The Pontiac G5 Coupe reminds me of John Steinbeck’s classic novel “Of Mice and Men.” Best-laid schemes aside, no car deserves more to be taken out to a field and shot in the back of the head. This brand-engineered blight bleeds bureaucratic bumbling. No doubt someone at GM figured that Pontiac should share some of the Cobalt love with a derivative of their own (a la the Cavalier/Sunfire). Rather than taking a pass-worthy platform and making it into something worthwhile, they gave us the G5, “lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain.”
At its most basic level, the Pontiac G5 is an entry-level coupe built with all the love, care, and attention of a post-writers strike reality show, with about as much public interest. It’s likely some beancounter vetoed making the exterior of the G5 look like a lean, mean, road-carving machine in favor of slapping a Pontiac grille on a Cobalt and ever-so-slightly reshaping the lights. You can purchase a little exterior upgrade bling to set your Pontiac apart, but at 70mph no one will know the difference. You’ve probably seen dozens of these and didn’t realize it wasn’t a Cobalt.
Step inside and cold, hard reality slaps you in the face. The Coupe's interior is 99.99 percent identical to the Colbalt’s cabin. Unfortunately, GM forgot to engineer the suck out of it. Only a few differently-shaped buttons and some ill-fitting faux carbon-fiber trim (the sort of ‘finesse’ touch that serves double-duty as an ipecac) differentiate the two models. A Mercury may be nothing but an expensive Ford, but at least they make you feel like you’ve gotten something for your money.
At the turn of the key, the 2.2-liter Ecotec engine grunts itself conscious, rolls over, farts, fluffs the sheets and settles back in for the duration. Ostensibly, the powerplant boasts 148hp and 152 ft.-lbs. of torque. In reality, you feel like you’re being towed by a wheelchair-bound octogenarian with a rope slung over his shoulder. Pushing the gas is about as fun as checking your credit card balance after Christmas. The ill-designed four-speed slushbox makes precision merging impractical, and passing improbable.
I hear the naysayers already. It’s an entry-level economy car coupe. It’s not supposed to be fast! Mission accomplished. Except the Excitement Division’s Cobalt clone ain’t no fun neither. I can forgive weak acceleration if the car makes up for it in handling, but the G5 is firmly entrenched in Molasses Swamp.
The G5 Coupe lacks any hint of the light, tossable quality and sharp, rewarding steering that many of its competitors possess (think Civic or original Focus). The G5’s tiller is numb and joyless, and the brakes have a definite “Come to Jesus” vibe about them (i.e, they certainly won’t save you, so you’d better have a backup plan). It’s every bit as spine-jarring, noisy, and unrefined as the Cobalt.
Handling at the limit… what are you, kidding? You’d be hard-pressed to put a Pontiac G5 into an unsafe position, given that every nut and bolt and Chinese plastic fastener is fashioned from anti-fun. The payment booklet should come with free samples of Valium. It won’t add any performance to the car, but at least you won’t care. Speaking of driving into a tree…
Nearly every safety feature is optional. But again, the G5’s best safety feature is the car itself. A Pontiac Solstice can get an 18-year-old kid (or anyone else for that matter) into a lot of trouble. The G5 will make Junior swear-off hoonery entirely. At which point things can go three ways: either he’ll start saving for his first STI, or beg for a bus pass, or both.
Worse, GM’s reliability has improved to the point where the punishment is endless; you can only justify ridding yourself of the G5 because you hate it. Note: arson and insurance fraud are still illegal, even for cars like this.
How about shelling out a $4k premium for the GT trim and 0.2 more Ecotecage? A used Civic Si costs the same and inspires half the self-loathing. The only way GM could redeem this car (and the Pontiac brand) would be to offer it with a supercharged Ecotec. But GM’s abandoned the LSJ and it’s unlikely the upcoming SS Turbo will make it to the G5.
It’s no wonder Pontiac sold fewer than 30k of these bad (in the traditional sense of the word) boys last year. So why does the G5 exist, if people don’t even want the Cobalt? There are still places where the Buick – GMC – Pontiac dealer is the most exciting showroom in town, complete with brand-loyal customers. The net is killing the ignorance that allows GM to stuff these dens of pistonhead inequity with substandard machinery. And not a moment too soon.
