Junkyard Find: 1993 Pontiac Bonneville SSEi
Yesterday’s Junkyard Find from 1993 wasn’t the kind of car most of us would find interesting enough to seek out today (though I’m considering buying a Dynasty, caging it, and starting a new race series: Spec Dynasty). Today’s ’93 car is a different story. A Bonneville with 205 supercharged horses under the hood? I’ll take one!
Granted, the fascination that Detroit had with plastic body cladding in the 1990s made for some not-so-attractive cars, especially after the sun went to work on the plastic for a decade or two, but: Roots supercharger!
The Bonneville SSEi (and its blown Buick cousins) haven’t held their value well, since I see solid examples in wrecking yards and on 24 Hours of LeMons tracks on a regular basis.
And, really, the SSEi’s power/weight numbers are pretty close to the contemporary Ford Crown Victoria’s… and, as someone who drove a P71 Crown Vic as a daily driver for years, I can say that we’re not talking about eyeball-flattening acceleration here. But still: Roots supercharger! These cars do sound great with the pedal mashed to the floor.
This car has “SSE” and “SSEi SUPERCHARGED” logos everywhere, including this one printed on the underhood insulation.
Perhaps the fate of this car (which I found in the same Denver self-serve yard that holds the Dynasty) is to be a supercharger donor for somebody’s Buick Skyhawk project.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Hi there I was wondering if you could help me see my 93 Bonneville is in need of some body mount/cradle bushings and I just can't seem to find any if you could help me find some.
I'm kinda surprised by the amount of hate this Bonneville has gotten, it's not the pretties or fasts car from the Pontiac line in 93 but it wasn't meant to be the end all be all. They took the basic Bonneville (an average sedan) and injected it with steroids. It's performance is pretty respectable for the time, even when compared to it's euro competition. A 1992 Bonneville SSEi (27K) with go from 0-60 in 8.0 seconds flat, a 1992 BMW 325i (28K) will do it in 7.7 sec, a 1992 Mercedes 190E (26K) 2.3 in 11.3 sec, and since it was brought up a 1993 Mazda 626 with do it in 11.3 sec for the auto and 7.6 for the manual. So on the performance front the Pontiac will give the BMW a run for it's money and in the case of the Benz and the Mazda (the auto anyways)it will stomp them into the ground. As far looks are concerned it's a product of it's time and honestly it's far from the worst looking car from the 90's. Yeah all the SSEi, ABS, and Supercharged badges are kinda cheesy now but how is that different than back in the 50's when car's would have V8 badges all over the place. Same goes for the interior (which is no were near as bad as some people are claiming). Personally I'd take the cluster of switches as apposed to one button that does everything al la the "recent" BMW iDrive system. It's kinda hard to take "your uncles car" and make it look cool, I think they did a great job with what they had to work with I think the car looks better in black with gold accenting and the gold honey comb alloys.