This 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix SJ was One of The Best 1970s Personal Luxury Coupes

Good morning,

this

is Bill from Curious Cars and usually Auto House of Naples, but today I have a car from a private collection that, frankly, I really wanted to check out, so here it is. I'm very excited about it. This is a

1977

Pontiac Grand

prix

sj coupe basically, like all

grand

prix

were up to

this

point, it wasn't until many years later that you got some

grand

prix sedans, historically they were a cooperative offering from

pontiac

, but you know, let's look at it in the context of the times at the time in

1977

, hey, what's wrong with you?

You have Star Wars released in the cinema, as well as Saturday Night Fever. You know, you really couldn't go wrong with the release of the Commodore Pat, the Apple II and the Atari 2600. uh, all of which became a successful Atari, not so much until my mom bought me one in 1981. uh, you said that one right. big 747 disaster in tenerife uh, in the Canary Islands there was a bomb that exploded in uh, Gran Canaria and the Canary Islands, so all these planes were diverted to this small airport in Tenerife, which suddenly drove the controllers crazy. I mean this place is used to having nothing more than a few regional flights.

Suddenly, there's like 70, you know, big 747s hanging around. and it ended up being the worst disaster in aviation history: two 747s collided at a kmm and a pan am mainly because the captain of the klm was a jerk, but it happened in heavy fog and you know there was some confusion at the time , but that was a big deal, you have Jimmy Carter getting elected and his first act is giving away the Panama Canal as the first thing he did. I could use a glass of Billy beer this morning and what else in '77? I don't know what there was. someone else I guess Quebec made French through the official language which was clever there was a 25 hour blackout in New York City which led to looting and lots of babies and yes other things happened so 77 was an interesting year the median The house price was like 49 grand and gas, which was expensive at the time, was 65 cents a gallon and there it is, that's the scenario for which this Pontiac, the last year of this, what is this? ?

The third generation Grand Prix was released to the world. And in fact, it did fantastically well in 1977. To this day, because of course Pontiac no longer exists, it is, was and will forever be the

best

-selling Grand Prix of all time. Over 280,000 of these things were produced in 1977. He was a very, very prolific person and a

luxury

coupe at the time. It competed directly with Chevrolet's Monte Carlo, which was also in a special body that I'll get to in a minute, and a variety of other offerings. 77 was the downsized Ford. Thunderbird that sold like hot cakes, I think it outsold this car, uh, but this one still did very well, also the Mercury Cougar and, uh, look how these birds are going crazy, the cats are out this morning .

I didn't videotape them, but yeah. running around this car and looking at me and they feel threatening, I don't think the goats are around, but Peter claims that he now freed them from their pen so they could come out at any time, which is not great, the only thing I have in my favor is that the weather is still a bit nice you see, and again animals pass by and I get bewildered and forget where the hell I was, so anyway in 77 you could also get the mercenary, what was it, the matador amc ? Barcelona which was probably the least attractive

luxury

coupe ever made, which is why I love it, but that was another deal and of course the person in luxury

coupes

was off the charts through the '70s and into '77 , and that's why Pontiac sold so many.

Of these things, they were the third largest division, not a division, sorry, the third largest automaker, from 1973 on until this year, so they were selling a ton of cars and, to some extent, they were You can thank Mr. Delorean for that, but we'll get to that later. So the first Grand Prix came out in 1962 and it was based on the Catalina platform and it was kind of a detuned Catalina and it was a sporty alternative to other Pontiac cars that had bucket seats and a center console, that generation ran. I mean through what it was in 1968 and then in '69 the second generation grand prix came out, which was a very, very attractive car, uh, the '69 grand prix, you can borrow it, there's a debate, I don't even know if It's a debate about the The names s j j and uh ssj, which were the models that came out between 1969 and 1972, were blatantly not based on the same duesenberg name and some people say that the style is also related to that duesenberg, which is fine, maybe yes, but you know, talk about it.

