No one saw the Taurus SHO coming. A slick-looking Ford aero sedan powered by an impossibly high-tech, Japanese-developed powerplant was not something anyone expected to see in 1989, least of all General Motors. Such was the impact of Ford’s subdued high-performance family car that it overshadowed Pontiac’s revised entry into the segment, which most of us have forgotten about. Whether you remember the Pontiac Grand Prix STE or not, it deserves our attention today.
GOOOLE Goes Full On GOOOSTE
It must be tough getting branded as “Yesterday’s Big Thing.” In the early nineties, top-selling eighties musicians like Christopher Cross or Men At Work could have released the Greatest Album Of The Century, and nobody would have cared; the public had moved on to the Next Big Thing. A lauded Pontiac of the eighties once experienced this same sad phenomenon.
In 1983, Pontiac released its cause celeb of a sports sedan: the 6000STE (aka “GOOOSTE”), based on the new 6000 LE (“GOOOLE”) GM A-body platform car. With a “six headlight” front end (fog lights were the inboard lamps), blacked-out trim, and sporty alloy wheels, the STE showed that American was at least trying to make a European-style sport sedan.
The underpinnings were not spectacular by today’s standards, with the two-barrel carbureted V6’s “high output” being a mere 135 horsepower (compared to the standard engine’s even more pathetic 112). Still, the 6000STE managed to find a place on Car and Driver’s Top 10 list and Road & Track’s 12 Best Cars For Enthusiasts; Motor Trend called it “One of the few automotive bargains around.”
The STE steadily improved with features like rear disc brakes (ultimately with anti-lock), a tachometer (yes, the first one didn’t even have that), and fuel injection. In 1988, the 6000STE received GM’s first all-wheel-drive system, paired with a 140 horsepower 3.1 liter six and, unfortunately, a three-speed automatic.
That wasn’t enough extra power to keep people swooning. Also, the boxy 6000 was now nearing eight years old and looking considerably dated in the face of Ford’s new aero cars. The STE’s direct competitor, the Taurus, was about to make life really miserable for the once-universally-praised Pontiac.
SHO ‘Nuff Fast
It certainly didn’t look very flashy; in fact, the SHO barely looked much different from the Taurus you might rent from Hertz at the time. Still, under the hood was a motor packing the stuff of exotic cars.
With double overhead cams and a 7000 RPM redline, this 220 horsepower V6 from Yamaha could propel this Taurus to sixty in a mere 6.6 seconds and a top speed higher than 140. That’s a second or so slower than the same year M5, but the SHO could be had for a fraction of the cost of the smaller hot BMW. Ford also had the audacity to release the SHO with a five-speed manual – a move that really got car geeks swooning over the mild-mannered-looking performance sleeper.
Suddenly, the poor 6000STE went from being sort of irrelevant to essentially invisible. Still, that didn’t stop Pontiac from coming up with its own super family car.
Better Than That Four Door Thunderbird, At Least
Pontiac’s first move was to take the STE badge off the old 6000 and find a new home for it. Up until now, the vaunted Grand Prix badge had never been placed on a car with more than two doors, but Pontiac decided that it was time to expand their well-received, all-new-for-1988 coupe into sedan territory. Far from being a travesty and disgrace to the name, the four-door Grand Prix was a rather sharp-looking car, and for the STE version, Pontiac had no interest in following Ford’s path of making a sports Taurus with a very basic outside and interior.
Up front, Pontiac added a full-width “light bar” nose in a manner not unlike the Mercury Sable; driving lights fit into the transparent “grille” area between the headlights while the rest illuminated with extra bulbs. The vented hood was quite racy for a mom-and-pop sedan.
This special Grand Prix was adorned with the ride-Pontiac-ride “visual excitement” which Motorweek once described as “spats and spoilers hanging off the car like Spanish moss on an oak tree”. Oh, John Davis, you have a way with words. In back, a “heckblende” filled in the space between the black-grid, smoked-out taillights. Subtle ground effects finished off the look. Certainly, the whole car was more eye-catching than the restrained Taurus SHO, yet at the same time, it was rather subdued for a top-of-the-line 1990 Pontiac product.
