ordinary Grand Am. Turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder? Five-speed manual? Just 6000 miles on the clock? And a cage and SCCA insi…
One of my newest favorite car flavors?
Pre-production/prototypes that were supposed to be crushed but weren't.
It's always fun to see what could have been.
Run!
1986 Pontiac Grand Am SE
J.A. Ackley said:It's always fun to see what could have been.
Nothing there that wasn't a was 
GM has always done some interesting prototypes/test mules. I loved the Feretta too. A V8 FWD beast that was doomed from the start. Talk about torque steer...
I always liked that style of GA. I have no doubt that it smoked clutches, those things are a bit heavier than the J cars that trans was intended for and the stock boost is only like 7 or 8psi. The Isuzu trans that was bolted into the 2.0 turbo cars was not very sturdy either - V6 J cars got a Getrag unit with a bigger clutch/flywheel and rated for more power but the 2.0 OHC had a different bellhousing pattern.
Those Brazilian 2.0 OHC turbo motors were ticking time bombs though. Head gaskets were not the greatest and when the turbos let go, it pretty much trashed the engine.
In reply to cobra17 :
The engine was Opel's fault, no? Daewoo made a version up until fairly recently.
The turbo 2.0 would bolt into a Pontiac Lemans, since that came with a 1.6l version. The whole car was a Kadett which was more or less a German J-body, made in Korea. The low end Daewoo-branded car (Lanos?) was more or less a Kadett and it used this engine family, too.
It wasn't the head gaskets that failed, by recollection, as much as it was the cylinder heads cracking after about 60k miles like clockwork. Whole industries were built around repairing them, or new castings.
Funny this comes up now. Posting pictures to the early days of autocross thread, I remembered a father-and-son showing up at one of our local events with some kind of hairy Modified or Street Prepared car. The thing broke halfway through the day. Undeterred, they entered the dad's bone-stock Grand Am just to have something to drive and promptly shoved it around the course, front sidewalls contributing to traction as much as the tread. They were very skilled drivers and far from the slowest on course that day.
After all these decades, I've forgotten whether that was the same day the local VFD took their big engine through the course and scored a clean run...
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
The Lanos was very closely related to, and used the same 1.6 engine as your beloved Aveo.
What is a "cut suspension"? Cut springs?
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
They were used in Daewoos, same engine family. I briefly had a 90 Sunbird GT with the 2.0 turbo and had to source ARP rod cap bolts for it from overseas (for a Daewoo). There was a DOHC head swap from the Daewoo Nubira (IIRC) that could be done on these engines as well. I want to say that Kia or Hyundai briefly used the same architecture, there was a big donor list somewhere online when I dug into it ages ago.
The original engines, non-turbo at least, were built in Brazil and shipped stateside for the Sunbird so on the old J-body forum I was a member of, we just called them the Brazilian engines. My exposure with the 2.0 OHC was brief and tangential, I know more than anyone should about the GM V6 J/L cars though because I had an unnatural affinity for them in my younger years.
CyberEric said:What is a "cut suspension"? Cut springs?
Correct. Cut springs.
I was a fan of the first and second generation Grand Ams, but never warmed up to this one. I remember having one as a rental back when they were new; granted it was a base model with auto transmission, but it had zero personality.
In reply to stuart in mn :
It might have been what the automaker was going for.
In reply to J.A. Ackley :
It may have been the beginning of the end for Pontiac.
In reply to cobra17 :
While they were made in Brazil, they were German engines, the same way that GM 3.9l V6s were Chevy engines but made in China.
I have an unnatural affinity for Chevettes, which were also Brazilian Opels. And it could also be said that the J bodies were just American Opels/Vauxhalls...
I think the only truly American small cars beyond the Vega and Pinto were the Chrysler K-cars. And before 1974 the Pintos had English or German engines...
stuart in mn said:In reply to J.A. Ackley :
It may have been the beginning of the end for Pontiac.
Not the Aztek? 
In reply to J.A. Ackley :
The 3rd generation Grand Am was introduced 5 or 6 years before the Aztek.
Not to say the Aztek wasn't controversial. I was at the Pontiac club national convention in 2001 and they had a presentation by the head of the Pontiac design department, followed by a Q & A session. The very first question from the audience was "What were you thinking when you designed the Aztek?" They didn't have a very good answer. Having said that, outside of its looks by most accounts it was a pretty decent car. It was kind of ahead of its time, if it had been introduced 5 or 10 years later it wouldn't have stood out very much from the crowd.
In reply to stuart in mn :
Thanks for the historic background. You're probably right for it being ahead of its time. The Aztek still seems a bit out of character for the sporty image of Pontiac. If it were marketed for another brand, such as Saturn, it might have had a better fit and had less animosity toward it.
In reply to J.A. Ackley :
It's kind of like the Bangle Butt era of BMWs. When they first came out their looks were universally panned, but after a number of years had passed they hardly stuck out from the crowd.
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