One of my newest favorite car flavors?
Pre-production/prototypes that were supposed to be crushed but weren't.
Photography by J.A. Ackley, unless otherwise indicated
A pristine 1986 Pontiac Grand Am? Well, that’s not something you see every day, especially at a drag strip. Look closer, and then you realize this isn’t any ordinary Grand Am. Turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder? Five-speed manual? Just 6000 miles on the clock? And a cage and SCCA insignia? What is this?
You’re looking at one of three Grand Ams that GM pulled off the line for testing and development purposes. Yes, the third-generation Grand Am had a 2.0 turbo, but it didn’t receive that until 1987. This was one of the test mules. After development concluded, GM ordered all three destroyed. Well, that didn’t happen. One lived its life as a street car. Another turned into a drag car, with a different engine getting swapped in. And then there’s this Grand Am.
James Ward, a higher-up at Delco Moraine, a former division of GM, also used the car to test brake parts, which Delco Moraine made. After that, he turned it into a race car, competing in autocross and at his home track of Mid-Ohio during the late 1980s into the early 1990s. In 2014, James got the car titled, as it carried a VIN, and drove it around town sparingly. Despite living in Tennessee, James’ grandson Derek grew up around the car. He spent his summers with his grandparents in Ohio. “I remember moving the car around,” Derek recalls. “I pulled stickers off it a time or two. I’ve washed it since I was probably in diapers.”
The Pontiac Gran Am back in the day. Photo courtesy Derek Brock.
In 2019, Derek drove it from Ohio to Tennessee when the Grand Am had only 3000 miles on it. “Went up there on a weekend and put a clutch in it that day, and I drove it home on that clutch as easy as possible,” Derek remembers. “It was about 360 miles. That’s the first trip that car had done–and that was 10% of its mileage. Didn’t get 300 miles until I had no clutch left.”
Sure, this Grand Am has no a/c for those hot southern days nor a radio, but it does have power windows. But the real kryptonite for this Grand Am is its clutch. Derek cites its size as being the primary issue. “It’s only 8 inches–it’s so small,” he says. “It pushes 18 pounds of boost. As it boosts up, it spools and it spins the clutch.” Derek solved his clutch issues by going to a stage 3 clutch from Spec, and Derek says he hasn’t had a problem in 2000 miles.
GM rated the 2.0 LT3 used in the ’87 Grand Am SE for 165 horsepower and 175 lb.-ft. of torque. At the Knoxville Dragway’s 1/8 mile, Derek turned a best pass of 10.4 seconds–nothing spectacular, but still respectable. In addition to autocrossing the car, he’s taken it several times on the Tail of the Dragon.
“It’ll smoke the tires off in first and second–it’s hilarious for an old-timer car,” Derek says. “It’s on a cut suspension, so it’s like a dart, it darts wherever you want it to go. It’s crazy how well it handles, but that’s what it was built to do, it was built for autocross. It’ll fly around the corner.”
Let’s face it: Posters of the Pontiac Grand Am didn’t adorn many walls. Its performance, though, often surprises people, says Derek.
The Pontiac Grand Am today, making a pass at Knoxville Dragway.
“When I was at the drag strip, my brother Jaron took [the Grand Am] down [the strip] twice,” Derek says. “I sat in the stands and somebody was like, ‘Look at this guy, drag racing a Grand Am. Can you believe that?’ The younger generation laughs until they hear the turbo spool up. Then they’re like, ‘Okay, there is something there.’”
Both Drew and Jaron cherish their family heirloom, even if it attracts some side-eyed looks.
“It’s whatever you take it as. Everybody has got their own perception of what it is,” Jaron says. “At the end of the day, though, it’s just cool, man.”
Derek Brock.
One of my newest favorite car flavors?
Pre-production/prototypes that were supposed to be crushed but weren't.
It's always fun to see what could have been.
Run!
1986 Pontiac Grand Am SE
J.A. Ackley said:It's always fun to see what could have been.
Nothing there that wasn't a was 
GM has always done some interesting prototypes/test mules. I loved the Feretta too. A V8 FWD beast that was doomed from the start. Talk about torque steer...
I always liked that style of GA. I have no doubt that it smoked clutches, those things are a bit heavier than the J cars that trans was intended for and the stock boost is only like 7 or 8psi. The Isuzu trans that was bolted into the 2.0 turbo cars was not very sturdy either - V6 J cars got a Getrag unit with a bigger clutch/flywheel and rated for more power but the 2.0 OHC had a different bellhousing pattern.
Those Brazilian 2.0 OHC turbo motors were ticking time bombs though. Head gaskets were not the greatest and when the turbos let go, it pretty much trashed the engine.
In reply to cobra17 :
The engine was Opel's fault, no? Daewoo made a version up until fairly recently.
The turbo 2.0 would bolt into a Pontiac Lemans, since that came with a 1.6l version. The whole car was a Kadett which was more or less a German J-body, made in Korea. The low end Daewoo-branded car (Lanos?) was more or less a Kadett and it used this engine family, too.
It wasn't the head gaskets that failed, by recollection, as much as it was the cylinder heads cracking after about 60k miles like clockwork. Whole industries were built around repairing them, or new castings.
Funny this comes up now. Posting pictures to the early days of autocross thread, I remembered a father-and-son showing up at one of our local events with some kind of hairy Modified or Street Prepared car. The thing broke halfway through the day. Undeterred, they entered the dad's bone-stock Grand Am just to have something to drive and promptly shoved it around the course, front sidewalls contributing to traction as much as the tread. They were very skilled drivers and far from the slowest on course that day.
After all these decades, I've forgotten whether that was the same day the local VFD took their big engine through the course and scored a clean run...
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
The Lanos was very closely related to, and used the same 1.6 engine as your beloved Aveo.
What is a "cut suspension"? Cut springs?
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
They were used in Daewoos, same engine family. I briefly had a 90 Sunbird GT with the 2.0 turbo and had to source ARP rod cap bolts for it from overseas (for a Daewoo). There was a DOHC head swap from the Daewoo Nubira (IIRC) that could be done on these engines as well. I want to say that Kia or Hyundai briefly used the same architecture, there was a big donor list somewhere online when I dug into it ages ago.
The original engines, non-turbo at least, were built in Brazil and shipped stateside for the Sunbird so on the old J-body forum I was a member of, we just called them the Brazilian engines. My exposure with the 2.0 OHC was brief and tangential, I know more than anyone should about the GM V6 J/L cars though because I had an unnatural affinity for them in my younger years.
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