Inside, however, GM let loose with the full MC Hammer-era Pontiac treatment. A steering wheel covered in buttons? You’ve got it.
Between the seats, the console featured overwrought seat controls similar to those of the same-year Bonneville. Why does “driver only” get the logical seat-shaped switch while the passenger gets something entirely different?
At least those seats look pretty comfortable with decent lateral support. Boy, Pontiac really went nuts with seats that looked like medical devices or something, didn’t they?
Displaying compass direction, date, and various “system functions” could have been done with a very simple, easy-to-read display, but Pontiac’s STE didn’t do that. Instead, we got a “DIC” (Driver Information Center) that packed this minimal amount of information into a freestanding Colecovision way down in front of the shifter.
Enough of the games and gadgets – is the same damn 140-horsepower six under the hood? Thankfully, no; Pontiac wasn’t going to let the Ford upstart totally overshadow the former critic’s darling.
Put The Puffer On The Pontiac
Ford used outside help from Yamaha to make its ultra-fast four-door family car, and the Pontiac crew found the outsourcing path made sense for them as well. General Motors went to ASC/McLaren, the partnership of the Detroit-area specialist best known for making convertibles for many (if not most) car brands at the time, and a division of the famous race car builder. The Michigan-based McLaren offshoot had begun in 1969, primarily to develop motors for Indy and Can Am cars, and they’d worked with Ford on the two-seat Fox Body Mustang/Capri in the late eighties.
The Grand Prix coupe was the first to receive the ASC/McLaren treatment, which included adding a turbocharger and intercooler to the 3.1-liter six to pump output up to 205 horsepower; a huge jump from the 140 of the stock lump.
With the introduction of the first four-door Grand Prix, Pontiac offered the turbo mill as an option for the reborn STE sedan. Whether such a car was in the cards before Ford launched the SHO is unknown, but the STE turbo certainly couldn’t avoid such comparisons.
Motorweek got the turbo STE up to 60 in 9 seconds flat, a full two seconds slower than the SHO they tested the year before. I’ve seen figures from other publications that got the Pontiac’s sprint down to eight seconds or even a bit less. Being twenty horsepower down on the similar-weight hot Taurus and saddled with a mandatory four speed automatic meant that in a head-to-head race the poor Pontiac didn’t stand a chance. However, the dragstrip isn’t the only race that you need to consider for fast four doors, and the STE offered some compelling arguments over the Ford.
No PRNDL For The SHO
Say what you will about monochromatic sedans with ground effects, but any driver worth of his Members Only jacket in the late eighties wanted such a look for their sporting family car. It has to be said that the 1990 Grand Prix STE – for better or worse – certainly cut a more dramatic profile than the rather stock appearance of the SHO. Also, we Autopians might champion three-pedal cars, but the vast pool of buyers now and back then seem to disagree.
The fact that the SHO was available with the five speed was a small triumph, but in a move that seems unfathomable today the manual was the only transmission you could get for the fast Taurus; an automatic was not an option until the second-generation model in 1993. The hottest Pontiac Grand Prix STE’s automatic-only format might have gotten black marks from enthusiasts, but it had the potential to increase its popularity over the Ford by a significant amount.
Not that it mattered in the end. It appears that a mere 1000 Turbo STEs were built for 1990; the only year the blower-equipped motor was offered in the four-door. Surprisingly, Pontiac didn’t give up and decided to still up the ante against the Yamaha-powered Ford.
Too Little, Too Late
For 1991, General Motors hit back at Ford with the LQ1 V6, also called the Twin Dual Cam or TDC motor. At 3,340 cc, it was an in-house bored-out version of the previous 3.1, and dual overhead cams actuating four valves per cylinder matched the specs of that enigmatic Taurus. This time, Pontiac was taking no prisoners; your LQ1-powered Grand Prix STE could be matched to an automatic or a Getrag 284 five-speed manual transaxle to effectively level up the playing field for a SHO-down.