[NB: All pics: G5 Coupe GT. GM doesn't offer press shots of the base coupe]
127 Comments on “2008 Pontiac G5 Coupe Review...”
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My boss likes the Cobalt version so much he bought two of them over a year. Of course, he bought the loss leader version – first one was $9999 and the second one was $10,999. Puts a ton of miles on them and disposes of them like a tissue.
Personally, after driving it, I agree 100% with this review, though. Even the manual tranny doesn’t do much for it. And in this day and age, why does the engine have to have such an agricultural sound?
Certainly no ambiguity to this review.
This makes me all giddy to read what you think of the Saturn Astra… at least it’ll have a different interior.
Kudos!
That what mr. Ghosn was saying, if your product is garbage – whose fault it is? definetely not Japanese.
Auto industry needs mr. George Sternbrenner to transform it from losers to winners.
Two of these were parked at the mall a couple months back, both red, both backed in so you could get a close look at the front ends. I checked them out the whole time I walked by in and out. Kudos on your critical eye on noticing the headlights being different; I never noticed it, and I thought I checked ‘em out pretty thoroughly trying to figure out the difference.
You’re right about noticing them, I think other than the mall, I’ve only noticed one other one, and it was parked, too.
My neighbor has had a Cobalt wagon aka HHR for close to two years now. I don’t know if the exhaust is tuned the same way as the Cobalt, but it makes the fillings in my teeth hurt in the summer when the windows are down and I hear it go up and down there driveway and up and down the road.
Greystone: “Auto industry needs mr. George Sternbrenner to transform it from losers to winners.”
What they have today is James Dolan.
(a reference to the owner of the NY Knicks)
As a high-school English teacher who exchanges multiple novel quotes with my colleagues, and a huge Steinbeck fan, I have to say this review is a perfect example of why I like this site.
Hard to disagree with that assessment. The Cobalt and G5 are a big reminder of the bad old days. I am not sure why a replacement isnt being rushed into production as it seems this segment is booming and a strong contender in this class would bring in younger buyers into GM vehicles. Saturn Astra is promising, but unfortunately it will not have the volume to make much of a difference.
Can someone please explain to me why Chevy got the Cobalt SS and Saturn got the Ion redline, but GM’s ‘excitement’ division got nothing? They should have cut both of those models, dumped the IOn completely and gave Pontiac only the SS version. Now, if GM could only understand the words ‘brand management’. At least the tail lights are better than the Cobalt.
Sherbornsean – New Yorkers do not tolorate losers, they will evict mr. Dolan and deport him back to his Cleveland tribe losers – and the city of New York is in the process to cut the tax give away that they are receiving.
I wish if that same principle is applied to the Detroit three blind mice.
Wow, I never thought I’d find a pro writer who made Karl Brauer from edmunds seem even-handed. :-)
GM really needs to get its act together. Sure, these cars are loss-leaders, and basically just fulfill their obligations to the unions & dealers for an entry model, but the Civic and Mazda3 really show these don’t HAVE to be penaltybox cars.
I’m glad Pontiac has stopped putting vinyl siding on their cars. Unfortunately that was the only way to tell them apart from the other GM divisions.
Megan Benoit,
You should replace “the sort of ‘finesse’ touch that serves double-duty as an ipecac” with “the sort of ‘finesse’ touch that serves double-duty as an emetic.”
Ipecac is a creeping plant with drooping flowers. An emetic is something that induces barfing. Yes, you can make an emetic from ipecac (hence, syrup of ipecac in your drugstore) and I understand the source of the confusion but that usage isn’t quite right and to use “emetic” is more precise.
KixStart
From Merriam Webster — ipecac — “an emetic and expectorant drug that contains emetine and is prepared from ipecac especially as a syrup for use in treating accidental poisoning.” *shrug* The terms can be used interchangeably.
Geeze, don’t be so hard on the poor little G5! After all, it does have more power and better fuel economy than the Scion tC! That makes it a game-changer, right?
When visiting the visually confusing Pontiac web site, when one mouses over the models at the home page, most will show the car and a tidbit of empirical data announcing that the Pontiac model has trumped a competitor in one little specification figure. This brand is very insecure. By the way, excellent review. After driving a Cobalt for a few days when the Jeep was in the shop, I entirely agree and love the literary references.
