Used But Not Loved: 1991 Pontiac Grand Am LE
I found out an interesting fact by featuring those 12 terrible economy cars from the other week. First is that you folks are a bunch of weirdos who actually love these derelict piles of parts, but the more importantly I got some keen insight to the current state of used car market dynamics. Any car older than about 1989 is a classic and therefore gets nostalgified into stupid price wars by all those idiots bidding on fancy auction sites. Anything newer than about the year 2000 is consider a new car and gets scooped up by carmax/carvana and used car dealers and turned into something that some idiot will pay $400 a month for the next 60 months. Who thinks that a 2014 Honda Civic that cost $18k when new is worth $16k with 93k miles on the odo? Not me. But because of the chip shortage everybody has lost their collective minds. And where’d all the chips go? Maybe they needed them to put in all the vaccines? Anyway, the conclusion I’ve come to is that a 30 year old car isn’t old enough to be a classic, but isn’t new enough to be daily driven or traded into carmax, so cars from 1989-1993 are about the most perfect section of the market to get for cheap. And American cars are especially good deals if you avoid the big name cars like the Mustang or the Corvette and instead stick to brands like Mercury, Oldsmobile, Pontiac and the like. It just keeps getting better. Find this 1991 Pontiac Grand Am LE offered for $3250 in Cuba, MO via cars.com.
What manner of hell is this? Who in the engineering team at Pontiac decided that putting the stressed part of your safety restraint into the door was a good idea? I guess if you crash into a lake and are lucky enough to open the door before you submerge then you don’t have to worry about unbuckling before fleeing the vehicle. This is one of those cases where Pontiac was solving problems that didn’t exist. Or perhaps the design focus group was just a bunch of car-jackers they found roaming around Detroit. Yeah, we like the seatbelt where if you open the door, the guy just falls right out. That’s perfect.
See a better way to drive something from the best era in time? tips@dailyturismo.com
That’s a great observation. I’d like to add that any car older than 5 years w/ a stick shift (and isn’t a sports/sporty car (Porsche, BMW, Civic Si, etc)) can be a great deal. Look for a leper stick shift car using CarGurus that’s been sitting in a used dealer lot for over 100-180 days, and go hunting! I did this w/ my 2011 Scion XB 6 years ago. Original price was 11K w/ 46K miles. I drove it off the lot for $8700…. (then again, it’s a Scion XB (a ‘leper’), but I love it and it’s treated me well)……
“Who in the engineering team at Pontiac decided that putting the stressed part of your safety restraint into the door was a good idea?” Answer: Someone who wanted to meet a very badly worded mandate for “passive restraints” in the cheapest way possible. You can, at least in theory, get into the seat without buckling or unbuckling the belt, so it’s technically passive.
And you thought Ford’s motorized seatbelts were bad.