2008 Pontiac Grand Prix GXP

I had this car on a two-month mini-lease and drove it almost 10,000 miles. This is the most fun mini-lease car I have ever had. I enjoyed driving it as much as I do my Corvette and I can’t say that about any other car.

It has a 303 hp V8 and paddle shifter automatic transmission. I drove many miles every day on two lane roads with a fair amount of traffic. Passing was always effortless. There was some torque steer when I initially tromped on the throttle, but I have driven cars that were much worse. If I eased into the throttle, there was no issue. Handling was very good and predictable. The cruise control was always right on speed and easy to bump up or down in one mile per hour increments.

Brakes- this thing stops well even from crazy high speeds. All cars should have brakes like this. Whoever worked out the design on this brake system should be given an award. It just doesn’t get any better.

The transmission shifts automatically very well and as expected. I really couldn’t do any better shifting manually with the paddle shifters. It was nice to use the paddle shifters for slowing down, but usually I left it in the auto shift mode. Many cars don’t shift as expected. This one did very well. The shift points were in the right place whether I was driving slowly or pushing it to its limits.

The instrumentation was so good. Everything desired was there and I just love the red instrument backlights in Pontiacs. The only criticism I have is that the bright blue high beam indicator was way too bright. I ended up placing a piece of black electrical tape over the indicator light. I could see the blue glow around the tape, so I was still reminded the high beams were lit. The sound system controls were on the steering wheel and in a very intuitive position. The heads-up display worked well and displayed channel changes made to the built-in XM radio along with speed, direction and gear selection. This was an all around well-designed instrument package.

I liked this car a lot. Of course I could nit-pick it and find something I didn’t like. The door catches were weak and I was smashed in the shins more than once when a door closed on me, but that’s a minor problem. I got used to it and just made sure the door wasn’t about to close by itself on a hill or in strong wind. The high beam indicator was easy to fix. Everything else was very enjoyable.

To the design team at Pontiac- job well done! And don’t ever forget Pontiac is a performance car with red instrumentation.