What a difference nearly three decades make, or does it? Produced for 28 years with minimal enhancements, the GM W-body lived an unusually long life in many forms. This 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix LE coupe’s body was present at the start in 1988, and this 2006 Chevrolet Impala LT’s body was around in the platform’s swansong year of 2016, making them visual bookends in some sense.
(Update: to make this comparison a bit easier, I’m adding these profile shots of an early W GP and a late W Impala. The basic hard point similarities are quite obvious, especially at the cowl, and its relation to the rest of the car. The belt line at the doors has been raised, but that’s not really a very fundamental architectural change. The roof line at the rear is a bit further swept back, and the Impala has an extra 3″ of wheelbase, obviously added at the rear to increase rear seat room. I actually see a lot more fundamental similarities than differences. – PN)
You even managed to capture The W-body’s true successor in the hearts, minds, and wallets of the American consumer just beyond the fence, the GMC Acadia.
Haha, and would you believe my client traded in that very bus of an Acadia in for a MINI Countryman All4 stick-shift?
I’d love to see someone do a true comparison of the first and the last of the W-platform cars, I’d like to know if there are any “hard points” (as they are called) that didn’t change from the first chassis to the last chassis.
I was thinking that too…that Impala looks nothing like the original Ws and is quite a bit larger.
In Jack Baruth’s review (on TTAC) of the last W Impala he made a crack about the belt line of the Impala “Combine that with the low beltline, which is probably a hard point dating back to the 1988 Cutlass Supreme or something like that…”
It would be interesting to know if that had a grain of truth to it.
When I look at specs from 1990 to 2015 I find everything different. Height, width, track, wheelbase, interior space, etc. I can’t find a single dimension that is the same.
My guess would be that Jack has been driving about 5 years if he thought the beltline was low. The original Lumina’s was much lower.
That’s not to say that no hard points are shared, but if there are it’s pretty dang hard to see.
the 97 Grand Prix shares the same 110.5″ wheelbase as the Impala, chances are that’s the primary basis for it with identical floorpans and cowls.
I’d also wager that the width of the floorpan itself is the same from beginning to end, and that ultimately tells a greater picture. Overall dimensions are easily manipulated. For example, it used to be accepted that the 71 Mustang switched to the wide intermediate platform to explain it’s width over the original, but as it turns out a fat layer of tumblehome was added to the sides of the same 1965 chassis. Same thing can be done with the W body, and as far as a platform goes, platform doesn’t necessarily equate body structure, Minivans and CUVs share plarforms with sedans but the bodystructures themselves are entirely different, accounting for different widths/lengths/heights.
Phil L:
I just raise that drivers seat right the heck up –
manually or electrically. Solves the beltline
issue, but sometimes I cannot see traffic lights
without leaning forward due to the roofline.
I don’t see much similarity in these cars. The shape, length, width, height, wheelbase are all different.
There were three wheelbase versions of the W-body.
107.5″: ’88-96 Regal, Cutlass Supreme, ’88-96 Grand Prix, Lumina, ’95-99 Monte Carlo.
109″: ’97-05 Regal/Century, Intrigue.
110.5″: ’97-08 Grand Prix, ’00-13 Impala, ’00-07 Monte Carlo, ’05-’09 LaCrosse.
I was just wondering if there was a single stamping in the structure that was unchanged from first to last. They seem to have completely different shapes.
The fuel filler door? 🙂
A profile view is better for making a comparison. Clearly the beltline is significantly higher, but then we all know how perfect Jack’s memory is. 🙂
But there are clearly significant architectural similarities, despite the changes to the body. The most critical hard point elements, like the cowl, looks to be quite the same. I’d say there’s a lot more similarity than differences, which mainly have to do with the higher belt line at the doors, but that’s not a fundamental architectural change.
That pic is a bit surprising…though a Lumina further disguises the similarities.
Thanks for including that pick of the first generation Lumina. Yuk! What were its designers thinking??? I remember viewing that car the first year it was introduced, at the North American International Auto Show (in Toronto, Ontario, Canada). I thought it was an incoherent design then; now I find it absoluely awful! However, at least it had great visibilty, unlike today’s cars.
I kind of think the square wheel wells are interesting in kind of a good way.
Hoffmeister kink at the front of the greenhouse, that’s something that didn’t catch on eh?
Never was a fan of those at all, all the worst external traits of the bathtub Caprice without the substance
there were two or three reengineering’s of the platform. Since it continued to be called a W platform, the basic design probably did not change much, but the wheel base changed. While GM lost money to begin with, I can’t believe that they were sill losing money on the second and third generation models, although whether they ever made enough to cover the development costs may be unclear.
