Ask any insufferable full-sized Ford fan (like me) what the most reliable and durable American car in the last 25 years was; they’ll tell you that it has to be the Panther-platform Ford Crown Victoria. However, General Motors’ full-sized sedans powered by the 3800 V6 certainly give them a very good run for their money. Like their rear-drive Ford counterparts, this bulletproof engine typically resides in cars owned by those in their twilight years of driving, such as Buicks and Oldsmobiles.
However, you don’t have to go all geriatric to get a ride with GM’s most dependable powerplant. In fact, there’s a car with a modified version of this motor that was the first front-drive sedan to break the 200MPH mark. The stock street version of this last outing of the Pontiac named after the salt flats was a supercharged sleeper that was as underappreciated then as it is now. Let’s revisit the Bonneville SSEi.
From Excrement To Excitement
In the eighties, Pontiac was desperately trying to get back to their performance car roots after a journey through the Brougham Wasteland. General Motors’ new front-drive platforms were a blank canvas to which The Excitement Division could make mock-European sports sedans to lure a market that cried out for “Wal-Mart BMWs.”
Pontiac began with the mid-sized A-body and built the 6000STE, a six-headlamped shot at the Audi 5000 Turbo, which showed the world that GM was at least trying to get with the times.
A little while back, I looked at Pontiac’s follow-up where they applied this kind of thinking to their version of GM’s new generation of large drive sedan. The result was the Bonneville SSE, a rather over-the-top pastiche of surface-deep Miami Vice style eighties European tuner car excess that lacked nothing but AMG badges. Oh, it also lacked actual performance.
With the introduction of the brand-new 1992 Bonneville, Pontiac fixed that issue by adding a supercharged version of the 3800 that packed 205 horsepower, a lift of 30 over the stock motor. This was enough to push the Pontiac’s new big sedan to sixty in 7.5 seconds according to Car and Driver (though Pontiac’s official figure was 8.5). Finally, the Bonne had some power to back up its extroverted looks.
Unlike the earlier 1987-91 model that had the appearance of a smoothed-out nose and tail stuck onto a blocky Buick main body, this Bonneville had a much more cohesive style. The rounded styling improved aerodynamics without looking like a me-too Taurus, though Pontiac couldn’t resist adding their typical fussy body cladding to the top-level models.
Compared to the 1988 model, the 1992 interior still featured the ultra-tufty seats and buttons-o-plenty but was somewhat more rationalized.
The fake wood and less-than-spectacular materials remained. At first, I wanted to laugh at the massive GAIN control for the stereo; is turning the bass level up and down really that important in a car? Actually, going from Wu Tang to Yacht Rock, no fumbling to find the tone controls? Never mind, that’s a dope feature.
Oh no! The mess of seat buttons from the ’88 car remains, and if anything, it looks more complex. At least they appear to have incorporated all of the switches into one location instead of three as on the old car.
In darker colors, this generation of Bonneville came off as far better looking and hiding a lot of the streaks and strakes that many of us found objectionable in nineties Pontiacs.
Actually, one great hack you could do with later editions of this generation of Bonneville was to order the supercharged engine with a lower-level SLE model to give you the performance without the boy-racer add-ons. And to my eye, a much nicer-looking car.
This ninth generation of Bonneville was well received, and the supercharged 3800 engine eventually bumped up to 225 horsepower and then to 240. By 1999, however, it was getting quite long in the tooth. The 1992 model finished mid-pack in a Car and Driver comparison test with an international mix of sport sedans, but by the end of the decade, it came in dead last in a similar comparison. Clearly, the time had come for an upgrade.
Saving The Best Bonne For Last
Pontiac certainly still took the Bonneville seriously enough to put the effort into making the tenth-generation 2000 version better than ever. The big move was transferring the name to GM’s G-Platform that consolidated all of their large products, including such cars as the Oldsmobile Aurora.
Starting with the basics, the G-platform reportedly had one of the strongest production unibody car frames. According to GM, in the “test to fail” procedures, they needed to use the “frame crusher” designed for heavy-duty truck frames – an impressive claim.