Putting my sights higher, I'm referring to America's first supercar, the duesenberg sj, but anyway that happened around uh 73 or sorry, 72 until this style came out in 73, a year late due to the strikes with the uaw and other things that happened in this car, they should have been out. This style of car should have been around in '72, but it sold well anyway. Delorean, who was heavily involved in the first grand prix when he was head of advanced engineering at Pontiac. When he arrived in '69, he was already the boss of Pontiac. and it helped him not create it, but he certainly promoted the niche of the

personal

luxury car market and that's something that became one of the most prolific salesmen in the history of the American automobile in '77, the person in

coupes

Luxury cars were like over 10 percent of all car sales in the United States, which is a huge number, well over a million cars, so this was a pretty hot market at the time and it was fascinating. that there were so many participants in it and so there are many competitors for this car, not only from other manufacturers but also within the GM division, which is part of what ultimately led to their serious problems, was just the competitiveness between divisions and badge engineering, and you know it was a real problem, but I don't think so. anyone could tell that this particular grand prix was designed with a badge, even if it was one of the most prolific colonnade cars to come out, this one was so special, okay, so let's quickly look at the second generation grand prix that also shared platform with others. cars was the g body and was based on a stretched body platform.

When the '73 came out they just made it a special body and then this was called a special body and frankly when I was younger I had some girls with a special body there was no question about it but they eliminated the g body until the next generation that It came out in '78 and it was a full g-body again, so you know, it's the typical gm crap with all the body stuff that could drive you crazy and the people who insist on it and you know, talk about it like it's important oh god, I don't know, they drive me crazy, I mean, who the hell cares which body is what, but bodies anyway?

They were very prolific and incorporated some new styling cues that were mostly made to comply with federal regulations, for example, gone was the hardtop coupe of the first two generations and what was a full set of side windows than the rear ones. they could get off. Not leaving any glass on the side of the car was that colonnade thing that gave you fixed opera windows in the back, they called it a six-window rig. You see that crazy curved windshield on the back, very, very cool, I like that, but anyway. The colonnade could be had in a variety of different bodies, even three within Pontiac's own division, at least three, if not more.

The three that come to mind are the grand prix, uh, le mans and the grand am, and then of course you had subsets of those. like the gto and can ham and that kind of thing, but anyway, the a corps were everywhere and every division had one except cadimac, which didn't, and basically there was a lot of competition within GM's own ranks. uh in terms of you know, so there was the malibu, the monte carlo, the regal, the cutlass supreme uh, all of these cars used body platforms and they all in one way or another competed with each other, but only two, the monte carlo and the grand prize. shared the special platform, uh, special, which was a longer version of the body, oh my gosh, that's quite a mouthful in '73 when it came out, it had all the Pontiac engines and they were, you know, even though the thing about the emissions were starting to come in.

Play, they were still pretty big engines, the base engine was a 400, I think you could even get it with two cylinders, so that might have been later, but it's a 400 anyway and then they had a 455 that you could get there. be a grand prix 455 super duty, uh, but that didn't work out and, you know, supply issues absolutely plagued this line for the entire run, especially when it was so successful that they're selling over 280 thousand cars that they just couldn't. I don't understand it, I mean, how can you maintain that level of production? I'm probably forgetting about the 350 or something you could have gotten in '72, but I don't think so.

I think they were just a 400 and a 455 and uh, in this generation, this third generation, they were just turbo hydra 400 transmissions, there were no manuals that you could get, uh, because the grand prix wasn't really, it was a luxury sport. I mean, its main mission wasn't to go fast or be in luxury it was to close the gap between the two, uh, the Grand Am to a lesser extent was and that was meant to compete with the European cars that were becoming fashionable in at that time, the bmws and mercedes, and that was pretty much a

pontiac

le mans with a grand prix interior and a trans am hood, so it was a cool piece, and then the lemans, which was a bit of a grand prix less expensive, and then you could get into the full size pontiac like the bonneville. or the Katamina, which of course was a much larger car, but anyway one of the interesting things about this generation of grand prix is ​​how the engines changed over time, so it went from the 400 to the 455 which continued for a couple of years, but the power ratings kept going down uh in '75 the dual exhaust was eliminated and you know because the academic investors ruined it and then there was definitely a 350 for '75 and then in '77 the 301 came out uh it was a completely new engine from pontiac based on older architecture but still brand new at the same time the 4 cylinder Iron Duke came out and they shared a boring stroke and essentially that meant you could take the pistons from an Iron Duke and put them in the 301, connecting rods and aluminum .

