1998 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP review from North America

Initially the car was near flawless except the trunk lid would open when I was driving. This was fixed by the dealer.

Around 60,000 miles one of the headlight lenses fell out requiring a new $200 headlight. This appeared to be an adhesive failure though the dealer said this was a fluke and they had not seen this problem before.

Around 62,000 miles the other headlight lens fell out. Same story with dealer.

74,000 the lower door panel on the passenger side popped from a broken clip. No, I didn’t hit anything; it just broke on its own. $85 repair.

75,000 miles, transmission began surging. (This felt like when you are driving and turn the cruise control off and get that little surge.) The first repair shop said it was the plugs and wires. This was $400 and didn’t fix the problem.

Took the car to a transmission shop and was told they couldn’t find anything wrong with it and thought it needed to go somewhere with sophisticated electronic diagnostic equipment and referred me on. There was a software upgrade for the transmission, but they also discovered that when the transmission was serviced as indicated in the manual, they apparently didn’t change out the filter and the fluid was very dirty and had more than the normal amount of metal in it. This was a $600 repair.

The car started running slightly hotter than usual so I took it back to the diagnostic place. They said the battery was rusted out and the coolant needed replacing with something other than that corrosive red stuff that came in it. Apparently this is a big job because together they wanted almost $1,000 to do it. I had my husband replace the battery and we simply added the same coolant and that seemed to fix the heating problem.

After all this I decided it was time to trade the car and since I drive through a rather nasty construction zone on the way to work I knew it needed an alignment. When I picked it up from the alignment shop and drove a few block, made a right turn and it felt like someone was jerking the wheel to the left…hard. I turned around and took it back and found the rack and pinion had broken. Lucky me. This was a $500 repair.

This was a nice car for the money and was maintained and serviced according to the Mfrs. schedule except that I changed the oil every 3,000 miles.

I would sell or trade these cars at 50,000 mile. When they go south on you, they go quickly.