How I Got Into Cars

I consider myself an automobile enthusiast.  I’ve driven a shockingly small number of vehicles, owned an even smaller list of vehicles and yet I really enjoy automobiles.  I wasn’t always this way, I used to have strong feelings about computers.  I memorized specs, knew the best manufacturers, the best parts, costs.  I destroyed my first computer trying to find out ways to customize it.  But then I turned 16 and started finding out that it was fun to drive cars for the sake of driving cars.

My first car was a 1994 Pontiac Grand Prix.  It was a near base model which was still pretty nice.  3.1 liter V6 that was rated at 160 horsepower, 4 speed automatic transmission and cool dual exhaust.  It wasn’t fast by any means.  Even after I added some really loud exhaust and a home-made cold air intake the best it ran was a 16.3 which is slower than many economy cars these days, but I loved that car.  Being as it was a vehicle with very little aftermarket support, I found myself going the extra mile to try and find ways to improve it.  I joined a forum for Grand Prixs and at the time the L67 equipped GTP was all the rage so the 94-96 part of the forum was, for lack of a better word, filled with radical dreamers who hoped that one day someone would get bored and make headers for the car and people who planned swapping an L67 into their car.  I did everything I could to my car and posted every last thing with the help of my brother who was contemplating a future as a mechanic.  I found solid motor mounts and installed them.  I found a ported intake and installed it.  I combed junk yards looking for TranSport vans to steal their throttle bodies.  Essentially, I was topped out and base four cylinders were starting to make as much horsepower as I had, I needed something else.

Then the day came that I stumbled onto a website for W-Bodies.  The site was filled with information about maintenance and part replacements.  But in a small section of the site, a guy posted about his experimentation with custom grind camshafts.  Suddenly, I became a camshaft expert.  I thought this was the breakthrough I was waiting for.  Trade some torque for lots of horsepower, what could possibly go wrong?  So I found just the right grind specs and a camshaft core and took it to a machine shop in Albany where the guy was completely willing to do whatever I would like.  He made the custom grind to my exact specs and I took it home where my brother and I entered new territory.  Needless to say, old Blue Bomber wasn’t willing to come apart very well.  The harmonic balancer went through two pulley pullers before it finally gave.  The transmission never would separate from the motor.  And I think my brother had to pull the intake manifold 3 times.  But in the end, that camshaft went into that motor in the car.  Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a camshaft into a pushrod motor that is mounted transversely?  It wasn’t easy, and the car didn’t start the first few times either due to a fouled crankshaft position sensor which I think also eventually messed up the catalysts.  But it did eventually run.

Needless to say that despite the fact that she sounded awesome with a big lope in her idle, old Blue had actually lost power due to our hard work.  And while the butt dyno desperately tried to think there was more there, a trip to the drag strip and a 17.3 timeslip confirmed otherwise.  So I faced a big problem.  Blue still got me where I needed to go but to actually make her faster I was going to need to go more drastic.  I needed to go to straight pipes on the exhaust which may have solved some of the issues of her being slower and I needed to develop my own fuel and spark tables since the mass air density system that she was equipped with was completely confused and that was still a toss up to whether I would even be back where I was.  I didn’t have the time, knowledge or money to accomplish these things and combined with the uncertainty of my efforts, I gave up.  So I bought my Mazda 6 instead and traded in my Grand Prix.

Was she worth more than the $1,000 they gave for her?  Of course she was, but I was young and couldn’t afford to insure two cars and make a new car payment.  Do I regret letting her go?  You bet I do.  If I had kept her she’d have a supercharged V6 in her making well over 300 horsepower.  I still hold true my love of the Grand Prix.  But then GM went and called the G8 a G8 instead of Grand Prix.  Then they killed Pontiac all together.  So they can go fack themselves with a rusty nail.