The pistons were the same and what it was supposed to do at that time was you know we've created this big, powerful V8 engine that gets the gas mileage of a V6 and really motivates this car in the future, but yeah, you really know it. No, at that time it just didn't have enough horsepower under 200 and it ended up being? I'll tell you what a good engine was and a good engine and it ran well and did enough and it certainly wasn't suited to racing but it was good enough for day to day driving and it was very durable and reliable but in that At the time it was not wanted even though it was offered in most of the grand prix that were held in 1977.

You could also opt for a Pontiac 350 or a Pontiac 400. The 455 was gone when this car came out. That was a thing of the past, but the 400 was the

best

engine in 49 states and this one is very equipped. California Pontiac. Weren't their engines regular? They weren't approved for admission standards in California, so Oldsmobile engines came out that had the 350 and 403 in them and when supplies of those ran out because the Cutlass was selling so well that they even released a few 350 Chevys in some California models anyway, it all gets very, very complicated, but this was a very, very attractive car, it has a wine grill, they changed the grill almost every year from '73 to '77. they changed the headlights in '73, the lights had only one headlight on each side, two headlights in total on the front, later they became four rectangular ones, then they spaced them with the parking light in the middle, they had a large V-shaped grille.

The beginning was a V-shaped grille. cascade in the mid 70's and finally this last grill in 77 was just a year. They also changed the tan lights and some of the other things. They all had those aerodynamic mirrors, not big chrome mirrors at the Grand Prix. some of that Pontiac sports stuff and the beautiful Pontiac Rally two-wheeler, which I think are some of the most beautiful steel wheels ever made. You can see they are color coded on this car, they are very, very attractive. They wanted to offer alloys, but supply problems arose. It's impossible, you know, in all the documents at the time it said that you could order alloys even in 73, but it wasn't meant to be that way, they probably ended up going to Trans Ams and Firebirds and none of them made it to a car in 77 you could get alloys, but again, the scarcity is very difficult to get, very few. '76 was a peak year for the grand prix, that's when you could get t-shirts. were converted but even they couldn't keep up with the demand and there was a 76th anniversary gold edition that had some special markings and that thing came standard with the heart top andthat was all they could handle, so very few other high priests were offered with that top, so anyway I feel like I'm rambling all over the place on this car, but you can see how it has a slightly arched rear end, uh, at some point the license plate moved from under the bumper to above the bumper it had. horizontal bar type taillights that changed over the years until this 77 actually had medallions similar to what, you know, these hairy-chested disco kids might wear under their open shirts, so, that was pretty cool. , you also had these kind of interesting grand prix window sconces inside the opera house windows and, you know, maybe that couldn't compete with Cheryl Teagues and the Cougar, but it certainly had its own look, also a variety of different styling options, the upper quarter came on a lot of these cars and you know many didn't have it and probably survived better because the upper quarters when kept out of the tender rust, I also have a nice hood ornament on the front and I Love that V-shaped hood that reaches the raised edges of the fender and the split Pontiac grille with the arrowhead emblem in the middle. uh 73 brought the Five Mile Per Hour Bumper and you can see they're continuing this one in 77, but I think Pontiac did a good job of integrating them and not making them look very, very ugly, so overall I think this is it. an incredibly attractive and beautiful car. designed and again Delorean, a real car guy, you know, a real genius in terms of marketing and styling, you can see the impact he had on this car, he had followed, you know, somewhere like Chevy, I think, but he influenced a lot in the previous generation. and this generation too and the first generation, I love the way the doors taper and then cut back, that's quite attractive and when you lower the windows it lets more of the outside in.

You have two contrasting body lines in one coming from the rear forward and towards the center of the door, another coming down from the front and also towards the center of the door and neither for a bit of space in between. It just hit the mark for this car in terms of styling. There were three different option packages, the uh j, which was basic, uh, they stripped down a lot of the car from the previous versions to make the price more affordable for everyone, you know, and again I hope to sell a lot of these things, the sj like this one, which was the sports version and of course took the name off the duesenberg sj which is considered America's first supercar, a very valuable and very collectible car, and then the lj which was a version of grand prix luxury that incorporated many luxury options.

They ranged from 73 to 77, it was an optional package, then it became its own model and you know, and so on, there was also an ssj, but I think it was only in the second generation, the generation before this, uh, which It was uh. You know, made by Hearst or tuned by Hearst if you like, there aren't many of them and they are considered very collectible today. The Lemans and you know, the Grand Am moved at the same pace as this interesting car that deserves a brief mention: the 77 Pontiac Can-am, of which only about a thousand were made.