This Bonneville followed the tradition of Pontiacs from years past by offering the widest overall track of any car in its class, “reverse staggered” as it were, at 62.6 in (1,590 mm) up front and 62.1 in (1,580 mm) in the rear. Styling now eschewed the “jellybean” aspects of the predecessor for a crisper appearance with a wedge profile that followed the Pontiac brand language of the time. Basically, it looked like an upsized Grand Am or Grand Prix, though if anything, the longer shape seemed to suit the aesthetic better. As with those cars, the slight “Coke bottle” shape sort of implied a rear-drive car that it wasn’t. I really want to get virtual sandpaper and smooth out those funky Pontiac bumps on the sides.
The interior was toned down a bit from the earlier SSEi models, with car seats that actually started to look like car seats and not odd massage chairs, which I kind of miss.
Love or hate the dashboards of the earlier Bonnevilles, this 2000 model wouldn’t change your mind much. Grey buttons abound, round vents seem to be multiplying, and materials were still where the term “rental car cheap” originated. At least the three-dozen seat rocker switches finally went away.
Ah, but the reliable 3800 remained, and the supercharged version still pumped out 240 horsepower. For a big American sedan, a zero-to-sixty time of around 7.5 seconds was reasonable.
The Integrated Chassis Control System (ICCS) fed information to the traction control from yaw sensors, wheel sensors, a lateral accelerometer, and a steering-angle sensor to help corral the car when in a skid, but the Bonneville was really all about long-distance cruising. Still, this ain’t no Buick: the new Bonneville was the most sporting of GM’s G-body family.
Do You Like Catastrophic Head Gasket Failures?
Was the SSEi the last word in performance Bonnevilles? No, that title goes to the rare GXP model introduced that featured an extra two cylinders. With the discontinuation of the Oldsmobile Aurora, there was no non-Cadillac GM premium sedan with a V8, so the Bonneville gained a 275-horsepower version of this motor for 2004.
In appearance as well as performance, this big sedan was able to hold its own amongst the other formidable Pontiacs in the 2004 lineup, including the Aussie Goat.
The GXP could accelerate from zero to sixty in around 6.5 seconds, or a good second and a half faster than the V6 SSEi and quicker than a BMW 530i or Lexus ES. Well, that is, when it was running; you see, the V8 in the GXP was the notorious Cadillac Northstar engine. If the 3800 V6 built a new legacy of GM reliability, the Northstar blasted it apart in the same way that it did its own head bolts (among other issues). Sure, at 275 horsepower, you got 35 more than the last supercharged SSEi built in 2003, but buy one and you’re now trading one of the most reliable GM powerplants for one that never got fully sorted.
You want cheap, dependable speed? Believe me, the extra performance ain’t worth the headache or expense. I’ve driven by a dead-on-flat-tires Caddy STS every day for the last ten years, which serves as a warning. Stick with the supercharged Bonneville SSEi, or get a normally aspirated 205-horsepower, 3800-powered 2004 or 2005 model, which had the same simple and rather pleasing strake-free rocker panel flanks as the GXP.
How about a 2006 model? Sadly, that didn’t exist. Pontiac went on to import the admittedly excellent Holden-made G8 and dropped the Bonneville for good; GM then went and dropped the Pontiac brand as a whole not much later. Keeping the big 3800-powered sedan around likely wouldn’t have saved the brand, but the costly rear-drive neo-BMW Aussies certainly didn’t either. Besides, did any of those V8-powered cars break world records? No, but the 3800 sure did.
You’ll Never See A Pontiac LeMans at LeMans
There’s a lot of Pontiacs over the years that didn’t exactly earn their racing track names. Hard to believe as it might be, that’s not the case with the big Bonneville. Back in 1956, a Pontiac 860 coupe set out on the famous salt flats to break the Class C stock car 24-hour world speed record, a feat that it accomplished at 118.375 mph. That “Bonneville” name, which was placed on the car thereafter, was earned, not slapped on.
To commemorate this achievement nearly 50 years later, a 2000 Bonneville received a host of tweaks to the stock-blocked 3800 to produce in excess of 450 horsepower. This modified Bonneville recorded a trap speed of 204.31, setting the world top speed record for a front-wheel-drive (and supposedly still street legal) sedan.
After years of the name being applied to button-tufted-velour upholstered cars with wire wheel covers, it was a triumphant but bittersweet accomplishment to see one of the last Bonnevilles- and last Pontiacs in general- go out with a performance that lived up to the name. Ride, Pontiac, Ride indeed.
