Junkyard Find: 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP "JuggaLambo"

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

We had Volkswagen Junkyard Finds all last week, and this week we’re going to have 21st Century Junkyard Finds. To start things off, how about a genuine, numbers-matching, 240-supercharged-horses-havin’ sixth-gen Pontiac Grand Prix?

Eric Rood, who lives in Illinois and understands the local culture, dubbed this car the JuggaLambo, because Juggalos— who tend to be a Midwestern phenomenon— seem to love GM cars of the 1990s and 2000s (even those who are cast out of the Juggalo community drive 1990s Pontiacs), and thus the Grand Prix GTP is the pinnacle of this category of cars.

The Eaton blowers found on GM 3800s of this era are always easy to find at cheap self-serve junkyards, and the current street price for them is about 50 bucks. You can even put two of them on a Chevy 454 in a Murilee Martin-themed Rambler Marlin (yes, the blowers exploded).

These cars are not particularly uncommon in wrecking yards these days, so I assume you can find runners for low, low, low prices.

This ad is for the following generation of Grand Prix GTP, but the ’02 was just as good for blind drivers.






Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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.

More by Murilee Martin

Comments
Join the conversation
3 of 106 comments
  • Mikey Mikey on May 20, 2015

    I have a girl that comes in to help me out. Single Mom low. Income. She had a 04 GP. When the brake and fuel lines rotted out , she sold it for scrap price. Some guy got a hold of it ,and got it back on the road. She managed to pick up a 6 year old Mazda. Within 18 months the rear quarter showed serious rust. Now the Mazda needs brake lines. She told me she sees her old GP on the road everyday.

    • Grant404 Grant404 on Jul 31, 2015

      One of my minor hobbies from which I get a lot of satisfaction is "rescuing" cars that still have a lot of life left in them, but someone has given up on them for relatively easily fixable reasons. For example, in 2006 I picked up a Saturn for less than $2k because a transmission issue scared the previous owners out of it. A couple hours of work and a rebuilt valve body later, no more transmission problems. That was nine years and 65,000 miles ago and she's still doing great. We towed it all over the US behind our motorhome for a few years, then I drove it as a third car/grocery getter especially through the $4+ per gallon gasoline years, it went to Florida for spring break a couple of times, it got one of my sons through his last two years of high school, and it's now it's about to do school duty again for my youngest son. I've always kept up on the maintenance and along the way did some upgrades with nice OEM items from Pick-n-Pull, and in many ways it's in better shape now than ever. It looks great and runs and drives well. Not bad for a car someone gave up on nine years ago. I bet they'd be surprised if they saw it and/or found out it was still going strong and looking better than ever.

  • Thrashette Thrashette on Nov 23, 2015

    I'm late here, but my first car was a 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix. I actually quite liked it. The worst thing about the car was that everything would fall apart around it, while the engine and trans kept truckin'. The parts were cheap and readily available, and the car was very easy to work on even for a complete novice. I got it up to 250k miles before rust really started eating at it. It was shoddily maintained, but didn't see a check engine light past 100k miles. I don't think it handled too badly at all, considering its weight and size (sedan was actually eeking into full-size category.) In typical Pontiac fashion, I have it sitting in my yard, unsure what to do with it. Body and interior in awful condition (rainwater leaks were a huge issue,) but it still drives beautifully. Never let me down, ever. It's sad. And, yes, the interior was awfully ugly, but very practical. The controls all made sense and were very easily accessible, and there were TONS of storage compartments.

  • Joe This is called a man in the middle attack and has been around for years. You can fall for this in a Starbucks as easily as when you’re charging your car. Nothing new here…
  • AZFelix Hilux technical, preferably with a swivel mount.
  • ToolGuy This is the kind of thing you get when you give people faster internet.
  • ToolGuy North America is already the greatest country on the planet, and I have learned to be careful about what I wish for in terms of making changes. I mean, if Greenland wants to buy JDM vehicles, isn't that for the Danes to decide?
  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
Next