I find it believable that the platform was eventually a money maker (or it wouldn’t have stayed in production so long) but you’d likely have to comb shareholder reports to see if the GM officially wrote off part of the cost of development as a “loss” long before the end of production.
Once the W platform was in production, the tooling costs and so forth is money spent, so scraping the platform makes no sense. I would think that they would have written off the cost by the time they updated the platform.
Ahh yes, three examples of GM fodder over the past 25 years and you do not realize they are gone until they are gone. One of my jobs is to inspect future rental cars when they get off the truck and I kind of liked working on the Impala Classics, but production ended in May or so. There are not that many older W-Bodies in the Portland area, but most are Luminas with some Grand Prixs here and there.
The engineering staff in the mid eighties would have never thought that the w body would have 300 horsepower engine standard. Bet they would have said it couldn’t be done.
It’s the torque that is critical. The 3.6 V6 does not have 300 lb-ft of torque. The small V8’s did have too much torque.
Mine had 280 lb-ft of torque…. That’s pretty close…
The supercharged 3800. I had one in a 1995 Riviera whose body design was much better.
IIRC, torque-steer was one of the bigger complaints with the 5.3L V8 FWD Impala SS. The reduced torque (but still powerful) 3.6L V6, which was the last/only engine available, replacing both the 3.5L and 3.9L V6 engines, was a much better fit.
In fact, even though it’s based on an ancient chassis, the last iteration of the W-body is considered by some to be the best version. I’d go so far as to predict the last W-body Impala is a very strong candidate to be a future cockroach of the road. GM certainly spit out a lot of them and their basic mechanicals are solid, on par with (or better than) the Ford Panther. I sure see many more of them on the road than Panthers of the same era.
All things considered, unlike many of its contemporaries, GM has been one of the best at updating and disguising a chassis’ humble origins for other models. Another superb example is how the lamented Citation’s X-body soldiered on for many years as the successful, stretched A-body in the Celebrity, Ciera, et al.
The current 2.5 not iron duke four in the new Epsilon Impala makes 196hp. A body fours were so light weight, circa 2700 pounds. If they had stayed around, today’s engines and six speed autos would have seen them come alive as well.
My 2013 red LT is a total hoot with the 3.6 when the “go” pedal is smashed to the floor. Loads of power and 31-32 highway MPG are hard to argue with. A large trunk, comfy seats, easy entry and exit and extreme reliability are even sweeter bonuses.
One thing about W-Body is, they make good dirt track racing cars/demolition derbys. Gen III Impala depreciated enough to show up in the track these days, and there are still few Gen I W cars hanging on the track.
1980’s cars seem so small to me today. Even a RWD GM box B, or a Ford Panther seems to shrink in a modern parking lot. Cars like that Grand Prix look like a sub-compact today, and we thought they were mid-size at the time!
Even the W body evolved; taller, wider, and decidedly big in the booty. And now that final W Impala is starting to shrink.
While the room in modern passenger vehicles is frequently generous, I’m not looking forward to the times were all of these big vehicles are powered by sub 2.0 liter turbo fours with auto start / stop that get lousy fuel economy in real world conditions. I don’t want to relive the ’80s in that way at all.
Dave B:
It’s the height. Plus proportions. Cabins are growing
wider, longer front to rear, and taller, while fronts
are shortening and trunks are shorter but taller.
In some cases, the trunks are roughly the same size, but the fastback-esque rear window makes it hard to access all that space because the trunklid has turned into a mail slot.
ROFLMAO!!
So the 2000-2015 Impala is based not on a late-90s, but a late
80s platform? Wow… And that shiny millennial sheetmetal made
the 2K+ Impala seem like an all new ride.
Bummer..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Impala#Tenth_generation_.282014.E2.80.93present.29
10th generation (current car) was sold concurrently with the “W” for a few years. The current Impala is on the GM Epsilon II platform.
Sorry, guess the version I’m referring to last model
year was 2013. Still, a search for ‘2013 Chevy Impala’
returns two body styles – bloated 2000-2013 W, and what
looks like a current Epsilon-based Impala. Confusing!
So how roomy is an Epsilon-based Impala compared to
the departed W? I drove an Epsilon Malibu(2005), and
was told it was just a few cubic inches shy of a 2005
Impala in cabin space.
