Grand Am Enthusiasts Website
filed in 1995 Honda Civic
Question: In my experience, the Grand AM isn’t a bad car, it just has a bad engine and transmission:
‘86 GrandAM V6 threw rod at 80K miles, new engine seized main bearing at 105K, 2 new transmissions in 130K miles
‘92 GrandAM Quad-4 cracked head blew head gasket at 110K…what a bitch of an engine to work on…took about 3X normal time to repair.
This is all your *opinion*, of course. Not everyone can have a non-practical car, or an expensive one. The Grand Am is a practical cheap car. You probably won’t argue with this. However, just because someone bought one (probably because they could only afford a practical cheap car!) or likes it more than any other car (for whatever reasons) doesn’t mean they can’t be a car nut or driving enthusiast. Entertaining is very subjective. And in the hands of a capable driver, any car is entertaining (though in an old Caprice, I guess entertaining would have to be defined as “wobbling a lot and getting seasick”). How about the Neon? Or do you only want to consider ACR? How about the Civic EX/Si? Miata? Mustang? F-body?
Any car can be an enthusiast’s car if someone is enthusiastic about it, for whatever reason (maybe they really like the car, maybe it’s all they have and can’t afford something “better”).
I cannot accept that at the price of any used or new grand am, one could not find an equally practical but more entertaining, more refined, better built, better designed car. Give me price point, and I’ll find some. Actually, I conceed that a driving enthusiast could have a Grand Am just for transport. Fine. But if he says he loves the way it drives, more than equal price cars such as a Contour, I’ll raise my eyebrows. I don’t have problem. I just keep saying that I don’t understand what there is in a grand am that one could be so enthusiastic about. One can like it for what it does. But that kind of liking is there in every owners heart for what they own. Its called affection. The Grand Am is a quiet, comfortable, reliable transport. Very nice. But its about as inspired as my toaster or my garden hose. But it has nothing that would make true driving enthusiasts get excited at the chance of driving one. When renting a car, most car enthusiasts will pass over it in favour of a neon, a contour, a civic, a Plymouth breeze. etc. You love your car. I’m glad you do. But the Grand Am is not a car enthusiasts machine. Perhaps we need to discuss what a car enthusiast is; you and I seem to have differing ideas on that.
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