1997 Pontiac Bonneville SSE review from North America

Front brakes at 50,000 miles (routine maintenance)

Trunk latch broke while on vacation one year.

I had to write this one up simply because it was the best car I ever owned in my 26 years of driving (I'm 42). I drove it off the showroom floor brand new, and traded it off about 4 1/2 years later with just under 88,000 miles on it. In that 88,000 miles, I never did anything to it at all except routine maintenance like oil changes, and exactly one set of front brakes. When I traded it in, it even still had the original tires! The trunk latch did break while on vacation one year - it was annoying, but wasn't expensive to repair after I got it back home.

I would imagine that repairs (if any were needed) would have been expensive, as almost nothing under the hood looked like something you could work on yourself - the supercharger kind of took over most of the engine compartment.

It's only two annoying problems were persistent the entire time I had it:

1 - The passenger side window was never quite aligned just right - there was always a little wind noise from it, and occasionally you had to "learn the ritual" to get it to seal up completely when rolled up.

2 - The right rear door had to be slammed pretty hard to completely latch.

This car was perfect for long highway trips, extremely comfortable, quiet, pretty quick with it's 240 hp supercharged V6, and frankly I miss it quite a bit these days. I'd buy one again in a heartbeat if I had the cash. It got low 20's MPG in town, and right at 29-30 MPG on the road, just as regular as clockwork.