Journalists, enthusiasts, and car buyers are a fickle bunch, right? We complain and yell at the car companies to try things, to do things, and to make the stuff we want them to make. More often than not when this happens and the company moves forward with a plan to satisfy the rabid masses, they get burned, sell nothing, and wonder why they did it in the first place. Then there are times when the companies do cool stuff on their own and leave us wondering where the ideas came from in the first place. These efforts also tend to fall on ears that, if not deaf, are hard of hearing.
The 1990 Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo seems to fall into that second category. The cars were beefed up by ASC McLaren who handled the additional body cladding install as well as the upgrades to the 3.1L V6 engine that took it from 130hp to 205hp and radically changed the performance of the car. This was not just the simple act of slapping a turbocharger on the same engine that was in all of the other cars at that time. A new crank was used, 8.6:1 compression pistons, and other upgrades were added as well. This combined with a different torque converter and a beefed up automatic transaxle resulted in a car that had some hair on its chest for its era.
Less than 3,500 of them were sold over their two year run and they are a kind of forgotten classic today. You can score these cars for cheap now and with some modern hod rodding tricks really get them to run.
Here’s to the cool stuff that no one remembers!