They had a trans am shaker hood, fancy treatment for the front and rear bumpers and were meant to be very, very sporty at the time. and now they are quite collectable due to their low numbers, so my goodness it's complicated to cram all this stuff in, but you really have to love the

personal

luxury coupe, the genre that emerged throughout the '70s, really did something old and cool. iron uh he's really fun to have around today so let's get in this car before the sun comes up and ruins everything he's mostly outside already I picked him up from Owl this morning my friend Al this is his uncle Scar Al , it's lifelong.

My friend, he promised me that he was going to have the car inside, which you know he didn't do when I got there this morning. It was all covered in fog and dew, thanks for that, but hey, in his defense, he smokes a lot. a lot of weed at night so okay so it's not staying up like we're supposed to try to do this one handed it's not always easy and I don't want to scratch anything. Actually, I haven't opened the trunk, so if I ever get in here, we'll find out together what's here, okay, so what's here is nothing more than what we'd like to find, which is a trunk, you have a spare tire covered by the small original material. things, you've got a cat underneath, you've got a nice padded rug there, you can see it's got some rust protection and everything is nice and correct under here.

Al's uncle owns the car, Uncle Tommy, I think his name is very unique. boy, um, this isn't his in any way, his most valuable car, this was probably a joke, uh, he's, you know, really into the hurst olds and the 442s and the judges, and we'll probably talk about some that. things as we go if you'd be kind enough to let us do them, but anyway, there's the trunk, you can see the lifting instructions there, you know, nice size, nice tan lamps, behind here you have the beautiful gm hidden. gas store where you turn the license plate down and you know classic '70s stuff, while this stuff was on a lot of TV in the movies.

I don't think any grand prix has really highlighted anything. I don't think there were detectives that you know made Grand Prix famous, they just appeared as supporting actors in most of the TV and movies they were in, which was a lot, let's take a look under the hood, okay, here it is, there is a 6.6 liter 400. pontiac v8 uh this is the same engine that would have been in the trans ams at the time uh in california, this would have been 403 old, which just wasn't as hypothetical as the pontiacs and the pontiac, you know, pontiac is part of the reason why it was not available for sale in California.

They really held on to their performance longer than the other companies. The Pontiac 400 still made over 200 horsepower in this incarnation. It was still a pretty excellent engine with torque and it's wonderful that it's in this particular car. It really motivates you in the future. I'm no better than the 301. It could have come with the 350. So you can see that everything below is absolutely lovely. You're a Pontiac. Well, by then it was already corporate. blue, I think I went to corporate black, so it's still Pontiac blue, that engine, um, you know, it's still the original, uh, whatever, this is the accordion air filter, everything in good shape, everything very nice, and you know, as befits a car.

Al's uncle would like that. It's nice to see it has air conditioning too, but anyway, everything is lovely under there and it still came to a turbo hydra transmission. There are no manuals available on the Grand Prix for this year or this generation in total, but it is absolutely fantastic. I also like the occult. The wipers go behind the hood and they sit on nice little perches there and they're aluminum which is a lovely look man it's a cool hood and I love the nice stripe down the middle going into that grand prix uh , split pontiac hood ornament. grille which of course is historic, the four quad lights look good and of course the pontiac wide track, they were still advertising the pontiac wide track cars around this time and, you know, I think that's beautiful, very unique and nice, I mean. look like the front end is like a sea ray or something, this car really has tremendous boat undertones.

I really have to do it on Pontiac, although a little bit because of their uh, because of their naming system, I mean, Pontiac has the most inconsistent names in automotive history. Really, I mean, when you get through the years, you might start with the torpedo, the streamliner that went into the boss and the super boss and that kind of thing, then we start getting into this weird thing with are we going to race? it's going to be geography what are we going to be you have the lemans you have the bonneville you have the safari uh you have the parisian so we keep progressing it gets weirder you get grand am you get grand what else, the can-am, you get the j-2000 in the 80s, then you have a series of birds and mythical creatures, you have solar fires, you have phoenixes, you have firebirds, you have trans I'm more racing the gto grantourism legato uh delorean borrowed that from ferrari for the name of his uh car sporty uh you have the aztec you have the g8 you have the 6000 you have the aster the ventura the catalina It's just this endless mix of things that they can't seem to focus on any one thing and eventually they just eliminated them all together, but in 2008, the Grand Seventh Generation Prize came to an end and that was it. from the grand prix, so okay, I'm going to pause it here for a minute, put my garbage bag in the trunk of the car and park where I'll have a little shade to get inside and then we'll go for a drive, in the meantime, hopefully the goats won't come out okay we're back and rolling and one thing I forgot to mention was by far I can't believe I forgot the most important event of 1977 and that was the command message Ashtar galactic.

