1997 Pontiac Sunfire review from North America

Perhaps I was just very lucky with this car, but I had very few problems with the vehicle over the course of the seven and a half years that I owned it.

The first problem I noticed was that the bolts around the driver and passenger seats were rusting. I don't think this posed a safety issue, but I was regularly cleaning up flakes of rust each time I cleaned out the car.

A couple years ago, the "check engine" light came on. It would periodically go out, but as the car got older, the light came on more frequently and stayed on for longer periods. My understanding is that the "check engine" light indicates that there might be a problem with the emissions level. Testing performed in 2006 confirmed that the car was putting out higher emissions, but the level was still within acceptable limits - although it was starting to get close!

A low-fluid warning light also came on regularly, but all fluid levels appeared fine upon inspection.

Once the snow really began to melt in early 2006, the car no longer started reliably. I thought that it could be a problem with water getting in with the gas, so I switched to an ethanol gasoline and that really improved the situation. There was only one day in 2007 when the car would not start.

I realized quite some time ago, that the horn didn't work. I don't even know when it stopped working as I hardly ever used it.

I also found that the heater would sometimes only blow cold air. This was not a common problem so I didn't worry too much about it, but I imagine it would've gotten worse over time.

Well over a month ago, both doors on the car froze open. They were still frozen open when I traded the car in last week. This was not the first time that I couldn't get the doors to stay closed, but the problem never lasted very long before. I imagine that the problem lasted so long this year because we've had a cold winter and the doors did not have an opportunity to thaw out early on as they did in other years.

When I bought the car, I opted to purchase a 3 year bumper-to-bumper warranty on it. By the time the warranty expired in 2003, so few things had gone wrong with my Sunfire that I did not even make my money back on the warranty.

This was a great car! It was nearly 11 years old when I traded it in for a new car, but it still performed well on the road. Were it not for the problem with the doors, I might've decided to keep it going for at least another year.