Pocket Change Pontiac Performance
The Bob Lutz-backed Australian G8 and GTO models get all the attention today, and they tend to demand decent money as “new classics.” The last Bonnevilles receive none of this respect, but as more spacious front-drive sedans, they’re likely more useful as everyday cars. You could also likely pick up several examples for the asking price of one clean rebadged Holden Pontiac.
Finding such a nice condition big Pontiac today is a task easier said than done, but they’re out there. Here’s a super clean 40,000-mile one that sold on Bring A Trailer.
Two decades on, the sort of hokey styling details seems sort of charming, and for better or worse, it’s distinctive.
The same is true on the inside, recalling the time when GM tried funky organic shapes that looked like internal organs on everything; how many circular air vents can you possibly put on a dashboard?
It’s a real five-passenger road trip ride. Honestly, this doesn’t look like a bad place to be driven around in.
This particular Bonneville went for $10,450, a surprising figure considering that’s really all the money for one of these comfy daily drivers. If you (or the son/daughter that you’re buying it for) dread the idea of getting an old Camry, Avalon, or Park Avenue as a dependable ride for your limited budget, the last of the blower Bonnevilles with the modern-day equivalent of the small block Chevy could be a good, solid bargain choice.
Pontiac Points: 77/ 100
Verdict: In the end, the Bonneville never beat the Germans but gave us something better: a real American road car that ended where it began, out on the salt flats.
first, I never knew pontiac offered the Northstar!
second I want to grab a supercharged bonny parts car and drop the motor into a feiro!
You could get a Grand Prix GTP with the same supercharged 3800 at the same time as these Bonnevilles were rolling out the door – and the Grand Prix could come in coupe form, without the silly side strakes.
I almost had one as my going-to-college car, but Dad was worried about putting an 18 year old behind a supercharger (and the 100k miles on the car already), so we found a naturally aspirated one with about half the miles. I drove that for the next six or eight years, until it was the cream in a three car Oreo and got totaled.
100k was just breaking in on that blower 3.8. When my 03 Regal got totaled while parked it had 365,000 + on it. Found a 01 Regal GS Supercharged to replace it. Wow!! What fun that car was. Slightly disappointed when work gave me a demo to drive. I sold it but have missed it for 7 years now.
A friend of mine had an ’02 Regal GS back in ’07 or so. That thing was wildly comfortable and fast. When he first got it, my reaction was “a grandpa car?” And he just said “let’s go for a ride” and I was SOLD.
Abe, the sausage king of Chicago?
These are the cars that spread out GM’s resources too thin to be able to afford to produce a class-leading product. They just had too many similarly-sized vehicles aimed at a similar market. There were probably 3 or 4 other cars based on this same platform (I think G-bodies) being sold by Olds and Buick. Other sedans on other platforms were within inches also sold by Chevy and Cadillac. Probably 2 dozens cars over a couple of platforms – each requiring their own tooling for sheet metal and interior bits. All needing their own marketing budget and dealership network. Just too darn much. Better to have 1/2 those vehicles, but invest more into their development and production.
To be clear, there isn’t anything particularly great about a late 90s Camry or Accord either. Hate to break it to those with rose-colored glasses for JDM cars. They did tended to have a little bit more polish in how they were put together, but they weren’t incredible cars. They were simply very simple, basic cars that naturally made them fairly reliable.
I don’t understand this car. I didn’t get it when new and still don’t. How was this going to attract BMW owners? However, I’ve always coveted the LS powered RWD Holden GTO (no hood scoop please) – that car offered performance /$ that easily matched the Germans.
From the article it seems highway comfort is the SSEi’s strong point. If that is what you want, any number of 70s land yachts fit the bill with more style, more comfort and very reliable powertrains. If you want something reliable and economical go Honda/Toyota. Now if you want tacky body moldings, Pontiac had you covered
Having had both late-70s land yachts and an ’01 Bonneville, I can say that the Bonneville did come close on comfort and reliability (style is subjective, so I can’t really comment there), but what the Bonnie did better was efficiency and body control while also being impressively quiet inside. The Japanese competitors have their advantages for sure, but the early 2000s GM G-platform cars were hardly as terrible as people make them out to be.
I got one of these as a rental when my Cougar was in the shop back in the day. These were really nice driving cars and were much better then they get the reputation for being. Yes, they weren’t a BMW 5 series but they were very nice highway cruisers and blew the doors off of 70’s land yachts in refinement.
