(first posted 1/15/2018) Once upon a time, roads and parking lots in the United States were teeming with the Pontiac Grand Am. When GM’s third attempt at popularizing its model name appeared in the fall of 1984, it was when I was at an age when I was finally allowed to be dropped off at the mall without adult supervision. It was a rite of passage for many of us who were born in the ’70s & ’80s to be able to go to the mall with our friends, play video games at the arcade, eat in the food court, and, like, totally blow our weekly allowance. At a time before online shopping was the norm, many of us did actual walking instead of letting our fingers and computer mouses (mice?) do so, virtually.
In my recollection, by my teenage years in the early ’90s, it seemed like at least one in ten cars in the parking lot of one of the Flint area’s three malls was an N-Body Grand Am. The G/A seemed like such a Michigan car – a sporty-looking, relatively affordable compact that had just enough fashionable plastic to fit in with that era’s high-tech image, while still being within reach of the salaries of many working class adults. It also fit in nicely with Pontiac’s “Excitement Division” identity with the introduction of a 125-horsepower 3.0L V6 on the SE variant for ’86, then with the turbocharged, 150-hp 2.0L four-cylinder borrowed from the Sunbird Turbo for ’87. Our lower-tier featured car, however, is likely powered by a 110-hp 2.5L Tech IV, and probably weighs about 2,600 pounds.
I feel like much of the Grand Am’s evolutionary changes in both physical appearance and general image mirrored my own gradual shifts in many personal preferences in those formative years. You know how it is, when you become a teenager and suddenly many of the things you had cherished just a few years before – certain cartoons, t-shirts, toys, and even friends in some truly unfortunate scenarios – suddenly fall (hard) out of your favor. It then becomes “cool” to trash the things you used to really like when you were oh, so much younger in order to distance yourself from the you that didn’t know quite as much as you did by that later date.
For me, the N-Body Grand Am was one of those objects, being a car I genuinely liked at first. By the dawn of the ’90s, though, and also aided by these cars’ sheer ubiquity, they had suddenly seemed to become the object of near-universal derision as emblems of aspirational, blue-collar crapitude. Some of the “car guys” with whom I went to school who dreamed of owning and restoring their own Chevelles and Camaros used to complain about having to drive their mom’s Grand Am on weekends. I would have gladly traded my family’s ’84 Ford Tempo with such individuals, but at that age, access to a car (any car) was all that really mattered to me.
When I stumbled across this example last month, it was truly a shock – almost like running into an old acquaintance from high school. These Grand Ams weren’t just the most plentiful of their N-Body platform-mates (which included the Buick Somerset / Somerset Regal / Skylark and the Oldsmobile Calais / Cutlass Calais). Initially, they were genuinely popular, well-liked cars, selling in excess of 200,000 units for each of the four model years between ’86 and ’89, and falling just short in ’90 with 197,000 units sold. My own personal pendulum has swung back from adverse selection against things that may be nice and/or popular, back to just liking what I like. It may be a bit of my nostalgia speaking, but I don’t hate this car!
While I don’t necessarily want one of these Grand Ams (even in pristine condition), I like that they were a reflection of the tastes of much of the Middle America that shaped a lot of who I am today. Much like the signage in the corridors of many malls at the time this car was new, the G/A was a symbol of what many Americans wanted. Sure, its plastic cladding soon spread across Pontiac’s entire model lineup and also became as passé as bolo ties and tight-rolling your Bugle Boy trousers at the cuffs, but at this car’s introduction, that look seemed very much in vogue. The fact is that now, I’m more than a little sad that the American mall, and its subculture that I remember so fondly from adolescence on, seems to be going the way of Pontiac.
We still have many brick and mortar malls and retail stores for the time being and, hopefully, will continue to do so for a while. What a treat, though, around this past holiday season – when malls are traditionally bustling with activity – to see an example of one of the most popular “citizens” of their parking lots, at a time of year when, in my mind, malls and Pontiacs in general were still totally awesome.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, December 17, 2017.
