The clock in the Pontiac-GMC showroom hadn’t stopped, but the salesman in a navy-blue suit sure felt like it had. He sat at his desk clicking a ballpoint pen that hadn’t signed a sales contract in a long, hard while. An iron-grey sky spat near-freezing rain outside, and tomorrow was Thanksgiving Day. No one in small-town New England was likely to waltz in and drop a down payment on a new Grand Am.
Perking up like a bloodhound who’d scented a fox, the salesman hopped from his desk chair and strode across the showroom floor. Someone had walked in.
“Uh, hi, c-can I have a brochure?” stuttered a slightly unsure, adolescent voice. A frown spread across the salesman’s face like frost on a windowpane. The rain-soaked boy with Ronald McDonald hair was not a prospect.
The salesman forced a smile; after all, the kid’s parents might need a new car. He grabbed a few brochures with his business card stapled to them and handed them to the boy, who immediately thumbed through them with reverence, stopping on the page with a Pontiac Sunbird convertible; his eyes lingered and widened. “Thanks, Mister,” he said, then bolted out the door.
Finding a convertible — any convertible
Thirty years later, the same kid had grown and was working on a case of carpal tunnel syndrome by scrolling through Facebook Marketplace ads for 1990s convertibles.
“At first, I was looking for a Dodge Shadow convertible, or maybe a LeBaron,” says Chris France. “I’d always loved Sunbirds and Cavaliers, but I was willing to consider anything that was in good shape and in my price range."
“I’d been looking for a while, and nothing seemed right, but this one low-mileage Sunbird kept popping up in upstate New York,” Chris continued. “The seller was asking more than I could afford at first, but the price kept dropping.”
The quadruple-white Sunbird looked great in photos, but Chris had trepidations.
“I was nervous. You know how the internet is — people will say anything."
“The guy selling the car told me his dad bought it new and only took it out on nice days with his wife, who always wore her bonnet.”
According to the seller, the Sunbird had never been driven farther from home than Rome, N.Y., some 25 miles away. Less than 16,000 miles showed on the odometer.
Eventually, the Pontiac’s price dropped to a point where Chris could seriously consider the car. He contacted the seller and made plans to travel to Booneville to see if it was as clean as it appeared.
When he arrived in Booneville, Chris knew he’d found his dream convertible.
The white upholstery and paintwork looked nearly flawless, and the matching convertible top and white-enameled alloy wheels showed only minor wear and were still in excellent usable, original condition. Sporty-looking red accents and “Sunbird” script enlivened the monochrome-white car — all part of this car’s RPO (regular production order) W25 Spring Special Appearance Package.
Before the sellers surrendered the keys, they wanted to ensure the Pontiac would be properly cared for.
“They said they had a few offers, but they wouldn’t let the car go because they thought those buyers were just going to drive it like a secondhand car,” Chris says. “I promised to keep it in the garage and only bring it out in nice weather, as they did.”
Chris arranged to pick up the car after he’d obtained insurance, license plates and registration documents from Maryland, where he now resides. After 30 years in the same town, the Pontiac made the 439-mile trip to the Old Line State without incident.
The convertible conversion
We had the chance to sample Chris’s car on the road with the top up and down. It’s a remarkably snug machine with the top in place. At freeway speeds, wind noise isn’t too oppressive. Still, the convertible top is only there to keep out the weather under dire conditions. The Sunbird convertible’s raison d’etre is open-air cruising.
General Motors enlisted American Sunroof Co. (ASC) to transform Cavalier and Sunbird coupes into convertibles, and the firm did a neat job of it. The convertible top attaches to the windshield header with two easily manipulated latches, and a chromed button in the center of the header activates the top’s hydraulics. It even has a real glass rear window.
It would seem that ASC put structural bracing in all the right spots, because the car feels quite solid under most road conditions, quivering only on severely pockmarked pavement. One of the few things that betray the conversion from coupe to convertible is the two seatbelt mounting struts that sprout from the doors. In GM J-body coupes, the seatbelt attaches to the upper window frame which, of course, is absent on the convertible.
Base Sunbirds were powered by a 110-hp inline four-cylinder engine, but this one has the optional 140-hp, 3.1-liter V-6 under the hood, as proclaimed by coordinating red-and-white fender badges. It’s a pushrod, fuel-injected engine with good throttle response and a pleasing exhaust note. The V-6 sends power to the front wheels through a three-speed automatic transmission that shifts smoothly and cleanly. We didn’t look up the final drive ratio, but the Sunbird feels relaxed when cruising at 70 mph.
We didn’t get the chance to try the car’s handling on a really challenging road and it’s probably just as well, for the MacPherson-strut front and twist-beam rear suspension is tuned for a boulevard ride, not aggressive driving. Chris tells us he has a new set of shocks and struts on the shelf, ready to install, which might put a little “driving excitement” back into his Sunbird.
With its plethora of disparate slide and button controls and mixture of angles and organic curves, some might describe the Sunbird’s instrument panel design as fussy. Happily, there’s a complete set of analog gauges to keep drivers apprised of what’s going on in the engine room.
A posthumous gift
On the way back to the Pontiac’s garage, Chris waxed nostalgic about his car.
“I wanted a convertible, any convertible, when I was a kid; I never even got to ride in one until I was an adult,” he says.
“My mom passed away last summer and left me a little money; that’s when I started looking for a convertible. I was married in October and picked up the car the day after the ceremony. I like to think of it as mom’s wedding gift.”
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