You know, this was very important in the south of England. People are watching. You know they're in England, so they're what they're sitting in their flats listening to the BBC. and uh eating chips and thinking about taking the subway in the morning and saying "you know cheerio" and having a cup of tea and all that uh they were actually watching it when suddenly the audio goes away and a voice comes from the future. called the galactic command ashtar, a guy named brilliant took over the television audio and implored humanity to come together, drop their weapons and unite in peace, harmony and unity, so that we could evolve into a brighter future and beautiful we obviously did and that is of course where we are today so very very interesting stuff and thank you verilion I think that was the name of the ashtar galactic commando guy who helped put humanity on the right course, actually a really cool person.

Hoax and you know someone had taken over one of the satellite repeaters or audio pickups or whatever it was and found out there was a little problem with it and was able to get past the real audio of this. shiny cat, they never caught him, whoever he was, and they came up with this fantastic thing, so if you're ever bored, check out ashtar galactic commando. I didn't know until I touched it up last night, uh anyway in 1973, this brand new body and these specially made bodies, a special body, sorry, like the grand prix and the monty, they got a front suspension straight from the firebird camaro to improve car handling, front and rear stabilizer bars, rear coil springs.

This was the first Grand Prix to have steel belted radials from the factory and in fact that was the famous radio tuned suspension, which came on Pontiacs after that, it had variable aspect power steering, it had hydraulic disc brakes standard and at the time it was considered a good handling car, you know, that may or may not be true in terms of what we consider a good handling car, but back then it was and it had a pretty modern suspension , so anyway, let's just get started. you now have frameless glass, although you now have this common help top with the fixed windows at the rear, at least the glass on the side remains frameless which is good again.

I love the submersible door panel, I mean it's just cool. feature and the kind of stuff you'd actually get from GM after a certain point, uh, when the badge engineering went crazy, you know, a Cadillac Cimarron, you could probably put a door of that on a Chevy Cavalier, I mean, no There was no variation at all. Besides the trim panel quality and stuff, back then they differentiated their brands enough to be a little neat and even the motors were different and some of the tools were different, they had some amazing options that you could get on the previous ssj cars, which I just read about black and white TVs, phones and a lot of cool stuff, so even though Pontiac and GM and all the divisions were moving towards this strange harmony designed by the badge uh where things were they became too similar to the other uh 73 to 77, there was still enough variation that yes, the brands retained their individual identities.

If you were in a Monte Carlo from the same year, it would be very, very different in terms of what you would see and feel around you, even if the fundamentals were all very similar. but anyway, the door panels are nice, big sloping armrest, I'm surprised this bird, I guess the sj doesn't have to have power windows, the lj definitely would, but we have cranks for the windows there. Nice door handle, uh, you can see it has wood paneling. everywhere in '73 four and I think all five were real wood,african crossfire mahogany, veneer, uh, you know, gm and their low cost basically turned it into contact paper, but the hats don't look good and everything is nice and tight. and right on the door panel, there, these high seats became standard in '73, a no-cost option, you could also get a bench seat if that's what you wanted, if you needed it to fit three and then they had some reclining seats, you could also get in the back seat and I left this here I didn't mess with any of this let me lift this up so we can get in um you can see your Canadians would be happy back there I left it on their uh their show car license plate thing that and also the pontiac hat because it's not mine to move it, but you could put your three canadians back there in this and what do they call this malahide or something, the pontiac vinyl uh macca, whatever, it doesn't matter anyway, a nice vinyl interior and a a nice little license plate that he had made for this car or the one he bought it with, I don't know, you have two speakers on the rear shelf of the package, you have a good fit and finish, you know that's a lie in 77, really Wasn't the fit and finish of this car so nice?