3 years ago, TTAC reviewed the Cobalt. I didn’t see any stars, but from the tone of the article, I would guess about 2.5.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/reviews/chevrolet-cobalt/
The same car, 3 years later with no real changes??? maybe 1 star is about right.
SherbornSean :
Greystone: “Auto industry needs mr. George Sternbrenner to transform it from losers to winners.”
What they have today is James Dolan.
(a reference to the owner of the NY Knicks)
I know, I’m boring, but what came to my mind was, what they have today is George Constanza, selling what he thinks could be John Voigt’s car.
N85523,
Only the GT makes more power than the scion tc and stickers for 2.5k more than the TC, that is Civic SI and Sentra SE-R territory. The base 5 gets slightly better fuel economy, but is down about 10 hp and ft-lbs of torque on the TC.
jazbo123
I can’t speak for Chris Paukert, but I don’t think there’s any car I hate more than the Cobalt. But the Cobalt at least fits into Chevy’s product line, whereas the G5 has no purpose in life whatsoever other than to hopefully trick some poor schmuck into buying it instead of a Cobalt. It’s a crappy clone of a crappy car, a perfect storm of suck.
Amen. Rented a base Cobalt coupe last month, and can’t imagine why anyone would want it, let alone a copy of it.
Worse, GM’s reliability has improved to the point where the punishment is endless; you can only justify ridding yourself of the G5 because you hate it.
Hahahaha…
Sanman111,
I wasn’t trying to defend the G5 in any aspect, merely providing an example of Pontiac’s deceitful comparative advertising. From all accounts, the Scion is a superior car.
greystone :
New Yorkers do not tolorate losers, they will evict mr. Dolan and deport him back to his Cleveland tribe losers –
So I don’t want to go off topic, but how could a Clevelander let this pass? Who beat the Yankees in the playoffs this past year? Does anyone remember?
Even the grave yawns for this no star piece of crap.
At the turn of the key, the 2.2-liter Ecotec engine grunts itself conscious, rolls over, farts, fluffs the sheets and settles back in for the duration. Ostensibly, the powerplant boasts 148hp and 152 ft.-lbs. of torque. In reality, you feel like you’re being towed by a wheelchair-bound octogenarian with a rope slung over his shoulder.
The coffee coming out of my nose still burns. I haven’t laughed out loud for that period of time since forever. Great job.
“Pushing the gas is about as fun as checking your credit card balance after Christmas.”
wow. Viva TTAC.
Here in Canada, we had this car right from the get-go as a Pontiac Pursuit. Then they decided they were going to bring it out south of the border too, and started calling it the G5 Pursuit so that by the time the American version came along, they could just call it a Pontiac G5.
And I agree, it doesn’t seem to have any purpose in life other than to provide the option of buying a Cobalt with better looking tail lights.
Megan Benoit,
That’s the number two definition. My Merriam-Webster (which is ink-on-paper and dated 1977) doesn’t include that second definition at all, leading me to believe that it wasn’t a terribly common use of the word until recently or, more likely, still isn’t terribly common.
If you look at the definition of “emetic,” you’ll see that it’s use precisely expresses the concept desired here, to wit, the G5 interior is a thing which induces barfing, not a thing that could be processed into a substance which induces barfing.
Further, you’ll notice that the next-door neighbor of “emetic” is “emesis,” which means “barf,” the roots of both being from a Greek word meaning “barf.” The word ipecac doesn’t have that heritage, rather being named from Tupic (I think it’s an indigenous Brazilian language) for “duck” and “penis.” And I guess I’d rather not know why.
I rented a 2007 Saturn Ion for a week in January with the same powertrain. Owning a Toyota Corolla at home, I actually thought the Saturn was a better car – roomier, better performance, and the powertrain was great.
Fuel economy wasn’t bad either. Maybe you should compare this car to what else is available for the same price, net of discounts.
It wouldn’t seem so bad at that point. It wouldn’t bother me to own an Ion if it was my own money.
KixStart
I doubt your copy of the dictionary includes such terms as “blog” and “e-mail,” yet they are certainly part of the common vernacular (and included in current versions of various dictionaries). Language is a constantly changing, evolving thing. M-W says it can be used that way, with that meaning, and if you have issue with it, take it up with them, not me. Or you could just buy a more recent copy of the dictionary and practice saying those words many a male has difficulty with… “I was wrong.”
taxman100
I did. This car fails on all counts. Civic, Corolla, Mazda3, Focus… all better cars, and some of them cheaper, to boot. Even if someone offered me a brand new one for $10k, I’d still get something else. After all, I’m the one who has to live with the thing. There are a lot of great entry-level coupes out there… the G5/Cobalt is not one of them.
