Sadly, I didn’t have a dash-cam to take a video of how the order of these two Sunfires came to be. Because just a block or two earlier, the silver one was ahead in the thick traffic of West 11th during our semi-rush hour. But then the red one made a bold and noisy move to overtake the silver one; a most impressive display of its great power. We were all in awe!
The end result was getting to sit at the next light one car ahead.
FWIW, this was a random encounter of these two cars. But how often can one get to see two of them in such thrilling action on the open road? I was left slack-jawed.
Wow, to live in a place where a Sunfire is something to actually notice instead of to tune out . . . .
Actually, this could make for a great racing series – a track with nothing but Sunfires and Cobalts. Sort of like IROC meets the County Fair.
Back in the mid-1980s, they used to have a feature at Road Atlanta with only Renault LeCars (IIRC). The only mods allowed were roll cages and open exhausts. Sounded like an angry swarm of bees as they approached Turn 7!
Ah, found it! It was the IMSA Renault Cup series. Here’s a pic (not Road Atlanta).
This is *everything*.
Aren’t those Alliances?
These are the hatchback version of the Alliance, called Encore.
…or Renault 11s 😉
I saw a few of these races featuring 40+ car fields.
A Sunfire without hubcaps is virtually guaranteed to also have muffler issues.
here in maine every single sunfire is exactly how you mentioned. almost 100% of the time, just like a subaru having some sort of outdoors activity bumper sticker of some sort. ha.
You’d be surprised how many of these, and their Chevrolet brethren, still roam the streets of upstate New York. Truly the roaches of the road.
Yup, saw two yesterday in the Hudson Valley.
They should’ve used that passenger window on the Cavalier instead of the Sunfire, if only to match the Monte Carlo.
Must be stopped for a “Pit Stop”
For many years there was a metallic light green model roaming Gallup with a second spoiler on the tail to keep the factory third brake light spoiler company.
There was always a young lady behind the wheel dressed in a manner that suggested she was heading to a fast food job. She never looked pleased.
Did the Sunfire in the rear have both lights still lighting up the “Sunfire” logo on the back? It seemed like most of them were running around with one light burned out within a few months of them going on sale.
There are still a few of these roaming around Atlantic Canada, but they used to be everywhere.
This makes me think of my sister, who owned only 2 door compact Pontiacs from 1988 to 2012. She had an 88 Sunbird GT Turbo, a 95 Sunfire, a 97 Grand Am GT, and an 09 G6 GT. In 2012 she got a company car and sold the G6. I just found out that she is losing the company car in a few months. She won’t buy a car that’s over 5 years old, so I asked her what she was going to do now that Pontiac is no more. Turns out she’s buying the closest thing she can: a 2012 Buick Verano.
On that note, I feel like the last of the Sunfires around here all died out about 5 years ago.
Seems to be a great regional variation with this car. They’re pretty uncommon here in Northern Virginia, but when I travel to the Midwest (particularly the rural Midwest), they’re noticeably prevalent.
Ah, the Sunfire….and Cavalier. If anybody had told me that these miserable shitboxes would ever be on my “maybe” list, I’d probably have punched them, or laughed it off, at least. In a strange and cruel turn of events though, I’ve actually been pondering such a completely out-of-character purchase.
As I continue to casually search for the not-presently-necessary, but soon to be requisite second household vehicle, these things keep crossing my path, and I’m beginning to soften to them. You see, I have this set of criteria: Aside from a runningcar with working a/c, I’m looking for a 4 cylinder, 5-speed, 2-door car that’s easy to repair, with plentiful parts available and not too many power accessories or pointless crapola, for $2500 or less. So what does one suppose keeps presenting itself in the sun-baked but rust-free Daytona Beach area? You guessed it. I may need therapy.
There is some degree of practicality in my criteria, mixed with a sprinkling of random preferences. This vehicle will be used primarily for a 5 mile round trip commute probably 3 times a week, it will be needed to occasionally run to the grocery store or to a Dr appointment, and it’ll likely be the vehicle of choice for Home Depot runs (no lumber, just potting soil, hobby crap and the like). It also needs to serve as a beach buggy, as I’d really like something that will not be in any way devalued by a half inch of salt spray caking the paintwork and several pounds of sand filling every crevice. On the less practical side, I want a coupe because…well…I just want one, and I want a 5-speed because my other half can’t drive a stick, which means that even though this vehicle will be the beater, it’ll be mine, which as sad as that sounds, will make it the first vehicle designated solely as such since 2006 when I sold my Saab convertible and moved into Manhattan.