It was good enough, is what you could probably call it, you know? And just in well-preserved examples like this one it doesn't look as good if you had one of these things in high school. or college and beat it, today it would look bad if it existed, huh, but anyway you have three-point seat belts with retractors in the ceiling, a small place to hang dry cleaning clothes than a person in luxury chicken coops would need and Everything is beautiful in the back, now again being a sports division. I love that angle. It has all the wraparound cockpit look that BMW gets the most credit for, but here it is in a Pontiac and had been in Pontiacs until the second generation iteration of this Grand Prix, look at the angled center console, I think it's very, very cool, this one has power seats, no power windows, it's a strange order, man, really strange order, you can also get rally gauges with a variety of different options. but anyway let's jump in turn it on i heard this big pontiac shot for life i love the pontiac 400 i think it's the best v8 this year and to some extent before i put it down for a minute this one also has a tilt wheel. which is nice and mounts to the column the way I like it and I like Fords at the end of the wheel.

It was a big deal at the time that the headlight dimmers were on the turn signal switch, in this case. as well as activating the cruise control, so you have a three-way switch, well actually, many more ways than that and then you like a porn movie, but you have the cruise function, you have the signal indicators turning and dimming of the high beams, all on. a switch on the side so none of that goes down with your feet, uh, you could have had a tack here, I didn't have that option, but you have a nice set of full gauges, otherwise, you have your fuel, your volts, your oil. water pressure and temperature uh there you see a hundred mile per hour speedometer with um only 53,000 on the clock, which is real in this car uh here are the windshield wiper controls here on the dash here are your headlights, nice things uh you have your lighter here with, you know, a hieroglyph of what looks like a zippo.

Wonderful, nice detail, I don't know why they said big long lighters in the 70's, but they did that too. Your air conditioning works fine with this car. Very nice, the same. that was on my 79 Firebird which is fun to see as well as this badge the radio tuned suspension badge the same one here's your defrost uh this one has the upgraded eight track am fm uh stereo and I'm suffering because I didn't bring any. Of my eight songs with me I didn't even think about it, so we're stuck with whatever's on the radio. Yes, Rod Stewart, I can do without Rod Stewart most of the time. 99.9 of the time I'm happy to do without Rod Stewart. he has his moments, but not many, so you have this nice little pocket here because you know it would be a good place to put a gun, except it would go flying the moment you hit the gas, so I'm really not. sure what you could put in there that won't fly away the moment you hit the gas probably nothing, I'm sure it covered some option, I don't know if it had a second stereo option or a trip computer, something you might have had down there, but otherwise it's just a hole that's so horizontal that nothing will be left there.

Big weird courtesy light here on the side of the console. Here you can see it's the sj modem again listening to that duesenberg. You have small and neat ones. I don't feel very well made for GM you know this isn't like that as time went on it's a cool little ashtray cover and of course people smoked in the 70's so you had to have a good ashtray. the same pontiac shifter that you would find on trans ams and firebirds, very nice stuff and again a very well done little center console here and that's a good place to put some weapons, you could have all kinds of things in there, even big revolvers from the 70s.

I don't know if you have a 44 in there but a 357, don't worry, you know, especially if it has a five or six inch barrel or a short barrel 44 with that big eight inch bear, whatever it never, Never, you should have. a dumpy but nice, uh anyway, fit, finish and quality. I can't believe I'm saying that about a GM product from the '70s, but there's the glove box, nice stuff, all the books that come with it, I'm going to throw it away. Let's look at this for a minute just to see if there's any chance it comes with a window decal.

There is a protective plate. There's the manual. I'm not going to look in his books. I don't immediately see a window sticker here, so let's go. I'll leave it as is, but it's nice to see that this car comes with all these original documents and there's actually a build sheet on that rear plate, so let's take a look at that real quick without opening the trunk, but I see it . in a socket for one, so probably the deluxe models came with that, but anyway there's the build sheet that I'm going to focus on and I can read it when I'm in front of my computer later because I can't see it now with the glasses, but there's the top Lando, I can't see it, the steel belt, the radios, the air conditioning, uh, you know, all the things that this would have included.