Thanks Joe for bringing back good memories of ’90s (and even early ’00s mall days. Back then, going to the mall was an experience, and an act of enjoyment in itself. Going to our then local mall, the South Shore Plaza, was a regular Friday afternoon/evening activity. My mom and I would do a little shopping, meet my aunt Kathy who worked near by for dinner, and then usually end up in the mall bookstore for a while.
Saturdays were also often “mall days”, and it was a common activity for us to drive to one of the many area malls further away for the experience of it, even if the stores were the same. These days, I can’t stand going to most indoor shopping malls. If there’s something specific I need, I’m in and out of there as fast as I can.
As for the Grand Am, being a few years younger I more commonly saw the following two generations everywhere. I must say though that if we are talking just the Grand Am, I like the cleaner styling of this first generation. Grand Ams were very strong sellers, but never seemed to have much of an enthusiast/aspirational image. I generally saw them driven by younger, blue-collar types and elderly women who preferred a smaller car.
Thanks, Brendan! I also used to make it a point to actually buy something or spend money when I went to the mall, as you mentioned having done some shopping. Much of my money was spent at one of the music stores (Tape World, Record Town, or one of the other ones). It gave me an excuse to actually get something for myself and feel like less of a loiterer, if that makes sense at all.
Sometimes, though, I would go just to hang out without spending any money – just to be with my group of friends or to have something to do / somewhere to go.
Agree with you 100% that the styling of the original was the cleanest.
I am at a complete loss when it comes to “mall fascination”.
what was so specical about them?
Ohh my. Not just the Pontiac either. The Grand Am was blah. But talking about malls, it does get fairly nostalgic.. I’m from MN, the land of the Mall of America, so no clothes sales tax. Barf. Yet I worked there and at Water Tower Chicago in intermittent stints. Good lord, thank you for allowing me to remove myself from retail life. That ish isn’t easy.
One of Pontiac’s last successes. Back in the mid-90’s when I had my BMW E30 325is, I could always count on some late adolescent in one of these wanting to street race. They were Johnstown’s answer to a BMW if you had the delusion, but not the money.
Shopping malls are still popular here in Australia with a lot of the larger ones here in Brisbane expanding and adding outdoor dining precincts. Ah, but that’s because it’s a yearly tradition in the summer, when it gets really hot, to either go to the beach or go to the shops.
These were easily the best-looking N-Bodies, although I think the ’92 redesign was quite distinctive and appealing. As for this generation, I actually think they looked better with the sealed beams. I can see how they invited BMW (visual) comparisons. Just a pity GM didn’t try to burnish their sporty image–the turbo fizzled out quickly, the V6 never came with a stick, there was no “GTP” or anything. The Grand Am seemed to always be a bit more show than go, but it remained a remarkably strong seller for years. Pontiac had a lot of loyal buyers!
Will, I agree with you (and Jason W., below) that the sealed-beam look on the original ’85 and ’86 models looked best. To me, these were the best-looking of the compact Grand Ams, in the long run.
I was in high school when the new ’92s came out, and while it was time for something new after eight, full model years of the previous design, they took a while to grow on me.
I also agree with your assessment about being more show than go (at least in the beginning), which seemed a shame with such a strong brand and visual identity Pontiac had developed with the Grand Am.
I never knew shopping malls are still popular in Australia but then I thought of Bondi Junction, hearing it from the radio station.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P-2RoP6Smw
I can’t imagine an American radio station would play it though.
Does it make me anachronistic that I still like going to the Boscov’s candy counter and buying fudge- or a box of chocolates- and then going to the restaurant for lunch? Shopping is a form of recreation after all.
When this generation of Grand Am hit showrooms it was a GM “darling”, or at least a Pontiac darling. I thought the car was an exciting idea, a sporty looking smallish car, but realized it was basically just a bigger version of the 70s Sunbird. I thought the styling was a tiny bit jarring on the early model, but the re-style of the late 80s cleaned up many details.
As far as malls, my first experience with them was in 1960 at The Springdale Mall in Mobile, Alabama. That mall had limited entrances from the parking lot and unlike “modern” malls, going from 1 store to it’s neighbors often meant going outside as this mall started as a collection of stores in a line that shared exterior walls.
And now, shopping centers in my area are reverting to collections of stores that are connected to each other by their outside walls only.