I’ve actually even come to think that the Cavalier coupe as a reasonably attractive vehicle, although a part of me likes the Sunfire better just because it’s a Pontiac, thus making it a loveable orphan. Something tells me, since there just isn’t a Neon Sport Coupe to be found anywhere, much less with a standard transmission, that I’m destined to own one of these Iron Duke powered nightmares. What is happening?!?
One minor correction: No J-body ever came with an Iron Duke. The second generation came with the 2.2 derived from the 1.8 originally standard in 1982, and the Quad 4, later Ecotec.
While the first generation has all but disappeared around here (save for 88-90 Z24s, which seem to be minor collectors items), the second generation has staying power and are still plentiful. I think they are the definitive used car; lack of refinement made them a poor choice when new, simple mechanicals and steep depreciation makes them a decent choice used.
Thanks for that. I guess I made the assumption, since the last Cavalier I drove was a ’94 model owned by a co-worker back in the 90’s, and its drivetrain’s “refinement” was about equal to a 1976 Pontiac Astre once owned by someone I dated in high school. (Which is to say that it felt about as smooth and well balanced as an 8HP Tecumseh poweered lawn tractor I once used as a kid.)
But yeah, it does seem like the most ill-advised new car purchases tend to end up being some of the most practical cheap used car purchases, for better or worse.
Having owned both an Iron Duke and a lawn tractor with an 8hp Tecumseh, I can appreciate that comparison! 🙂
MTN: that would have been the Vega Dura-Built 4 in that 76 your friend had. You know: the one with all the “improvements”. And a 60,000 mile warranty.
The Iron Duke didn’t come out until 1977.
All criteria I look for in a new car as well MTN. Nothing wrong with what you are considering. I purchased a new 99 Cavalier 2 door because of just those reasons.
Nothing went wrong with it in the 50,000 miles I owned it before someone in a BMW rear ended me at a stop light. In a left turn lane. At 4:30 in the morning on my way to work.
This was the car my girlfriend drove – a base secretary special Sunfire with the 120 hp 2.2L 4 cyl engine and 3 speed automatic. After we got married, I drew the short end of the stick and the Sunfire became my car and my brand new SUV became hers. It was my daily driver for 3 years and, like most GM of the time, did most things fairly competently and was reasonably trouble free but didn’t arouse any passion or pride of ownership. The most exciting aspect of that car was trying to merge onto a busy expressway. Imagine thrashing those 8 pushrods for all they’re worth while praying that you don’t get run over by that 75 mph semi truck looming large in your rear view mirror.
That’s not surprising, everybody knows red cars are faster.
Ah the Sunfire, another horribly muddled car by GM between concept and production. I actually had this exact poster from CAS on my bedroom wall circa 94.
Seems overwrought looking back at it now but this was the Dodge Viper era, little did I know as a 5 year old it would become a shitbox J body.
I laughed far too hard at your last sentence, Matt. Thank you for that.
It is completely normal for a model line to lose body style after body style as times and volumes change. What is unusual is the two door coupe to be the last man standing. The only other I can think of is the Nissan Pulsar, and it lacked the 4 door sedan and wagon. So for this, I tip my hat to the Sunfire.
This summer, I saw what I believe to be the first and only 2003 – ’05 Sunfire 4-door sedan I’ve ever seen while driving on the expressway. I thought it might have been a Canadian-market special, but it wasn’t – I was just never aware the last Sunfires were offered as sedans.
The final refresh sedan actually was Canada-only, Joseph.
I remember these well. Several years ago when I was working at a large national tire and auto service chain we had a loyal customer with a well worn faded green 1998 Sunfire. He would bring this car in for maintenance or repairs frequently. When dropping it off he would every time refer to it as “The Sun-crapper”. He would toss the keys to me and say: ” The Sun-crapper is here for its monthly wallet flush” and we would both laugh. It was in the shop enough that we would refer to it as the “Sun-crapper” around the shop. The funny thing is that when he was ready to part with his much maligned Sun-crapper the Technicians got in a bidding war to try and buy it. They knew every inch of that car and knew it would be reliable inexpensive transportation or could be easily flipped for a nice profit.