I never knew there was a Northstar powered Pontiac! That’s a hell of a piece of trivia!
The later H-bodies and the G-bodies were sweetheart cars. I’m fond of both the penultimate and final Bonneville as well as the Lucerne.
That said, one problem GM never really rectified until its bankruptcy was that the cars would just fall apart, especially inside. Even after GM had decently reliable powertrains on most core products, no one wants to see their car disintegrate into a pile of cracked vinyl-foam and saggy headliners. And GM’s cars had a longstanding and continuous reputation of doing exactly that. Even if you were rooting for Pontiac, if it was between the Bonneville and a Maxima (even though the Maxima was smaller), I can see how regard for presentation longevity would push you toward the latter.
These were good cars. The supercharged V6 could pump out some solid performance numbers with a bit of old-school hot rodding. The transmission was the weak link.
I’d prefer the Park Avenue Ultra. That’s the same car but different styling. Plus nobody’s going to admit to being beat off the line by an old Buick.
To me, the G-body Park Avenue and LeSabre (and, really, why did these both need to exist, other than that the Park Avenue had a marginally longer wheelbase?) just look stodgy and have not aged well. Meanwhile, the Bonneville looks a lot more dynamic and youthful and worldly.
As good as this may have been, it still seemed straight out of the malaise era compared its Toyota and Honda competitors at the time.
The ’94 SSEi was my first car, definitely have a soft spot for it. Loved all the buttons and the supercharger whistle when I installed a hot air intake was great for a 16 year old lol
This was like the Seville if you made it out of used Tonka trucks.
Don’t turn down the gain on Yacht Rock, Bro. Some great bass lines in that genre
Ah! Another man of culture!
A solid ba-dump is enough to get it an extra five points on the Yachtski scale.
I adore FWD Bonnevilles. It’s the kind of car that I wouldn’t actively seek out to purchase, but if I knew someone who was selling one I would buy it immediately, if that makes sense.
If I had to pick a car to bring to Radwood, this would be it. I don’t think many of them survived Cash For Clunkers, so you don’t see them often anymore.
Only twelve Pontiac Bonnevilles were crushed by CFC.
We had a ’98 SSE, Green with Tan leather interior. Loved it. It was a huge improvement in looks over the other ’90s GM cars I learned to drive in and was the newest in our fleet. I picked up a ’00 Grand Prix GT coupe in ’04 and got to keep loving the Pontiac style of the ’90s. I really like the Bonneville, although it was replaced by a slightly newer Olds Intrigue that had a slightly nicer interior. All great cars.
The real shame is that Pontiac JUST started to make huge strides right before they were cancelled. They ditched the busy body cladding, finally, and started producing cleaner/crisper designs, and regardless of reliability of that last v8 model, they started focusing on performance. The G8 was fantastic, the GTO was cool, and they were planning on bringing Holden Utes… and then BANG, dead.
I really think Pontiac should have stayed, but folded into the other dealerships, instead of trying to make a pontiac for everyone, it should have just been GM’s wildchild division. Take mundane GM cars, spice them up, there’s your brand identity.
We could have had utes, bros 🙁
All of the Pontiacs could have been rolled into Buicks umbrella under a “Gran National” sub-brand. It even has its own emblem to differentiate it from the standard Buicks and GM wouldn’t have had to throw out everything it was working on with that brand.
Kind of like they’ve now done with Hummer over at GMC.
In the eighties, Pontiac was desperately trying to get back to their performance car roots after a journey through the Brougham Wasteland.
Great writing!
These were Perfectly Cromulent cars.
The dashboard and button plastics of this era of Pontiac may not the the original in GM interior cheapness, but they’re probably the first thing I think of when someone says “GM just can’t get interiors right”. The buttons make me laugh.
This final Bonneville front end reminds me more of the Aztek than anything. It looks like total ass to me. Where I find it endearing on the lampooned Aztek, it’s just plain goofy and overwrought on this. This is also the era of GM where the taillight lenses and reflectors had to be so comically large that they threatened to swallow the rear of the vehicle whole.
I had an old coworker who had an SSEi who did nothing but boast about this car, and proceeded to speed like an absolute lunatic in it because his father was some sort of high ranking trooper. He might have been the biggest asshole I’ve ever met in my life.
Ok… something positive. Those seats do look pretty damn comfy.