These were newly out when I was in the market for my first new car. For a variety of reasons these never got on my list. It would have taken something really special from GM to get on that list and this car, good as it might have been, just didn’t make it.
But they sure were popular in central Indiana, where they seemed to be the official car of single moms. And why not? The cars were attractive and GM still had a good reputation hereabouts, so this made the perfect car for ladies who wanted quality and style on a moderate budget.
A while back I was having a conversation with the father of one of my daughter’s friends. Grand Ams came up. His statement was “once upon a time, a guy couldn’t sling a dead cat without hitting a Grand Am.”
True that.
Weren’t 90% of this generation painted red? It did evolve to tan later on, it seems. For the places I lived when these were still in production, they were always thick on the ground and as durable as an anvil.
I seem to remember most of these Grand Ams as being painted a medium metallic blue. I don’t remember seeing more than 1…maybe 2 that were black.
A high school friend (graduating in 1995 in the Midwest) had one like this example that was blue and powered by the 2.5. He blew a headgasket in short order but his dad paid to have the engine rebuilt. He actively lusted after the brown (almost the color of hot chocolate made with milk) Grand Am that his older sister had.
If you weren’t cool enough for a G-body Cutlass Supreme coupe – you had an N-body. That was pretty much the high school pecking order.
Jason, I always love your metaphors – whether they’re actually yours, or just relayed by you. I had a mental vision of actually swinging a dead cat by the tail in the parking lot of the Genesee Valley Mall. Gross and wrong on multiple levels, but hilarious.
It seems to me that the Grand Am occupied the same position in the automotive pecking order as Orange Julius did in the malls – ubiquitous, but not particularly appealing. The awkward proportions of the N-cars, with the upright backlite and steeply sloped windshield did not translate well from their G-body predecessors to the smaller package.
As the malls experience a huge shakeout as a consequence of overbuilding, the rise of online shopping, and changes in consumer tastes, only the strongest centers will survive, often by evolving into multi-purpose destinations with expanded dining, entertainment, and even hotel and residential components. In the same way, car buyers seem to be gravitating away from single-purpose vehicles, such as mid-sized sedans, to SUVs and CUVs, which are perceived to be more practical and capable.
From that perspective, this Grand Am harkens back to simpler, easier times. Thanks, Joe, for the Monday morning nostalgia trip.
There were once teeming herds of Grand Ams. You couldn’t be in traffic without an N body within sight. They were the Chevelle/Skylark/Le Mans of their time. Now they are rare.
What was the weak point of the N body? What would banish a 10 or 15 yr old GA, Calais or Skylark to the Pick-N-Pull?
Don’t ever want to see/know a 1990 Grand Am ever again.
My first brand new car was a 1990 black four-door with the “wonderful” Quad 4. I remember it stickered at $15,000.
Nothing but electrical problems from day one. Something was draining the battery dead after it sat for a few hours. After FOUR trips to get it “fixed”, and an arbitration (waste of time) meeting with GM, they finally fixed it.
The sight of this era’s Grand Am will always make me want to vomit.
Joseph, I always love these autobiographical posts of yours. They make me appreciate things and experiences that are either out of my time zone or comfort zone, like indoor malls and Pontiac Grand Ams.
Having grown up with real downtown areas in Innsbruck and Iowa City (no malls back then), with streets, and alleys and old buildings and garbage cans and fresh air and unexpected places and cars and sidewalks and everything else that makes a city street interesting, I’ve always hated indoor malls, even in my youth.
Yes, we used to ravage Towson Mall as a horde of us middle-schoolers descended on it like locusts after school, but it was an outdoor mall then, which was still doable for me.
When I moved back to Iowa City in 1971, they had just bult a crappy little indoor mall and it was painful for me to set foot in it. Dark, stuffy; it was like a prison corridor with cells along each side. Deadly.
Fortunately, Stephanie did most of our shopping, and I wear the same few pieces of clothing over and over and just replace them online.
I have a tradition of giving her a bottle of Chanel #5 at Xmas. I used to park closest to the mall department store door to the perfume counter, rush in, and rush out, while holding my breath. Mostly.
