Last week I had to go to Fort Worth, Texas and rented a Ford Escape
- fully loaded. It was a nice SUV. 6 cyl with good power but, IMO, it was a very cheaply made mass production vehicle. I found the seat too hard, no padding on the arm rests very uncomfortable, and the stereo very poor sound quality (really bad). I like the company's Ford Ranger P/U much better.
... And now, back to the real world of a worn out 92 Grand Am.
I find even with a considerably less powerful 3.1L 2001 GP SE, I tend to have too much wheelspin with the front wheel drive. Traction control seems to come on even in the dry when I'm trying to get away a little too fast. Did you notice the traction control coming on in the 2004 GTP that you had? It's not that these cars are overpowered, they just seem that way with FWD, since the front tires are doing all of the work of powering and steering the car.
Yousuf Khan
Yes, traction control came on frequently but I prefered it that way. With the Trac off, it was easy to spin the front tires on dry pavement and create large clouds of smoke. Due to other cars or road conditions, I was not able to do any accel testing vs. numbers.
A GP with Kompressor????
You mean it had a Mercedes Benz Kompressor attached to it ??
So your 92 is worn EH !?
========= Harryface =========
1991 Pontiac Bonneville LE, 3800 V6 _~_~_~_~275,068 miles_~_~_ ~_~_
It looks like this car needs traction control at all times, not just in the wet or snow. The big disadvantage of front wheel drive, it shifts its weight balance to the rear during acceleration, at precisely the moment it needs to have as much weight over the fronts as possible.
This car would have been one hell of a serious sports car if it had all-wheel drive.
Yousuf Khan
I have always liked those little chrome placques that say "Kompressor". I think the GTP should have a little placque that says "Pressurized".
Yeah :( The drivers window almost fell out on the way to the airport and I had to tape it up. That's today's project. Brake lines are all frayed and seeping. That's tomorrow's project.
160k miles, 60k to go.
Then people would think that you got a pressurized cabin, like in an airplane. :-)
Yousuf Khan
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