Unfortunately, despite the 400cc advantage over the Yamaha-Ford, Pontiac’s LQ1-powered STE only managed to pump out 210 horsepower with the manual, or 200 with slushbox versions. Contemporary tests showed zero to sixty times of high-to-mid sevens, but nothing to match the still-faster Taurus. Without the King of the Hill status, interest in the hot Pontiac mid-sizer continued to wane. Only 1,833 LQ1 STEs found homes in 1991, and a mere 125 of those had the stick. Things didn’t improve for 1992; only 1,127 Grand Prix STEs of any kind left the factory, and only 57 of the 628 LQ1 versions that year were manuals. That’s rarer than the 1000 “Richard Petty Edition” coupes sold that year which still fetch reasonable numbers on auction sites.
Any remaining examples today don’t seem to be so prized. This one below was listed recently for a mere $3995. The seller claims it’s the nicest one of those 57 made still in existence, which I don’t doubt.
My mental calculator has already more than doubled that price determining how much I’d need to spend altering the, uh, “questionable” modifications.
I guess I could just rubber-plug the spoiler holes for the ironing board wing? To each his own, but I couldn’t go around the block with that thing on there. And get me some GooGone for those stickers. Man, I’m just aching to put this thing back to stock since it’s so clean.
The inside is equally clean for a 188,000 mile car; possibly not as spacious as a Taurus in back, but still quite good.
Minor driver’s-side bolster wear on a 1990s GM car with this kind of miles on the clock is expected. Eliminating the offending yellow items in this thing would take but a few minutes, and you’d have a nearly perfect cabin.
If it runs as well as it looks, it would be a fun bargain for under $4,000. Good luck finding one of the other 56 built.
The Grandest Of Prix That Nobody Sees
For 1993, Ford threw down the gauntlet and finally offered an automatic for the second-generation SHO, a still subdued-looking car but now with a more sporting appearance than before.
Effectively, the Blue Oval had now eliminated any of the poor Grand Prix’s advantages. Only 505 LQ1 Pontiac STEs sold in this final year; reportedly only one grail-of-grails example was optioned out with the five speed. With that, the last manual transmission-equipped Pontiac Grand Prix of any kind ever, the STE saga was done for good.
Sadly, it looks like the 1990-93 Grand Prix STE has to be added to the pile of GM products from the Corvair to the Fiero and the Allante that showed great potential and finally got massaged or even drastically altered into the cars they were always meant to be only long after the spotlights had left them. The General just couldn’t seem to improve them fast enough to live up the hype, and buyers had moved on. Nobody even seemed to have noticed the passing of this sedan that was, by almost any standards, a far better car than the 6000-based STE that got all of the accolades.
Again, it sure sucks to be Yesterday’s Big Thing.
Pontiac Points: 77 out of 100
Verdict: Spicy powerplants, a choice of gearboxes, just enough flashiness, and plenty of practicality. Is this forgotten sedan one of the best Grand Prix to ever SHO up?
Top graphic image: General Motors
Why did GM persist with the front and back bumperettes?
Also, the SHO was more than an engine, with serious cornering capabilities for a late 80’s sedan! (Thanks to their ‘partnership’ with Mazda.)
I don’t know any GM car of the era other than the Corvette and the pony cars that could hold their own in a handling competition.
“Why does “driver only” get the logical seat-shaped switch while the passenger gets something entirely different?”
The “Driver Only” refers to the seat back adjustment. That little switch on the right was like the power mirror switch in today’s GM vehicles. It switched the controls from the driver side seat to the passenger side seat.
So when it was set to the passenger side, only the seat bottom could be moved up/down or fore/aft.
I believe the passenger seat back was still manual due to the fact that the 2-door Grand Prix still existed. That way you could still flip the side lever to access the rear seats.
My wife and I have this game we’ve been playing lately where we send each other increasingly ridiculous Pontiac commercials and dealer promo videos from the 80’s and 90’s. There’s something about that era at Pontiac; the cars may have the same awful underpinnings as the rest of the badge-engineered GM brethren, but damn if I don’t want to sit my butt in one of those crazy 26 way power adjustable seats and stare at a steering wheel full of redundant buttons! I’ve threatened that I may have to bring one of these things home if the right one pops up.
I completely forgot about the Grand Prix STE being a thing. I’ve coveted an ASC McLaren Grand Prix Turbo for a long time, but had no idea they dropped that questionably boosted 3.1 V6 in a 4-door. Adding that to the list!