Amazon has been a life saver for me, as I hate all forms of physical shopping. I’m just waiting for them to deliver lumber and drywall. 🙂
Valley River Center there in Eugene isn’t too bad for a shopping mall, it’s a lot less depressing than a lot of them. Agreed on the cell-like ambiance, the mall I live near now is like that. I wandered through a couple of months ago while killing time and have no reason to return there. The bookstore, hobby store and arcade which was so much a part of my teenage era are all gone. Dreary and unwelcoming and well, shabby. On a K-Mart level of shabby.
Single level malls without the open and welcoming spaces are the reason malls are dying. Why go where you feel like you are in a cattle chute?
I loathe VRC.
Thanks, Paul!
That Iowa City mall you described sounds so bleak. The Dort Mall in Flint may not have every store filled, but it’s far from boring or prison-like.
I had gone back to the “popular” mall in the Flint area, the Genesee Valley Center, for the first time in decades just a few years ago. They had signs posted in the mall saying something like no more than three teenagers could be walking in a group together. It was jarring. I can’t imagine having grown up without the weekend mall experiences I remember having with my friends.
As far as online shopping, it’s such a great thing. I buy a lot of music, and to be able to preview songs or an entire album before pulling the trigger is just about the best thing, ever.
Paul, the automobile celebrated here is the main generator of the malls you hate, and the antagonist against the walkable districts you love. There’s a great essay from the Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti, written for a catalog honoring years of italian coachwork design, Carrozzeria italiana – Advancing thhe Art and Science of Automobile Design hat should be shared…published in 1978
Yup. Which is why I have a love-hate relationship with cars. They have destroyed so much. And yet are so useful.
I prefer walking or riding my bike in our general area and to go downtown, about 1.5 miles away.
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Ha ha ha, Bugle Boy! I had forgotten all about that brand. That sure brings back memories of 80’s school-age fashion! As for the Grand Am, I always thought it was the sportiest looking of its platform-mates, with its Pontiac trademark split grille.
I’m 26, and much to my parents’ dismay, hanging out at the mall was definitely still a “thing” into the mid-’00s (and arguably late-’00s). Though the attractions were changing every few years (*cough* Hollister, Hot Topic, and Sharper Image *cough*), it was still a place to hang out.
As for the Grand Am, I never paid much attention to them, but I don’t even see the later ones around anymore.
These were reasonable first new cars in their time. They were distinctively styled. The back seats would have been nigh onto useless but if you were single it didn’t matter.
When I graduated college in 1989, I decided my new-car budget was $10k, which put the Grand Am out of bounds. I think the Chevy Beretta I ended up buying was a better looking car anyway.
Jim, I still think the Beretta is a really great-looking car, even after having been in production for close to ten years. Aesthetically, there’s not even that much of a comparison between the Beretta and the Grand Am, though I still think the original ’85 N-Body Grand Am was a good-looking car.
Here in Michigan, there are still those few, few typical, almost overly stereotype teenager boys, girls driving Chevy Beretta in toothpaste like colors as late as 2017, and it looks overly stereotype that it seems unreal.
I found the same thing as MT, maybe it’s a regional thing but indoor malls had their merits as a hangout in crappy climates like Chicago, my friend’s and I hung out there almost every week well into high school, mid 00s, there was no place else to go this time of year besides our own houses(which meant parental supervision). Problem for the mall was we’d hang out there, wander through the stores and never actually buy anything. I didn’t notice the critical decline until 09-10 after the economy tanked, there were always store fronts that would come and go, but there’d be other stores like KB toys, Radio Shack or Spencor gifts that were always there, and when places like them disappeared from our local mall, that was when I knew things were bad.
Personally I don’t like online shopping, and I only do it out of necessity because all the specialty mom and pop stores are gone. Even if I’m just in and out of a store it’s a better experience because if I need this thing NOW, I can get it NOW. Everything I order though, I either get anxious waiting for my order, or indifferent about whatever I ordered by the time it shows up. Malls were great at their peak because you had a variety of specific stores clustered together, like online, but rather than navigating through a boring webpage you were navigating through a (sometimes) futuristic building with plants, fountains, waterfalls and an awesome smelling Cinnabon to make shopping seem like less of a task. It actually amazes me malls are failing and Wal-Mart still thrives, because the misery of that place is unparalleled, the worst abandoned mall in the country is better.