Nothing could save Pontiac from Steve Rattner. Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Auto Rescue is the tale of Rattners destruction.
ty for this, I’m going to grab a kindel version!
I agree that the weird bumps on most Pontiacs of the 80s-2000s just really turned me away from them. The last ones finally looked okay. I was a little sad to see these go just after they finally got rid of the weird styling and added a v8.
The GTO and G8 get all the love because they are objectively better. Especially the GTO which had a very decent interior (for a GM product of that time) along with a very stout v8, 6 spd manual, and very good handling (again, for a GM of that time). the only better handling cars from GM in that era are probably the Solstice/sky and the vette. the G8 interior is bad though.
I know this is Pontiac PThursday, but speaking of GM FWD v8s in this time frame, the last of the v8 impalas/monte carlos came with the much better LS4 instead of the dreaded Northstar. As an LS, they take all the same aftermarket mods, but the weak link is the transmission. Lo and behold, the LS4 block is uniquely shaped so you cant mix and match transmissions from RWD LS cars or really find better transverse transmissions. Just like a DSM, the engine can make all the power in the world, but the rest of the drivetrain cannot handle much more than stock…. They do make for good swaps into Fieros though (see, I brought it back to Pontiac!)
Yeah, I always think of the LS4 as “this engine that you wouldn’t think exists, but which is perfect for engine swaps into bizarre cars”
I feel like the Grand Prix GTP will get its week very soon. It was the most interesting of the LS4 quartet, with the front wheels that were wider than the rears.
The LS4 isn’t that different from the rest of the LS lineup. Basically an aluminum block 5.3, but with the small corporate/’metric’ bellhousing bolt pattern, and a more compact accessory drive to make it as narrow as possible. There are plenty of swaps (I think someone even makes a kit) to hook a 4T80 to it from a Northstar, which is a pretty durable transmission (for a transverse FWD, anyway). A few 6T70/80 swaps as well, and for manuals the F23 and F40 are fairly durable and bolt right up. ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’, but, there are some mix’n’match parts bin options for getting the most out of an LS4.
I owned a 2001 SE. These things depreciated like crazy, so when I picked it up in 2005 it had lost 90% of its value in only four years and 68,000 miles. It was not my first choice of vehicle, but I needed a comfy highway cruiser for my 200+ mile commute in and around Houston, and it did that with excellence. The N/A 3.8L still had decent power without the fear of destroying the transmission, and netted a pretty routine 24mpg on the highway while not feeling too small to be missed in the land of giant trucks that is south Texas. The interior plastic felt cheap, but the layout made sense and the vents were awesome for targeting the air conditioning on those hot Houston days. The cloth seats were also still epically comfortable, though having been in other Bonnies the leather ones were less so. In hindsight, I kind of wish I had kept the car.
I like the exterior of this last Bonneville but the interior exaggerated everything I hated about Pontiac interiors. A sea of Fisher-Price looking plastic buttons and overwrought everything.
It’s better than the Grand Am of that era at least, with every surface being “scalloped” in some way, I assume GM had been inspired by clams.
I would figure that interior might be one of Torch’s favorites.
My friend drove a 2003 Grand Am GT for nearly 20 years and I was always in awe of that car. It just didn’t die and it barely aged. Plus you could get the vents to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGdmoEWabg4&t=52s
If I had a time machine, first stop would be to go to 2001 and tell high school me that my car (’97 Grand Am) could do that. Damn.
Lol. That’s excellent.
Had a 93 SSE with the supercharger. It was a blast. It ate up the interstate as well.
I’ll differ from the first commenter on the rental Bonneville I had in N.M. It was a very nice ride, especially for a rental car!
The GXP by far looks better. IIRC a ’92 SSEi was what inspired Brock Yates to put a can of satin black spray paint on an expense report.
Having had plenty of these as rental upgrades in period, I found them more excrement than entertainment. The only way they could have seemed cheaper was if they bought the interiors from a Chinese knock-off version of Fisher-Price.
The class act from GM then was the Olds Aurora, but the whole Oldsmobile lineup managed to take the same basic ingredients and make a much classier dish out of them.
Where I worked when the Aurora came out one executive traded in his Mercedes on an Aurora. He was happy. Didn’t stay at the place long enough to know what happened.
They were nice new, though ultimately they did have the Northstar or “Shortstar” V6, so not many survivors at this point.