Curbside Classic: 1995 Pontiac Grand Prix – Neither Grand Nor Inspiring To Write About

(first posted 12/5/2012)     Is it the goal of CC to document every make, model and generation of car? I don’t know, but if it is, I’m going to need some help,  because there are a whole lot of cars out there that I’m just not qualified to say much about. Unless it’s just some generalized (and possibly inappropriate) slurs, which tend to come easy to me for certain cars, especially of more recent vintage. The odds of that probably go up a bit further if it was made by GM. Yes, there are two other cars in this picture I’d rather be thinking about. But we’ve done them, so now it’s homework assignment time: write an 800 word essay on a purplish 1995 (that’s a wild guess) Pontiac Grand Prix. Uh oh.

If you’ve been around here for a while, and heard about my studious ways in high school, you should already know what I’m going to come up with:

Nothing.

 

 

 

 

I never did any homework in school. Except about twice, when I actually got genuinely enthused about a particular subject for a paper. In all those years, I can think of just two: “The Life of Henry Ford” (1968), and “Why Marijuana Should Be Legalized” (1967). The second one raised an eyebrow from Sister Dolores, my eight grade teacher.

So you think I can raise any enthusiasm about this so-called Grand Prix?

If this were the assignment, it would be a different story. And if the model behind it wasn’t so…ah…mature, the story might actually be inspired. But I haven’t found one on the street, and you know what a purist I am.

So we’re stuck with this pretender to the that name.  OK, I can tell you this much: the 1963 Pontiac had a face that created a design revolution in Detroit, and everyone rushed to copy it. This GP has a face blatantly copied from a Mercury Sable. Does it get any more pathetic than that? Is there more to know about this car worth knowing?

True confession: the dog ate my homework. No, actually, it’s worse than that: I’m pretending to write about a car I’ve never sat in. And that goes for the whole family of GM’s W-Body cars: Regals, Cutlass Supremes, Luminas, Centuries, Intrigues, Impala, Monte Carlos, LaCrosse, (I’m reading this off from my wikipedia crib notes).  Never set my butt in any of them, at least not that I have any memory of. There, I feel better for having said that (guess my Catholic upbringing wasn’t a total failure).

It’s not that I actively shunned these cars; well, sort of. But around the time these were really enjoying their golden years, I mostly dropped out of the new car scene, at least for a while, having found other things that held my attention better then cars like this. The very first W-Body coupes that came out in 1988 were such snoozers, I decided to take a hiatus on new GM cars until the the whole W-Body era was finished. That turned out to be a lot longer than I thought. Call me Rip van W-Body. Did I miss anything?

I just remembered: I have done one other W-Body CC. And it turned out even sparser than this one, until I got some help from my friends. So if you’re a fan of Ws, my apologies. Bring on the love in the comments.

Only one possible regret: by not doing my homework, I can’t rightfully argue it’s a GM Deadly Sin. (Update: I did a DS on a Lumina here, and I actually did some homework on that one).  But then as far as I know, it might well be a GM’s Greatest Hit. Maybe homework wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Anybody got some W-Body notes I can copy? I hear there’s a test today.