The Grand Am of this generation never did much for me until recently, when I was a kid they were dumpy old Roger Smith GMs driven into the ground by high schoolers as first cars. Now that they are completely extinct from the roads and the demographic taint is gone, I see them now as a division making a pretty good effort with lousy resources. They were decent looking cars within the constraints of GM’s styling language, decent driving cars within the constraints of the N-Body platform, and decent performers within the constraints of GM’s engines… not competitive with the Japanese, but they kind of had their own little niche as these formal little compacts, they’re almost rambler like in an 80s sort of way. The fact that cars like these could ever be sales successes when today we’re so grilled into embracing maximum practicalitity and utmost perfection is somewhat laudable.
It sounds like, as you may notice the generation from the ’90s seemingly grew old overnight by remembering so many things so close yet so different.
I liked the first gen of the grand Am….The ones with sealed beam headlights and then the ones with composite headlights but still upright in design. Looked more European, at the time. The full facelift as pictured was OK, but the laid back front with a rake that matched the windshield was still at odds with the near vertical backlight. Over time The ysuffered heavily due ever increasing cladding as did nearly every Pontiac. When the final iteration finally shed its cladding Showing its Oldsmobile shared design, it was too little, too late. And the G^ did an admirable job of replacing it… However Pontiac waited too long. Had the G8, G6, and Solstice just been a few years earlier. Might the tin Indian have survived?
Totally agree with you, Jason – both about the sealed-beams and also the more formal, squared-off frontal styling looking the best.
The G6 will forever remind me of Oprah’s car giveaway. These are even starting to become thinner on the ground.
The only version of these early N-body Grand Ams that I cared anything about were the V6 models. The Iron Duke motivated (ha!) lower trim levels just didn’t do much for me. My brother had an 85 Grand Am with the Iron Duke and a 5 speed, IIRC. I think I drove the car once or twice when I still lived in Ohio. I came home for the holidays one December to find that he’d traded it for the first of several minivans. He’d mentioned problems with the car, but I no longer recall what they were. It was his last GM car, though.
I used to enjoy going to the mall when I was younger. Not really for the mall experience, but to go to the record store or Sears to buy tools and such. Somewhere in the mid-80’s the malls around us were crawling with bored high school kids. I mean droves of them. It really turned me off of shopping at the mall and I found I could get what I needed at other stores and more quickly at that.
One of the things no one seems to have touched upon concerning the demise of some malls is what I was describing earlier: Lots of bored kids. Many malls could not control the gangs that showed up en masse, the rent-a-cops weren’t getting paid enough to put up with that bullsh!t. There were a couple of malls in the Cleveland area that were so overrun with teen gang members, they drove off the folks who shopped there. I guess other folks found the same thing I did, I could find almost everything I needed from the mall somewhere else with better parking, prices and far less roving gangs…
I believe these and the Buick Somerset were the first Non-Oldsmobile cars that GM built in Lansing, so there was a little culture shock at the time. I remember they did a big open house to show off the retooled plant in 1985. The Grand Ams of course ended up being hugely popular here, so it worked out ok.
If the featured car was a 4 door it would be a good match for my sister’s first car. It was 6 or 7 years old when she was in High School, and she probably drove it that many more before it was totalled in an accident. No major problems, and she liked it enough to buy a newer one to replace it.
What I liked about the Pyramid/Ithaca Mall was that it had AC which was nice in the summer. Also, since it was heated in the winter I did not have to chop firewood to keep the house warm so there was incentive to get out and about.
The last generation of Grand And are somewhat common in Portland, OR, but the older ones are practically extinct.