I don't see where the total bill is and that kind of thing. I don't know why all that has disappeared, but yeah, anyway, there's that big heavy door nearby, roll down the window a little. You see, you have a remote mirror here. We have a mirror on the passenger side, but I do. I don't see where it has a remote, there is a brake release mechanism here so you probably just have to set it up I don't like the dash mount like on that brand 5. It has a remote mirror but you have to lean forward to set it up . it immediately takes you out of the position you need to be in to actually see where you're setting it, so it's like a three or four step process where you set it up by guessing, lean back, find out you're wrong, lean forward , set it again, find you know you're better but you're still wrong lean forward set it again seems silly.

I don't know why it worked that way back then, but you know engineering wasn't um, it wasn't always the brightest thing. In terms of absolute function, it seemed to have a lot more to do with style, which I guess if I have to balance today's world with the world, then style versus substance, I guess I prefer the style, I miss the look of these cars and how different they were. From what we have today, everything is so streamlined and egg shaped, let's see this isn't Dalton's window, so it's probably pretty good, yeah, I probably haven't cleaned it in a while.

He keeps these things in a hangar, so I'll do them. Pick it up again at the end of the street, okay, so let's go, so the big prize, you know, this one was, even though it was all new in '73 and it was designed with the gas crisis and the emissions crisis in mind, it was still larger than The previous generation was longer and heavier, it had a 112 inch wheelbase, but you know, part of that is part of that and the full frame design is what makes them so nice and I have to say that The Grand Prix really for me is one of the best tickets in the world. personal uh luxury coupe genre really balances sport and luxury really well uh in a way that others didn't do so well uh the ride of the car the steering the sharpness the feel of everything uh you know, this car today really feels nice to drive It's going around and I know it's a low mileage example, but 53,000 miles in '77 wasn't, you know, it wasn't a super mobile car at the time, if we go back, you know, so, uh, and It still feels brand new the way it brakes. it's the way the steering is, um, it really has a fantastic feel everywhere and that's part of the reason they sold so well, was how well the cars drove, also the Pontiac engines and even the Oldsmobile and, uh, the Chevy engine, where you know very well. ordered at the time it came out, so they were reliable, they may not have had the highest horsepower ratings, but they certainly weren't fantastic on gas, even if they were better at the time, but they were incredibly reliable, the turbo hydraulic transmission was bulletproof, the rear axle was, you know, solid and indestructible.

Everything was well sorted on this car, so it became highly prized on the used car market and these cars attracted many kids in the 80s during high school and college and their first jobs. uh you know, you could buy them cheap, they started every day, they were like old faithful cars really fantastic cars and that's why a lot of people remember with fond memories of them and although I didn't have a grand prix at the time or I really liked them I subdued anyone who did it. I can see the charm. I can see the charm.

I love the big, long hood with the hood ornament guiding the way I like the feel of the bucket seats. It's pretty easy to find a nice, comfortable position and how fantastic. boulevard cruiser uh, which is probably why these things are really starting to take off on the collectors market, they were forgotten for a while, but not anymore, you know, now the really nice examples are getting double what which used to take just a few minutes. years and yeah, I get it, you know, time goes by and people realize what they've been missing. Collectors noticed the good and made a load, I mean 280,077, so what a great collector car, you're not going to have too much.

It's a problem finding parts and moldings and pieces, you know, there were so many out there and I'm sure there are a lot of them rotting in the Arizona junkyard, so fenders and doors and all that stuff really shouldn't be a problem and of course, Of course it's easy to get parts for corporate v8s so what a fun way to have a collectible car. I wish this one was for sale. It's not that he likes it. You know, I'll say this. Everything is for sale. Everything's always for sale, man. Tommy sells things that he says he's not going to sell, so maybe he sells this one, I don't know, but don't call a house in Naples and ask about it, it's not one of his cars and they won.

I don't know what the hell you're asking. This is just one I borrowed again from a private collection, so you know I'll make another short little video on it if it ever comes up for sale and you're interested. In it, anyway, is the 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix, the third generation Grand Prix of a total of seven, and it is certainly the most prolific and the one that sold the most, so you could call it the most successful of all time, esp. '77, the most prolific year and a lovely car to drive, a nice car to look at and, uh, a very nice car to drive, so thank you very much for taking a look at it, I appreciate it.

I will take you back to your place and there will be no road trip today. uh, but uh, I have a very nice brand iii coming soon, but it's a domestic car. I'll probably have it Thursday and then we'll see what else we can put together, so thanks for checking it out, I appreciate it and we'll do it. See you next time