A 1980 Pontiac Grand Prix has come up for sale here in southern Ontario. It is an absolutely loaded car, with pretty much every available option for that year, including the W72 4.9lt high output engine package, that is rated at 155HP. The seller has documentation from GM of Canada, that says that there was only one 1980 Grand Prix sold in Canada with the W72 option, and this is the car. Anyone here ever heard of this engine package?
Anyone here ever heard of a W72 engine option for 1980 GP?
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Nothing that special. It was a 301 with a slightly better cam and electronic spark ck trol to help curb detonation. That's it.
And it should be rated at 170hp, not 155.
Fairly common car at least here in the states. As far as being the only one in Canada? Who knows how many were brought over that weren't sold 'new' by gm.
How much premium that would add for a buyer? Who knows. I wouldn't imagine much, but, funny things happen.
Does he have proof that that vin was the original Canadian sale? Or just sales data saying one sold in Canada and hey, here's a car with the engine in Canada?
He has documentation from GM of Canada Vintage Vehicle Services for this specific car. There are almost 3 pages worth of options listed for the car. In the documentation, it states that this car was a "1 of 1" for GP sales in Canada in 1980.
Which, all comes down to its worth to you.
It's a smog era 1980 Grand Prix. We're not talking an AAR Cuda, and, it'll never hit that territory either. It was a 17.1 sec 1/4 mile car. Other GPs of the gbody era were faster. Other gbodies were faster. No special edition appearance pkg. Nothing to really stand out. Not like a 2+2, 442, SS, GN, ChooChoo, etc.
A couple years ago there was a service all-car or all-par or whatever, it broke down how many of how many cars there were and by the time you took a 1990s buick pedestrian car and clicked enough options it went down to 1 of xx cars like it.
Who knows, maybe the 1 of 1 optioned like that accounts for a floor mat or pin stripe factored in that not many other guys clicked with those options.
Pontiac Historical Services always kept great records and you could order info packets. Sounds like that's what this owner did, or, one in the chain of ownership.
All that said, I'll probably stick to my original position. It's a nice piece of trivia, but, isn't the type of thing to add much in terms of value.
We've hit the conversation before on other strangely optioned gbodies. Rare doesn't always equal valuable, and, valuable doesn't always equal rare.
But if that bragging right has some extra value for you, go for it, just don't count on getting that same premium back out easily if ever
Nope.
The w72 was a 'hot cam' option only with that esc.
Used the same designation across the other car lines as well, you could order the same motor in the fbody for example, its what you got as the non-turbo of course
I think it may have ended up being the production version of the engine that GM used in the Grand Am CA concept car.
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