The new Impala started in 2014 I think, but is the same size. The W-body Impala continued as the Impala Limited from 2014 through 2016. The Malibu has a cabin of 100 cu ft and 13 trunk. The Impala’s are 105 cabin, 19 trunk. The Impala limited is a fleet only car.
So if the Epsi-Impala is same size as W-Impala,
did GM lengthen/widen the Epsilon platform to
accommodate it?
The Epsilon is now Epsilon II, and has a longer wheelbase version. There is also a modified version that the new LaCrosse is on if wiki is correct. Plus some version for crossovers.
The 4 door sedan W bodies did not come until the 1990 model year. The Lumina was the first, in spring 1989, then the Cutlass, Regal, and GP versions in fall. They were late to the party, compared to the Taurus/Sable.
Wiki says:
“In 1990, the base model [GP] was dropped in favor of a sedan version (replacing the 6000 which ended production the next year and the Canada-only Tempest), entering production on September 12, 1989”
Do I need new glasses? Cause I just don’t see the similarities between these two at all. Paul says the cowl is similar. Even that isn’t really clear to me.
I guess it’s the use of the word “Body” that’s perplexing to me. If the platform (ie. chassis) is identical, then the body can be different. But if you’re calling it a W body (the shell / structure?), then that body’s had more plastic surgery than Cher and Dolly Parton combined! And if all the dimensions have changed and all the stampings are different, isn’t it a bit weird to still call it a W-body?
The “Body” designation really refers to its “platform”, and that word is not always consistently defined. In a modern unibody, the platform generally refers to the key inner body structure that underpins the actual body, which may be built in a number of variations. This “platform” typically involves the floor, sills, center tunnel and reinforcements, rear suspension and at the front, the key firewall/cowl, a critical structural component, and of course the front suspension and it supporting structure, as well as the structures supporting the front and rear bumpers and crumple zones. All of this, as shown in Subaru’s New Global Platform in the image below, is really the primary structural element(s) of a given car. And it is this platform that requires by far the most development effort and cost, and also determines the ease of producing a family of cars that share the same platform on the same assembly line.
The rest of the body can of course vary; this platform could have a sedan, wagon, coupe or crossover, or other variant bodies designed to mate with it. But certain key “hard points” most importantly the cowl, must be shared by all if they are truly sharing this platform/understructure.
So these W-Body cars do share the same basic platform and suspension, but clearly their bodies are not the same. But the cowl is in the same relation to the front wheels, doors, etc. in both cars. And other platform similarities exist here too.
It’s not very expensive nowadays to develop new bodies that will fit on the same platform; it’s not lie the old days where a unibody car was one sole structure, and making changes to the body was very rather complicated and expensive, although it was done back in the day too.
Today, various sedans, coupes, convertibles, wagons and CUVs commonly share one platform. Subaru’s new Global Platform will underpin ALL future Subarus, from Impreza to a large seven-seat CUV, and with gas, hybrid and EV power trains.
GM has a very long tradition of calling its various platforms “bodies” going back to when Fisher Body built all the GM bodies, and in 2 or 3 specific basic sizes. But even then, there was some latitude, as these bodies all had (generally) unique external sheet metal.
GM’s tradition has just carried forward. Body = platform, since the most important/expensive part of the body really are shared.
Paul’s points duly noted, I nonetheless agree with Tatra. There’s no more similarity in the cowl than can be found in 85% of cars.
I think it’s important to understand that the Impala is a third generation W-body, while the Pontiac is first. I don’t know how much is left of the original W in the third generation, but the Impala should be a much better vehicle.
The basic point of what a W-body (or platform) is, is that doors on Buick should also fit on the same Olds, Pontiac or Chevy version. However, I doubt that first gen doors can be moved to a third.
We had three of the ’99 Grand Prix’s as pool cars at work. Not reliable, noisy, door handles rattled when you closed the doors, etc. Most employees just used their own cars and charged mileage.
I have also driven the later edition of the Impala. Some what improved, but both cars lacked any type of personality or outstanding feature. In other words, they were both dull.
The styling of the grand prix is dull and seemed shocking compared to the 88 g body. Just seemed bland and plasticy and not anywhere near as nice as a t bird. The lumina was a truly boring car and the impala really seemed small and poorly.designed compares to a crown vic
Our sole experience with the W body is an Impala we rented in 2006 on our vacation. Capacious, not bad on fuel, competent, but at the same time dull and uninspired. I will give GM credit, though, for allowing the driver to switch between U.S. and metric, because we drove the car in both Washington and British Columbia.