I actually seriously considered a new Sunfire at one point in my life. I’d just moved back to the states after living abroad for several years, and I wanted something with little fun in it and a littler price tag. Logically this meant Sunfire convertible, right? Right!
The only thing that stopped was, well… General Motors makes them. I just couldn’t bring myself to writing the check, because I just knew, deep in my heart, that it would all end in tears. So, I bought a Japanese car…
! the Post 95 refresh Cavalier/Sunfire. GM finally worked all the bugs out of the J Body and everyone I know who had one of these got some astronomical mileage out of the things. They went well over 300K miles with little/no trouble. For cars which were, unlike a Civic or Corolla, almost always bought secondhand as former rentals and not well treated, these things have some amazing durability.
We had an ’85 Sunbird for about a year? in the late ’80s which died a long and slow and troublesome death due to chronic overheating. It was much more nicely finished than the refreshed version and had a much, much plusher interior. Luxurious fabrics and trim in an elegant dark blue.
The refreshed version came only in a cheap, ugly black interiorand had much worse appointments, but that was really true of almost any ’90’s GM car. We rented one in the early ’00s in Mexico in that ubiquitous mallard green colour they all seemed to be. It droned going up the hills, and droned painfully going down the hills, and droned painfully going up the hills and . . . there are a lot of hills in Mexico. Not a pleasant experience.
Never seen any though those two do bear a remarkable resemblance to the Chevota Cavaliers we had dumped here from Japan, hard cars to sell, I saw one in a junker dealers yard recently $200 down $40 per week until you get sick of it and walk away.
You wonder what would have happened if GM had thrown some of the money from Saturn at these cars, or discontinued them and sent all the potential buyers over to Saturn. Obviously they were profitable.
Alternative 1: kill this car, and sell versions of the Saturn in Chevy/Pontiac Dealers. That didn’t work out so well for the G6/Malibu/Aura.
Alternative 2: Kill this car, and send small car buyers over to Saturn. Chevy/Pontiac Dealers wouldn’t have been happy and the rental car companies would have been deprived of a key reason to pay for an upgrade. But that would have been a better long term strategy; Chevy could have moved to larger family cars and Trucks and Pontiac had a strong selling entry level Grand Am.
Alternative 3: After a few years out, let the Saturn platform trickle down to Chevy/Pontiac with different styling and kill this car.
One of my best friends replaced her leaky 1993 Escort GT (see the Laser post from earlier today) with one of these nasty 1996 Sunfires. Denim blue with some of the roughest, scratchiest cloth seats I’ve ever encountered. The Escort was flawed but fun. The Sunfire was straight up fucked. A three year old car with wipers that randomly choose to go straight to the fast cycle? Check. Headlights that you were lucky to have bulbs last more than 6 months? Check. Blower fan that decided for itself when it should feel like working? Check.
Grossest part about that damn car was the mechanicals lasted forever … Beth had that thing for years. Needless to say, I always chose to drive when we would spend the day together.
Ahh, Shitfires, what interesting looking cars and yup, there are still some around Portland, OR though I usually pay attention to the occasional Sunbird, 2000, and J2000 still burbling along. I did see a few 2003-2005 Shitfire Sedans when I was still living on the East Coast along with a very rare circa 1990 Tempest here and there.
Mine was a ’97 sedan, teal blue, with the “122” 2.2L and the 3-speed. Pretty well equipped otherwise (power windows and locks! ABS brakes!)
“Cockroach” describes it well. Developed an little external headgasket leak at 60K, things broke on it once in awhile, but nine years and 165K miles and it still ran as well as you could ask for. I sold it for $900 when I finally got tired of everything else breaking, plus I’d gotten into a fender bender with it. Some mechanically-minded fellow bought it for his daughter; three years later I saw the thing still tooling around town.
Someone needs to round all of these up and hold a huge demolition derby.