When Pontiac first came out with the Pursuit in Canada as a replacement of the Sunfire, I kinda thought it looked much better than the Cobalt clone, though it certainly didn’t perform any better. I still wouldn’t go near a GM dealer but thought it might be a good start for GM’s turnaround. But then a funny thing happened. All the other manufacturers built better cars and true to form of GM, GM did nothing.
I’m surprised you even gave it one star as this is essentially a 5 year old car.
In fairness to the G5…and this is faint praise if any…it has to be light years better than the Sunfire that it replaced.
I once had the unfortunate experience of a bad weather landing at BWI in ‘02; being stuck in Baltiwhore for a day w/nothing to do, I thought I’d cash in some miles, get a free rental and go looking for John Waters. Well naturally, with bad whether and stranded planes, there were virtually no rentals available…thus, I faced a Daewoo and a Sunfire as my choices. Checking my lapel flag pin, I decided to go American…thus, I showed my support in those post 9/11 days by driving a crapmobile.
Anyway, it was the absolute biggest pile of junk ever. Huge panel gaps, the interior smelled like blunts and malt liquor, the wings and claddings and fins made me feel like a low-rent Batman. And the worst of it was that the seat was designed to sling you to the center console…so you look like you’re getting jiggity and stuff. In hindsight, I should have checked the glovebox for a Pontiac doo-rag.
Needless to say, it was an absolutely embarassing situation. I felt like people were constantly staring at me…checking out the loser driving the aborted fetus of a Firebird. At least if I had the Daewoo I could play the “frugal, appliance car owner” guy; with the Sunfire, it just had an ambiance of a single-wide trailer.
Of course, you can probably pull off that sort of thing in Baltimore (just kidding).
I had one of these as a rental a few weeks back. GT, black, black leather with the 2.4 Eco-lotech and a “subwoofer” in the trunk.
All I can say about it was I liked the heated leather seats. The rest of the car? Meh.
Whenever I get a rental that I’ve never driven before, I go to the manufacturer’s website and build my own, identical to the rental. When I saw what they were asking for this G5, I laughed. What do these things fetch at auction after 25K miles of rental flogging? Three grand? Four?
poor pontiac! what happened to you?
Bob Lutz was said to have commanded: “You pick up the European platform, and you do not dumb it down for the American market.” Guess we know how that turned out.
Is it automatic that a “European” platform is a good platform when it’s being engineered by GM?
Megan,
I suggest you rethink your curt response to KixStart. Modern tech terms and vernacular aside, he may be nit picking, but he’s right. No physician prescribes an “ipecac”; we prescribe “emetics.”
You’ll notice in the following link that emetic is a “related word” and NOT a synonym.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ipecac
Back on topic, when I drove the new for 2006 Cobalt SS with a blower and a 6 speed, I was quite impressed overall, esp coming into it with Cavalier expectations. Too bad that goodness didn’t filter down to the base model.
When I regularly got rental cars I hoped for the Cobalt. I always got the compacts since I didn’t want anything large and lame (read Taurus) so I went for small and lame. My greatest fear was some left over Cavalier. Next fear was the previous gen Focus which I never understood how anyone could like it. It felt cheap, handled lousy, and was noisy and coarse. The Cobalt was a step up…of course it’s a very short ladder. Still..not world class by any means. At least it has an aux jack for my ipod.
doctorv8
Even the definition you linked to (and the thesaurus definition below it) allows it to be used in this manner — a medicine used to induce vomiting. Either word is fine, I chose to use ipecac, write your own review and use emetic as often as you like if it makes y’all feel better.
Admitting they were wrong – something many women also have trouble with.
A car blog is probably not the ideal place to take a slap at the “unfairer” sex 8-).
Great review of a bad clone. I saw one of these the other day and only noticed it wasn’t a Cobalt when it got close enough to see the front and the grill was the only thing I could really see different.
Why spent time and money cloning this old car for Pontiac I thought they were trying to fix that brand. What happened to all that RWD “excitement” GM talked about.
jazbo123> Ah, but it’s the Megan Benoit way–don’t just defend your position, counter-attack your detractors! :)
Having said that, though, the review was comedy gold. Funniest one on TTAC in months!