In one corner, you had the sublime Yamaha V6 – would rev to the moon, a product of Japanese ’80s bubble-ness, probably the least Dearborn internal combustion engine put into a Ford up to the time. It wailed, and it gave a halo to the Taurus that we still fondly remember today.
In the other corner, you have plastic-fantastic GM’s response. The turbo engine – a weird footnote – and the 3.4 DOHC V6, kludged together from the block of a 60-degree pushrod V6, because half-assed looked better to the accountants.
At least GM made it produce less power, unreliable, and absolutely miserable to work on. What a pile of trash that probably cost more overall than a properly designed engine.
About the only saving grace to ’90s Detroit was that your domestic competition would impale themself on some self-inflicted idiocy. After tasting success so that they could seemingly pull ahead, without fail Detroit would do their Three Stooges act in some way, prompting a generation to never consider their products.
Those seats came from a Star Trek set.
Before poo-poo’ing the power output of those first G000STE’s, do recall that in 1983-4 an Audi 5000S had all of about 112hp, the 5000 turbo 140, an 8V Saab Turbo or non-intercooled Volvo Turbo had 125 or so, and even the mighty BMW 533i only had about 180. The 325e only had 120 or thereabouts, and my Jetta GLI had all of 90 and was considered a pocket rocket. ’85 was when Saab and Volvo upped their game to 160hp with 16 valves and an intercooler respectively,
It was a very different era, and that car was actually shockingly competitive in the segment the first couple of years. Then as usual, the General mostly let them whither away, AWD but not enough power to make use of it and an antediluvian 3spd autotragic was pretty lame. Then Ford blew it away with the first SHO.
Thanks to dealership sales droids being dealership sales droids, I missed getting to have an ’85 STE as my car my senior year of high school. My grandfather decided to buy himself a fancy retirement car, and had seen the STE on display at the local mall and loved the look of the thing inside and out (the suede seats were really cool). Went to the Pontiac store in his little yellow ’80 Subaru hatch commuter mobile fully planning to write a check and drive home in one. The droids completely ignored the old guy in the cheap little car. Pissed him off to no end. Went across the street and bought an ’85 Oldsmobile 98 Regency for about $5K more than the Pontiac. Which I ended up driving for most of my senior year, he preferring to mostly keep driving his Suburban. And that horrid land yacht sucked donkey balls. Eventually my grandmother took over the Olds and gave me her ’82 Subaru sedan to go off to college in. Which I much, much preferred to drive anyway. It had a 5spd and actually wanted to go around corners at more than walking pace. I sure wanted to bitch-slap those Pontiac salesmen.
I recall that the Grand Prix was desirable at the time in its own unique way. No, it didn’t beat the SHO, but outside of that, it was still quite good.
And I love the way the Grand Prix GTP looked… even though I’d never want to own a car with the 3.4L “twin dual cam” engine.
Back then, the best GM W-body car was the Buick Regal with the 3.8L V6.
While it had way less performance than either the STE or the SHO, it was way cheaper and more serviceable.
Try to get parts for an SHO these days… good luck! With a 3.8L Regal of the same era, getting parts is no issue by comparison.
I think late 90s was peak Pontiac with the Grand Prix and their supercharged version (At least for what I remember since I was born in the late 80s). If you had a Pontiac, you were cool.
I love these articles. I don’t like a headline with a comma splice.
Ugh, those stupid Fisher-Price buttons. God, I hated GM products of this era for that single reason alone.
I always really liked this generation of GP. It just looked nice to me, and still does.
My dad special ordered the STE with a stick. I was a kid, so I don’t know all the details, but the dealer played some shenanigans, he ended up with an auto, the car was a complete lemon, and after many months of time and money my school teacher parents didn’t have GM finally bought it back. It was the last GM my parents would buy, which is notable because my dads side was a lifetime GM family (my dad had worked parts, my uncle was a dealer GM, my cousin owned a Chevy dealership…)
I love the buttons. So many buttons.
Say what we will about the design, but this was right before Pontiac’s “ribbed for no one’s pleasure” era at least…that should count for something.