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1978 Pontiac Grand Am: Atypical A-Body
In the spring and summer, there is a weekly cruise-in on the downtown Davenport, Iowa riverfront, by the baseball stadium and the location of the farmers’ market. I’ve written up several other cars from this show, including a ’55 Dodge, ’73 Plymouth Valiant and an amazing ’56 Packard Caribbean. This time, something slightly newer caught my eye.
On October 2nd, toward the end of cruising season, I decided to check it out once again. The weather was gorgeous despite being 44 degrees that morning.
And lo and behold, a super rare ’78 Grand Am! It was terrific, and loaded with “Snowflake” alloy wheels, power windows, power locks and more. And it was very sharp in Roman Red with Platinum lower two-toning.
As I was frantically taking pictures, the owner came over and asked if she could open the car up for better interior pics, thrilling me even further. Oh, yes, please!
This car is a total time capsule, and the red paint with red cloth interior was so comfortable looking and nice. The exterior color of this car, incidentally, was available ONLY on the Grand Am in 1978, per my brochure. GM dubbed the interior color Carmine.
As it turns out, she and her husband bought the car new at Perry Snower Buick-Pontiac in Moline, just across the river. The dealership still exists, but these days it is Key Buick-GMC. And in a further coincidence, the owner, Dave Kehoe, is a friend of my father’s.
As the owner recalled, they didn’t trade in a car on it—they just bought it outright. Her husband called and said hey, come down to the dealership and see this car! She did, admitted it was terrific, and they bought it. It’s had a charmed life, never driven in snow, and driven sparingly over the past 46 years. I believe she said the car had about 42,000 miles.
I regret to say I neglected to get her name, but she is further proof that car people are the best people. It was amazing to see this car in person and chat with her about it! And even as I was chatting with her, I knew I was going to have to write it up.
When people say “Grand Am,” most folks will either think of the Colonnade 1973-75 model, with its Endura nose, stripes and gauge-laden instrument panel, or the 1985-up compact GM sedans and coupes. But this one represents the oft-forgotten second generation of the nameplate.
If you’ve never seen one, that’s not unusual. Amongst all the newly downsized 1978 A-Body Pontiacs, the Grand Prix was the belle of the ball, with 127,253 base model Grand Prixes alone built that year.
The Grand Am, on the other hand, is a rare birdie. For the 1978 model year, only 7,767 coupes and 2,841 sedans were built. The Grand Am coupe had a base price of $5,520 (about $27K today); the sedan, $5,634 ($27,600).
For comparison’s sake, new Pontiac shoppers in 1978 could also get the top-of-the-line Bonneville Brougham coupe for $6,674 ($32,700), and a Grand Prix LJ—the luxury version, as you’ve probably already guessed by the name—cost $5,815 ($28,500).
Even a base Grand Prix, at $4,880 ($23,900), had its own sheetmetal, with formal grille, upright roofline and all the Grand Prix personal-lux credibility that went with it. The Grand Am, however, was at a glance not too dissimilar from its LeMans and Grand LeMans siblings—unless you saw it from the front!
But for those in the know, it was a very different car. As the brochure explained: “For a few glorious years in the early seventies, one car came blazing on the scene to establish itself as an impressive American grand touring car. Well, now it’s back.
“Oh, and don’t worry about this new mid-size Grand Am merely looking the part of a sport hero. It’s got guts, brother. A responsive 4.9 litre (301 CID) 2-bbl. V8. Automatic trans. 205/70R14 steel-belted radial tires with Pontiac’s Rally RTS handling package. Not to mention power steering and power front disc brakes.”
Other Grand Am extras included the special front end with pointed nose and vertical grille, two-tone paint, Grand Am emblems on the tail panel, front fenders and instrument panel, bright body moldings, color-keyed inserts in the door handles, carpeted door panels, and other refinements. Our featured car was further dressed up with bucket seats and console.
Grand Am had one engine option, the 301 V-8 with a four-barrel carburetor in place of the standard two-barrel unit, though that wasn’t available in California due to emissions. The two-barrel version had 140 hp @ 3600 rpm and 235 lb-ft of torque at 2000 rpm. The four-barrel unit made 150 horses and 240 lb-ft.
Yes, it was the late ’70s, the very first year of CAFE, and the numbers reflect that. Imagine one of these with a 455, yowza! But I still really like these. It was a neat package.
But it wasn’t a roaring success sales-wise. By ’78, Brougham was in full swing, and cars like the Grand Prix, Cutlass Supreme, and Monte Carlo were much more popular to new car shoppers than even a well-thought-out nod to the performance sedan such as the 1978 Grand Am.
So the Grand Prix easily blew it out of the water in sales, and the base LeMans and Broughamier Luxury LeMans versions sold better than the Grand Am too. Pontiac stuck with it for 1979 but sales fell even more, to the tune of 4,021 coupes and 1,865 sedans.
In 1980 only the coupe returned. With an inflation-fueled base price of $7,504 ($29,100 today), a mere 1,647 were produced and the model was shelved—until the all new ’85 Pontiac Grand Am appeared with tidy dimensions, good looks and front-wheel drive. And immediate popularity!
