When the Bonneville got a Northstar V8.
General Motors’ Pontiac Division began applying the name of the famous Utah salt flats to cars starting in the 1950s, and many generations of Bonneville rolled off assembly lines prior to the sad day in early 2005 that saw the very last one built.
For the Bonneville’s last two years, though, a special GXP version was built with Cadillac Northstar V8 power under the hood, just for the 2004 and 2005 model years, and I managed to find one of those rare sedans in a Denver-area car graveyard last fall.
The final generation of the Bonneville lived on the same platform as the Cadillac Seville and Oldsmobile Aurora, both of which had members of the Northstar engine family for power. The Bonneville with a 4.6-liter Northstar was assigned a new GXP trim level; the wild Pontiac Grand Prix GXP, with a 303-hp LS4 V8 turning the front wheels into thick clouds of smoke, made its debut a year after the Bonneville GXP.
Every Bonneville built after the 1986 model year had front-wheel drive as well, though the GXP’s 4.6-liter V8 made 275 hp in a car that scaled in at close to two tons and was a bit more civilized. A four-speed automatic was the only transmission available.
The MSRP on this car was $35,270, or about $56,523 in 2023 dollars. Pontiac introduced the Holden Monaro-based GTO the same year as the Bonneville GXP, charging several thousand less for 75 more horses (and two fewer doors), so that couldn’t have helped GXP sales. The Bonneville was gone after 2005, with Pontiac itself following in 2010.
Fuel for the soul (for a few more years, anyway).
Keyword: 2004 Pontiac Bonneville GXP Is Junkyard Treasure