My Mom had a 1987 Grand Am LE 2 door silver with navy blue interior. It had the V6, sunroof, the usual power options and a special option Delco Bose stereo system. She loved that car – specifically the orange back lit dash, the rumble of the V6 exhaust and of course the stereo. I remember when she took delivery of it at Boyer Pontiac in Pickering, Ontario which was newly opened, they took a picture of her and the salesman who sold it to her for a wall mural. In hers and my opinion the 1985 – 1987 versions were visually the most appealing and the only years with the V6 until the 1992 3rd generation restyle. other than the power steering rack failure, common on all 1980`s GM vehicles, thankfully covered under the warranty period she had no issues with this car and when it came time to update she purchased a 1994 Pontiac Sunbird SE – V6 model of course. She maintains to this day that the Sunbird and her 1979 Phoenix were her best vehicles.
’92 was 4th Gen
As the current owner of two 4th Gen GAGT’s, including the only one of 719 ’93 LG0 Quad 4 HO Sedans left, I don’t find them “meh” or “bland”. But I guess I am kinda biased with the GM20 N-Body, despite me running the official ’85-’91 and ’92-’98 Facebook groups. Everyone loves to talk down about me loving these cars so, and I GET IT. They were “unreliable” and “bad cars”, despite me having more issues with my ’95 L82 3100 V6 in 13 months than I have with my LG0 Quad 4 HO in two months. But that still doesn’t stop the fact that these were my childhood dream cars, and I didn’t think I would ever own one of them, let alone a Bright White ’93 GT Sedan AND a Bright White ’95 GT Sedan (which is now a shell) at the same time. So go on, and tell me the “terrible mistake” I made being obsessed with Quad 4’s and N-Body GM’s… I’ll be waiting for all your politely discerning comments all day.
Ty’Eira, yours is probably one of the nicest G/A’s of this generation I’ve seen a current picture of, and your pride of ownership is quite apparent. I’ll bet yours really scoots.
I’ve never driven a Quad-4 equipped car, so I can’t speak from personal experience. But I was in high school when this engine came out, and I remember being genuinely excited that GM had engineered / extracted so much power from a 4. 160-hp was no small potatoes for the early ’90s.
Thanks for sharing a picture of yours.
Great read as always Joe. I loved the story about the malls and the importance of them as a youth. Around here now, they have become the places for the elderly and families. Very few teens other than those working there.
These Grand Ams and the generation that followed were everywhere. The cars of the earlier generation were notorious rusters. Here’s what I think of when I think of one these Grand Ams:
Thanks, Vince.
And this Grand Am (!!!) – it has to be real, because otherwise, I can’t imagine how long it would have taken to photoshop that rust to make it look this realistic.
Funnily enough, I recently saw an N-body Grand Am like this parked next to a newer Ford Fiesta. Side by side the Fiesta was the bigger car in everything but length. Most striking was how long to door on the Grand Am looked. Like it came from a much bigger car.
My parrents had a black ‘89, but the taillights were different. Kind of a crosshairs ch design with no orange reflectors. Are you sure this is an ‘89?
I have fond memories of jamming out with my mom in this car. It actually had a decent for the time stereo with 6*9s in the back. It made my Madonna I’m Breathless album sound fantastic in all of it’s Hanky Panky Vogueie glory.
Ryan, did the taillights on your parents’ car look like this? They had an SE. The base cars and LE models had taillamp lenses like our featured car.
“Hanky Panky Vogueie glory” – love it.
Thanks for your insight Dennis. They definitely had San LE, but this is another clue to our suspicion that it might have been crashed in the back before they bought it. It said LE in the door pillar and definitely had the duke up front.
It actually ended having an intermittent stalling issue and that’s what did it in.
My grand parents had one identical to this. It was a verry good car for them. Was the last car that that drove.
I have always had a fondness for the ’96-’98 models in GT trim, those were good looking Grand Ams!
These cars were still ubiquitous during my elementary school years during the early and mid 1990’s. I remember a number of them in the daily carpool.
Our neighbor across the street had a white one, which she traded in on the next body style Grand Am. A red four door was driven by a good friend’s mom. His grandparents lived next to him and had a pool. I took many trips to and from there in that Grand Am during the warmer months.
That Gran-am remind me a time when some hope for american car was possible . Which means , to go in the right direction : downsizing . Today with trend like owning the most you can get like bigger car ( 2018 Civic is bigger than a ’90 Accord ) and bigger ”light eco-pick-up” truck, with pallisade like front end , all that doesn’t seem to stop in a near future .