My first new car was a 99 Cavalier 2 door. Purchased for the all the reasons MTN is considering one now. Those have been my parameters for years: simple mechanicals, wide ranging parts availability, long production runs, few options, ease of service.
Mine had all the safety items: Air bags, ABS, traction control [standard on the 4 speed automatic]. 2.2 OHV 4.
I never had any trouble with it. Never had a problem entering LA’s freeways or on long trips.
It did eat brakes every 20,000 miles. Just like the 86 Olds Calais I had before it. And unlike my current 05 ION, which just had the fronts done at 65,000 miles.
Most of all, I considered it a pretty car, something that’s important when you’re making payments. Consider the hack job they did to it in 03 with that sad sack front end and grotesque rear bumper. You could still see a good looking car under there.
And as with all of them, it got premium maintenance before it was totalled in a rear ender. Shame. I’d paid it off three months before and detailed it a week earlier.
We’ve had three of this generation go through my family’s possession. The first was a 1997 Cavalier Coupe, pretty heavily loaded with options but not a Z24. We had that thing for 11 years, I drove it at first as my work car, then my two daughters drove it, gave it back to me and finally my younger daughter drove it until recently. The engine/transmission and most of the other greasy bits were functioning fine, but the body was rusting away and I think due to that it was starting to lose electrical ground. It went off the road at 267,000 miles. I donated it to an animal shelter for the tax write off.
The second was my 1995 Sunfire GT. I bought it in 2006 off of a high school kid, whom I found out later, hooned the crap out of the car. I originally bought it to be a father/daughter project, but my father-in-law pre-empted this by buying a 2004 Sunfire SE1 for her instead. Without telling me… It had the 2.3 Quad 4 and the famous Isuzu 5 speed tranny. With that combination, it was a pretty lively car. Not as spunky as a DOHC 5 speed Neon, but far more fun than the Cavalier was. Once I cleared all of the high school kid’s crap off of the car (go-fast stickers, extraneous fog lights, useless eBay cold air intake, oversized wheels with rubber band tires, etc.), it looked like something a 40 something person could drive. I liked the car a lot actually, I could fit my 5 piece drum kit in the thing (along with my monitor and other stage electronics) and still have an open passenger seat. The trans was the end of my fun with the car; about three years into ownership I broke the trans. It was difficult finding another one, as the car was fairly old then, but one was found. When it broke a second time in 2013, none were available in the upper midwest for any price. That, along with the rust that was overtaking the car, I sold it to my mechanic.
The aforementioned 2004 Sunfire SE1 was my older daughter’s first car. By this time GM had the J body down to a science. I cannot express how much better built the 2004 ‘Fire was assembled compared to the older ones. This one had the 2.2 Ecotec and the 4T40 autobox and was loaded with options like the super duper sound system and a sunroof. A great car for a high school kid, good on fuel not and too much in terms of maintenance. She was involved in an accident on a local freeway which totaled the car about three years into ownership.
Of the three, I miss the 1995 GT. It was my toy and I had some great drives in that car. But the three of them fulfilled the function of a cheap car: transportation. None of them left us stranded, and with some exceptions, were pretty inexpensive to repair and operate. I can’t complain too loudly about them, because they did what they were supposed to.
Gosh, I hate these cars. They’re everywhere in Manitoba. My sisters ex-boyfriend had one; a convertible, too. They are cheap and terrible. I can’t entirely explain why, but these cars fill me with passionate fury (ok, maybe a bit extreme, but close).
These have mostly disappeared from around here, though one of my coworkers drives one that looks just like that silver (actually kind of a metallic-beige) one. We take a pretty similar route so I see it quite a bit. From what I can see, there’s several lights always lit on up the dash.
When these came out, I admit I liked the way they looked (and still do). I thought the light-up Pontiac logo was cool, even if the bulbs seemingly only lasted months. I still like the original the best, as every time Pontiac refreshed the design it seemed to get chunkier and more awkward.
When I was in driver’s ed, I got to drive one of the early ones. The local Pontiac dealer had some deal where they would loan the schools the new cars for a couple thousand miles, and they got some big write-off or something. The stick shift was always a Sunfire so I would try and nab that car if I could. I always wondered what effect a bunch of high school kids learning to drive stick for a couple thousand miles had on those cars, but they seemed to handle it just fine.