Why the 2006/2007 Pontiac Grand Prix sucks balls

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I rented a 2007 (it might have been a 2006) Pontiac Grand Prix so that I could go on a roadtrip. At first I was pretty stoked with the car, but after driving it about 1500 miles there were several design flaws that although minor, seriously detracted from my experience.

The first problem that I noticed and the easiest for a consumer to fix himself is the quality of the factory installed stereo.

Reasons the factory installed stereo sucks balls:
• The equalizer settings made all of my CDs sound like shit. I tried to find the best sounding EQ setting for every CD I put in, but none of them sounded good. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only CDs that would sound good on this stereo are ones with spoken word or heavy bass.
• Acceleration caused the volume to increase. I’m not sure if this feature was on purpose, but if it was, the guy who thought it was a good idea should get a solid kick to the nuts. It was kind of nice for about the first hour that the stereo adjusted the volume for road and engine noise, but after that it just got annoying that I wasn’t in control of how loud or quiet the stereo got.
• If I put a CD in, it was either loud or quiet – no happy medium. The volume knob clicked for each increment of volume. A comfortable volume for the radio was about 10-15 clicks, however for CDs, 3 clicks meant I could hardly hear my music and 4 meant it was too loud for my passenger to put on headphones and watch a movie.

The second problem I noticed was the cruise control.
• Most car manufacturers have figured out that the cruise control is most easily accessible on the steering wheel, near where you rest your thumbs. Not the case for the Grand Prix. Instead they put it on the turn signal branch, which wouldn’t have been too bad if the controls weren’t useless.

• There was no decelerate option. That meant every time I hit some slower traffic, I either had to turn the toggle switch to off or tap the brakes to turn the cruise control off, let the speed of the car decelerate until it matched traffic and then turn it back on. That wouldn’t have been too bad except it got annoying that every time some idiot was hanging out in the passing lane – going slower than the speed limit – I had to take my hands off the steering wheel to fuck with the cruise control.
• The designer had the good sense to make the accelerate side of the toggle switch spring loaded, but not the off switch. I know, minor detail, but the on button doesn’t override the off switch and I forgot to switch the damn thing back to the middle enough times that it got really annoying.

My third and final complaint didn’t rear its ugly head until after dark. The dome light sits in the middle of this big upside-down dome thing that extends down from the ceiling. Whenever you switch the rear-view mirror to nighttime, the lights from the car behind you are bright enough on the dome light area that it reflects in the rear-view mirror and obstructs your view.
Why is that big upside-down dome thing there? I couldn’t find a purpose for it other than an aesthetic one. If it was put there purely for aesthetics, I’d like to know the address of the guy who thought that was a cool aesthetic because I’d like to go over to his house and shine a floodlight through his bedroom windows at 3 o’clock in the morning until he realizes how shitty I thought his idea was.

Other than those three complaints, I was really impressed with the performance of the vehicle. It handled well, the acceleration – even on an incline – was impressive, and the gas mileage was superb for a non-hybrid vehicle. If the interior design hadn’t completely pissed me off, I would probably recommend the Pontiac Grand Prix to anyone who would listen.