I like this generation of the Grand Am. I prefer the 85-88 version with the squared front end and the rear end with the license plate between the tail lights. It seems to me to look better then the 89-91 wedge front end and the rear end with the license plate moved to the rear bumper. It seemed to loose some of the magic of the original design.
Make mine a 1987 2 door coupe that is painted battleship gray
As a longtime car modeler, the firstgen N-body Grand Am is one of those cars I’m mildly surprised there *wasn’t* a model kit of back in the day – MPC/AMT had a thing for these sporty domestic cars – but I’d be shocked if one appeared now.
(if it had I’d have at least two, one built out of the box and the other converted to a 4-door…)
N body originally planned to replace GMs mid sized personal luxury coupes, but those were continued because of high sales. However, I recall G body sales dropped substantially starting in 1985, so perhaps GM should have continued with its original plans instead of having N body replace the X body
I have always seen this mentioned. I can’t imagine how dire it must looked in ’81 or so that they would go through another downsizing this dramatic. It also made sense time and sizewise that these were the X-replacements.
What might have made sense in retrospect was never building the GM 10s but instead a real update to the As in 86/87. At that point you kill the remaining Gs off a year or so earlier and give a real space between the midsize and lower full size cars while saving billions.
The second part was never doing Saturn but instead introducing what became the Saturn as the J Car Replacement. The Geo probably really sopped up whatever marginal buyers would buy a GM branded compact anyway, you again save billions while also not prolonging an aged out platform.
Then in 1991 or 92 replace the upgraded As with a car at same size but really focused on the Camry as competition. You steal Ford’s thunder as well because at this point they were selling but phoning it in with a Taurus that was slightly better than GM’s actual offerings. With the billions you save from not doing Saturn or the GM10s you can also develop a new line of more advanced overhead cam 4s/6s. The N replacements then could either be a short wheelbase version of the new A or a long wheelbase J. Maybe you have enough leftover to beat Toyota and Honda to the punch on a crossover from one of these.
You can really trace GMs fall from dominance more to this time than the late 70s where they got through the initial downsizing well with B/A (though they gave a lot of ground back with the X) but then just started trying to fill every little category and ended up with ridiculous costs and duplication.
And this is what has lead us to Toyota almost outselling GM now (they did in 2021). While GM has cut back on the duplication they have a lot of underperforming market mismatches and so far their pure electrics are a disaster. They are profiting big on the large vehicles they still do well but whether that continues into a new era remains to be seen.
Case in point is the Blazer. The almost discontinued and dated Ford Edge is outselling it. GM could have positioned a Colorado based Bronco fighter here or at least a more with-it five seat crossover. Instead they have a five year old meh vehicle that only manages 65k sales a year and has no following or enthusiasm.
Speaking of malls, Southdale was the first enclosed mall in America, opening in 1956 in Edina, MN, a suburb of Minneapolis. Mid century modern gem. I can remember driving there in my grama’s 1950 Studebaker Champion sedan. Once pinched my finger in the suicide doors. I agree that the Grand AM was by far the best looking N body. The Pontiac styling cues just seemed to give it a taut, sporty look. Maybe the Olds and Buick versions should have dabbled in their own version of cladding. It worked for Pontiac.
My family had an ‘89 Grand Am LE and the taillight cluster was different, more of a crosshatch design. All I can say is that the engine was called a 4 tech and we called it a low tech. It also sounded somehow of very low quality, and of very little power.
Maybe yours had the SE taillamps? “Low tech” – LOL. I had never driven a Tech IV-equipped car, but from what I had read, they were supposed to be a decent, little four-cylinder – perhaps compared to what GM had put out before?
These really WERE everywhere in flyover country. These were very common where I grew up, just as common as a Civic or Corolla at that point. (that point being the late 80s, early 90s.) I remember kids at school talking about their parents owning one of these as “cool.” You never did hear that regarding Buick or Oldsmobile.
“Hey, guess what? I got the keys to the CALAIS for Saturday night!” – said no teenager, ever.