1986 Pontiac 6000 LE review from North America

I can't say much has gone wrong with this car.

My grandfather bought it new in 1986 from a local Pontiac dealer, and he barely drove it until he died in 1994.

Following that it just sat in the garage until my father bought it off my grandmother, it only had 23,000 KMs on it at the time so it was quite a steal for a car that was 10 years old.

The main problem with this car has been rust, recently it has gotten really bad at the bottoms of the driver's and passenger's doors, as well as around the gas-tank lid.

One thing that has gone wrong is the spark plug wires eventually became cracked, which led to precarious starts and temporary stranding, at times, until we got them replaced.

The plastic of the interior just below the glove compartment has cracked.

Sometimes during long trips in the summer the engine-heat indicator will go on. Rectified by turning on full cabin-heat to draw heat away from the engine.

Not much else has gone wrong though, mostly due to the low mileage on the car itself.

Another problem - not something that has gone wrong, just a problem in general - with the 1986 cars, is the carburetion.

Why is it a problem? Well they are doing mandatory emissions testing in Ontario now, and 1986 was the switch-over point from Carburetion to Fuel Injection. So the carburetted and fuel injected cars of the same year are being compared on the fuel-injected model's level. Therefore the carburetted 1986's will have a much higher failure rate when it comes to the emissions tests, since they don't burn nearly as clean as fuel injected cars.

It's a decent car, if not a bit of a rust-bucket. Would make a good winter-beater I suppose.

As mentioned above about the problem with 1986 carburetted models, my dad's car failed the emissions tests, and so it will be gone by February 2003, unless we can convert it to fuel injection or somehow else get it to pass emissions tests.

If we are able to do this, then I will be the 3rd Generation in my family to own this car.