Thinking About Purchasing a Grand Am? Read This First!

I own a 2002 Pontiac Grand Am. I bought it used, a little over a year ago, through a Honda dealership. It only had 24,000 miles at the time of purchase. I have horrible credit and this was one of two cars that were available for me to purchase because of the bad credit. I am paying double what the car is actually worth as well.

Not that that isn't bad enough, but the car started giving me trouble a few months after I bought it. I had driven to work one day, then after stopped by the grocery store. When I left the grocery store and went out to my car, it would not start. I figured that the battery had died, so I had someone help me jump it...nothing happened. After I thought about it for a minute, I realized that it couldn't have been the battery because the key was in the ignition, and the 'dinging' noise was working. I tried my windows and door locks, and they worked as well. I tried to start the car a few more times, and nothing. I called for a tow truck and had it taken to a shop.

The mechanic at the shop couldn't figure out why it would not start. He tested everything he could think of, and all was in working order. He then said that it could possibly be the computer, but he also said that that was an expensive mistake to make for me if he was wrong. Instead, he decided to keep the car another couple days, and tinker with it.

The next morning he calls me and says that the car started right up. He said he started and stopped the car several times, and every time it started right up. He did not charge me anything, and I was on my way home in my Grand Am.

Weeks went by with no problem, I figured that maybe it was a loose connection somewhere and the tinkering that the mechanic did might have fixed it. I thought this up until about two months after getting the car back, because now I was stranded at work, and my Grand Am wouldn't start once again! It was doing the same thing as the last time. So this time I get it towed to my house, and then I called the Pontiac Dealership in my town. I also started searching on line to see if I could figure out what was going on. I had an appointment to get my car towed to the dealership now, and what I found out on line was horrifying!

I ended up on the website Edmund's.com, reading post after post of other Grand Am owners getting stranded all over the place because their car would not start! After reading about 200 posts dealing with this problem, I came up with two ways to fix it, neither of which appealed to me. The problem the car was having was in the pass lock system, and there where two ways to fix it. The expensive way, or the cheap way. I went with the expensive way, which was to take it to the Pontiac Dealership, and have them fix it. Apparently Pontiac would be the only place that would know about the pass lock problem. The other way, the free way, is to start cutting wires under your dash, and cross your fingers that it works! (There is actually a link to instructions on Edmund's.com).

At the Pontiac Dealership, they confirmed that it was indeed the pass lock system. The guy working there said that it is a common problem in the Grand Am that I had. Five hundred dollars later the problem of the car not starting was fixed. I was certainly not happy with GM for making such a faulty piece of equipment. Hundreds of Grand Am owners are being stranded every day because of this. A class action law suit was one hope for all the Grand Am owner's but still hasn't been started and most likely won't be because this is not a safety issue.

That was the first problem...yes, there's more! A month after spending five hundred dollars on the new pass lock system, my car starts overheating. I take it to a mechanic who flushes and refill the radiator and says that it shouldn't be overheating anymore. He told me that the Grand Am's use Dex Cool instead of regular anti freeze, and that the Dex cool 'gunks' up in the radiator and causes over heating. Halfway home the car starts over heating. I decided to take it to a different shop to get a 'new' diagnosis. The next mechanic couldn't figure out what was wrong either, and ended up sending it to a radiator specialist.

The radiator shop had no clue. They did say that the Dex cool system that Gm used in the Pontiac's does 'gunk' up. They thought that maybe there was a bunch of sludge in the bottom of the radiator that the flush did not get out. A quick look on the Internet also confirmed that Dex cool cause all sorts of problems, including overheating due to sludge and gunk. So this radiator specialist says that we can just start taking things apart and fixing them one by one to see if that is the problem. They said eventually they could find the problem, but this would take a lot of time, and money. We decided to start with the radiator. They would take it apart and clean each part out.

I went back on line and did some more research about 'overheating'. Once again I found nothing but bad news about the Grand Ams. There was all sorts of information about the Dex cool system, as well as overheating. Then I read that a bunch of owner's had the overheating problem to, and it ended up being the intake manifold. I called the mechanic, and asked them to take a look. They didn't see anything wrong at first glance, but after starting the car up, they could actually see where the water was coming out of the crack. My intake manifold was indeed cracked. How does a Grand Am with 30,000 miles on it, only 5 years old have a cracked intake manifold, as well as all these other problems? I went to the shop, and they showed me, and also explained the problem to me.

By this time, after spending another eight hundred dollars to get the intake manifold replaced, I am furious! I called and emailed Pontiac, only to never get an email or call back. I tried contacting someone at GM, with the same result. They must know something is wrong, and obviously don't stand behind their work. There are thousands, possibly more, Grand Am owners out there, most of which have tried to contact Gm, and Pontiac; the company knows all the problems these cars have, but chooses not to acknowledge them.

Believe it or not, I am not done yet. Two weeks ago, my turn signals and head lights decided to work only some of the time. Some days they all work fine, others,not at all. It's either a faulty switch,or a loose connection, and once again I went to the web and found other Grand Am owner's with the same problems.

What's next I wonder? I am stuck with this Grand Am because of my bad credit. It ended up costing me double what it is worth, and I have payments for the next 3 1/2 years. I can't trade it or sell it, because I have to get a lot of money for it to pay the loan off, and no one in their right mind, (except me of course), would pay that much for a broken Grand Am that had a ton of work done to it! I am writing this in hopes of saving someone else some money and heartache. If you are looking to purchase a Grand Am, please consider this article first. If it's the only car available, and you absolutely need a car, please consider taking the bus until a different vehicle comes around! You don't want to go through what I had to go through, as well as thousands of other unhappy Grand Am owner's out there. The time without a car, and the money I had to spend was ridiculous. There is nothing I can do now, but spread the word, and try to sway others away from the Grand Am.