A beautiful and rare automobile…those were the days!
Nice car. I love factory red interiors. Seeing a 70s GM one that isn’t 4 shades of yellow with red stripes where a seat belt sat is impressive.
That’s a G body
These cars were A bodies through about 1981. When the new FWD A bodies came out, these cars were renamed G bodies.
These were good cars, in all their iterations. They were, perhaps, GM’s last successful cars.
In 1986 I needed to choose my new Company Car, between a Chev Celebrity or a RWD Pontiac (Bonneville I think). I chose the ‘new’ FWD V6 sedan. I ended up buying that Celebrity when I changed jobs and I drove it for years, but it’s long gone now.
Anyway I probably should have got something V8 RWD traditional (like this fine old Grand Am!) and maybe I would still have it today. Put a 293 ci modern LR4 in it…
a friend of mine’s mom had a brand new one when we were kids, he was quite proud of it, especially considering how modest he was, but it was beautiful car and was impressed as well
Nice clean, well-equipped Grand Am! I had that same 301-2bbl/auto combination in my 79 Firebird Esprit. Reliable, but I think I got beat once by am 81 Volvo 240 wagon. It was not fast.
Late seventies malaise era cheapness. The four door versions didn’t even have working rear windows. The term lipstick on a pig comes to mind with the options on the slow, sad GM sigh.
Agree
American cars were garbage compared to the quality products coming out of Japan in those years.
I mom bought one. Silver 301 -4 barrel.
Probably around 1982. I loved the car. She used to work 2nd shift. So she got home around 1am. I knew where she hid the key. I was about 13-14 yrs old. I would steal the car and go drive around the backroads. It would smoke the tires pretty good. My mom must of caught on to me after about 4 trips. My only guess is-I never refueled. So she changes the key location and that ended that. lol. I fun and cool car. I loved it.
Gear shirt on the column and a bench seat.
This car is GREAT!!! I was a fan of the colonnade models, but these slightly smaller versions were better in many ways. My uncle had a new Grand LeMans with bucket seats and console in 1979, and I told him the Grand Am would have been a better choice.
My Dad had a Grand Prix with the same color interior. It was a good looking car for the day. This one is super clean.
This was the time the bean counters began their best to run things at GM. Up in Canada we’d put up with Pontiac’s being Chevrolets for years. It was hit or miss, the Grand Prix, GTO and Firebird being the only real Tin Indians.
The Grand-Am was also a Pontiac while the rest of the LeMans lineup was a Chevelle/Malibu. This dilution started to trickle into Oldsmobile and Buick as well.
At this point the parts department needed the VIN# to verify the powerplant. Soon the broadcast sheet, or option codes to be sure brake size and all sorts of mayhem broke out. You could walk around the new car compound a play “What is it really?” Models that were never RPO popped up, the 78on Malibu’s with 350/4speed. V8 Monza’s. Can you say Class Action Suits?
General Motors Canada decided the way to combat the Japanese invasion was by putting a GM store on every corner. Obviously more locations equals more sales. All the closed locations became Toyota, Honda and Mazda retailers. In 1984 Hyundai was added to the list. Given that the new locations had become second or third locations for the original dealers, under threat from GM, they had spots for all the Import locations that sprang up. Move forward and soon we had an original GM dealer selling every available car and truck available on the market, or be swallowed up by the “Group”. We now have one car mall that sells everything owned by one organization. Don’t like that KIA, walk across the street and pick-up a McLaren.
And ladies and gentlemen the government is now going to help you all with tariffs to AID line the pockets of Tariffman and his groupies.
I had a Black with Silver Two Tone Lemans coupe with the red interior.
It had the taillights that looked similar to the ones on this car with the amber turn signals. The dash layout was one of the best at the time!
Beautiful car that I really cherished.
Honeycomb wheels too!
First car I ever financed!
the Pontiac featured is a G body, back in the eighties we had a bunch of G body cars, Buick Regal T types, an Olds Cutlass wagon, Pontiac Bonneville wagon, Chevrolet Malibu’s, they were bought new or slightly used with low miles and driven in the Midwest, all of them suffered from frame rot.
As I recall, the frames would rot aft of the axle kick-up in the back. That rot, coupled with the fact there was no rear crossmember (the rear bumper reinforcement was used to take its place), was enough to take many of those cars off the road.
According to a comprehensive Wiki article, the 1978 Grand Am was an A-body; when the new FWD mid-sizers emerged for 1982, they became A-bodies, and the RWD’s were then renamed G-bodies going forward.
I remember the LeMans of this era, but had forgotten that the Grand Am existed then, too. A friend bought a LeMans back then. I always preferred the Malibu coupe’s straight lines. Now, looking back, they both looked good. I preferred the Grand Prix over both, though, and still do.
My best choice of that era, though, would be the final-gen of the El Camino, which I have always felt was the best-looking of all its generations.
These were very sharp, tasteful, sporty-looking cars that stood out from all the tasteless brougham that was so much in vogue at the time. My first car was a ‘79 Pontiac Lemans, but these were way sharper. The only bad news was under the hood. That malaise era Pontiac 301 didn’t offer much oomph.