Review sounds just a little bit off base to me. I have experience with the car and the description seems way off base. Both interior and exterior fit and finish is just fine. The 2 dr has nice lines and a sporty look. Is the Ecotec a bit noisy? Yes. Does it “grunt, fart”? No. Does it move the car along? Yes. With decent pick up and great mpg to boot. Car starts at $15,700 and well equipped is under $19,000. And that’s with auto trans, OnStar, spoiler, alloys, remote start, full power equipment and a 100,000 mile warranty.
GM has recently produced some very competitive products (Z06, Lamdas, Malibu & Aura, GMT 900s, Solstice, etc.), to much surprise and kudos. “They can do it when they put their minds to it” goes the line.
However, what they roll out with their next generation of compact and sub-compact cars will be a real test of their resolve and ability. They are being developed (hopefully) at a time when GM is tight for cash and the market is turning to smaller vehicles. They can build a nice large SUV or truck, a competitive mid-size car, but what do they do for an encore in a very important segment? And one they have struggled with in the past.
I think humans have a difficult time saying “I was wrong.” Hell, even my cat gave me a cocky sneer the last time he shat on the carpet.
Which transitions nicely to the G5. Actually, I don’t dislike the Cobalt. My $15K would most assuredly go elsewhere, but the last time I had one as a rental, I remember being pretty impressed at how smooth and dead-straight it ran the highway, and how much driver and trunk space there was. Of course, it is a 3,000+ lb vehicle.
The merciless rips make for a highly entertaining read. I do think it’s worth noting that even the worst car in this class is more blah than “bad.”
GM will sell a ton of these to car rental companies, which will be the only place where the majority of the market experiences the GM brands.
Most people will come away with negative brand perceptions reinforced.
I drove a 2001 sunfire as a rental from Enterprise. If there was a corner they failed to cut, I didn’t find it. I actually called my friends up and invited them over so I could show them how much the car sucked. Then I had a small 2004 chevy rental from Alamo, with just a few hundred miles on it. The engine blew up after three days.
Here’s a serious question:
An analysis of the demographic of TTAC should yield that nobody on this site would ever even consider purchasing a G5 coupe.
With that said, what was the reason to even review this car, other than to ridicule Pontiac or to provide an attempt for comic relief?
Megan,
Let me start by saying the review was extremely witty and entertaining. No coffee-burnt nostrils here but I did laugh out loud once or twice (try explaining to your colleagues why you’re laughing while ostensibly reading VB code). And I haven’t driven the G5 but you certainly brought back memories of the Cobalt I rented.
I was being just slightly obnoxious with my criticism and I knew it.
However, I’m right.
While it’s true that my paper M-W doesn’t have all the latest e-this and i-that, it’s still a good guide to usage. I didn’t say you were wrong, per se, but the word I suggested is more precise and eliminates some chance of ambiguity. If the meaning of ipecac that you employed wasn’t an important enough entry for the ‘77 version, it’s probably only online because electrons are cheaper and they might as well cover the few times it does see use in that context for the convenience of those who encounter it that way, not to encourage them to use it that way. The number one definition is clearly different. And the number one definition of the alternative I recommended is exactly on target.
Now, what you should have said was, “Thbhbhbhbht – nitpicker!”
And there’d be no arguing with that. :-)
Skooter,
What mpg did you observe? And how did you observe it? By recording mileage at fillups or are you trusting a computer and/or estimating by “tankfuls?”
Johnson Schwanz
I dunno, what’s the point of reviewing Ferraris and Z06s and cars that cost more than I make in a year? I’d argue that the average user on this site is more likely to purchase a G5, if only because they can A) afford it and B) they’re readily available. Plus, consider that some people get here by searching for a specific make and model of car… the more cars we cover on the site, the better for the site overall in terms of page hits and visits.
And let’s face it, some cars have it coming. When the best anyone can say in defense is, “It’s not *that* bad,” it’s pretty bad indeed.
Johnson Schwanz there are a lot more people viewing TTAC than just us posters. The site needs to have a variety of reviews not just cars the regulars are going to enjoy and comment on. What about the multitude of people who just pop onto the site to find some honest reviews of cars in that price range because they are looking for a new car.