Every time I roll any of the G8's windows down, I see this strip of grimy film across the top. I bugs me. Why? Because even after a good cleaning, the top inch or so of the windows is always obscured by the thick window frame. You need to roll the windows down a bit to clean the top edge, the roll them up to clean the bottom edge.
This, from a guy who carries his own mini bottle of window cleaner and a rag in his briefcase. Why? because when the photographers (who hate to see freshly wiped arcs across an otherwise clean windshield) want me to drive into the setting sun and the Editor-in-Chief reprimands me for flipped down sun visors in photos, I need a very clean windshield. Just sayin'
Chris Walton, Chief Road Test Editor @ 34,150 miles
Below are the fuel economy numbers for October 2009. We've listed the best, worst and overall average tanks.
As usual, a couple of cars are out on the road or unavailable at the time of this writing. I'll continue to add them as they come in and let you know in the comments.
Car
Best
Worst
Average
2009 Audi A4 Avant
26.8
15.2
21.7
2009 Audi S5
22.3
10.8
16.2
2008 BMW 750i
21.8
13.0
17.3
2009 BMW M3
20.7
10.8
15.7
2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS
23.1
13.1
17.3
2009 Dodge Challenger R/T
26.4
10.3
16.6
2009 Dodge Ram 1500
19.4
10.5
14.1
2009 Ford Flex Limited
26.7
13.3
19.2
2007 Honda Civic GX
47.3
12.7
31.5
2009 Honda Fit Sport
39.0
24.9
30.9
2010 Honda Insight EX
43.9
27.9
38.1
2009 Hyundai Genesis
28.5
14.3
21.2
2009 Infiniti FX50
22.0
10.7
17.1
2009 Mazda 6
30.2
18.7
23.7
2010 Mazdaspeed 3
26.7
16.3
20.1
2008 Mitsubishi Evo X GSR
22.6
11.0
17.0
2009 Nissan 370Z
24.4
13.2
18.4
2009 Nissan GT-R
21.8
11.5
16.4
2009 Pontiac G8 GT
24.3
12.0
18.0
2009 Suzuki SX4
28.3
17.2
22.2
2010 Volvo XC60
19.0
12.7
16.5
After the jump you can see the list sorted by best average MPG.
On my way in this morning, I decided to see what sort of fuel economy was possible cruising at 70 mph. The running average had been hanging around 18 mpg no matter how I drove the car, so I reset the Avg Fuel calculator to see how frugal the G8 could be. I saw 24 mpg before I pulled into the gas station and let the car idle while I snapped the photos. Pretty darned good for a big ol' 'merican V8. So I scrolled back to the odometer/trip screen only to find that it too had been reset. Noooooo! Now I'd have to subtract previous from current odometer readings to get an accurate trip reading. Why does resetting the average speed/average fuel economy also reset the trip meter (which is ridiculous to include hundredths of a mile, by the way)?
Chris Walton, Chief Road Test Editor @ 33,934 miles
I flew back from Japan on Saturday, and our long-term 2008 Pontiac G8 GT was waiting for me in the garage. I've driven this car a lot, so I know it pretty well and I like the way I feel when I drive it: Relaxed.*
Aside from the Australian idiosyncrasies to some its controls, this is a very straightforward car to drive. The driving position is good, with a relatively low cowl and a conventional, sedan-style, low-but-too-low driver seat. Said seat is comfortable and the steering wheel fits well in my hands at 9-and-3. The all-black decor and the materials used in the cabin are pretty unassuming, but the quality is solid. You're aren't going to find luxury trimmings here, but the G8 never feels like it's trying too hard.
Same goes for the way it actually drives. Sure, I wish the transmission was quicker in un-Sport mode (and I wish our front brake rotors were newer), but this car accelerates, steers and corners with an ease and predictability that's missing in far too many cars in this price range.
It's not just that the G8 is rear-drive and equipped with a V8, though I certainly don't mind those attributes. It's that it really feels like the drivetrain and chassis were tuned with a driver's eye toward how the total package would feel -- rather than a product planner's eye toward checking off specific boxes. This is exactly the approach New GM should take with all its future product.
Erin Riches, Senior Editor @ 33,721 miles
*The above photo was taken before the license bracket repair, but I decided to use it anyway.
It was nice having the 2008 Pontiac G8 GT as my weekend ride. I could comfortably transport my friends to bbq parties, safely stow away beer in the trunk thanks to the cargo net, so very easily pass slo-mo drivers on the freeway and handle my favorite 30-mph on-ramp at fun speeds.
The only thing I wasn't too crazy about -- and it's not a big deal by any means since I'm sure owners of this car will adapt accordingly -- was that there isn't an exterior trunk release button. There's the remote trunk release on the key and a button in the car, but if someone is helping you load your luggage, they'll have to wait for you to open the trunk for them.
And did I mention that the trunk release button in the car is not located on the driver side, but rather within the confines of the glovebox? H'yeah, a little inconvenient. I assume this has something to do with valet and securing your valuables in the trunk when they take it away.
Caroline Pardilla, Deputy Managing Editor @ 33,413 miles
It was a dark and stormy morning here is Los Angeles, so I quickly reached for the seat heater button in the Pontiac G8 GT.
It didn't get very hot, then I realized it defaulted to the lowest of its three settings. Most cars usually default to the highest and its up to you to knock it back. Or they default to the highest and gradually dial themselves back over time.
Not our Pontiac. It politely lets you warm up gradually.
Do you have seat heaters in your car? What is the default setting, high or low?
Living in Southern California where it rarely rains, our windshields get pretty dusty.
I live at the beach and I notice a lot of salty buildup on the glass. So, I use the windshield fluid often.
My favorite system is the one in the Pontiac G8. The washer fluid comes out of the wiper arms and really coats the whole area of the window, instead of shooting up two jets and making the blades disperse it.
Here is a video because I wasn't able to capture this with my still camera.
In our last episode, the centrally-mounted window switches in our 2008 Pontiac G8 GT had fallen into the void. No doubt some overenthusiastic staffer and a friend had recently reenacted scenes from Sylvester Stallone's tour-de-force arm-wrestling movie, Over the Top.
Netflix can be a very dangerous thing, indeed.
By the G8 GT turned out to be much easier to fix than Lincoln Hawk's busted relationship with his son. In fact, it was so easy that I got it mostly fixed DURING my commute home while sitting stopped at a series of signals in horrible traffic. One particular signal cycled five times before I got through.
Before our 2008 Pontiac G8 heads out to pasture, I thought I check in one more time to see how the old car was "Holden" up. Pretty well, actually and it's such a shame this car will disappear from U.S. showrooms. Each time I drive it, the G8 reminds me how the good American Sedan could have been had the domestic automakers not been so distracted by the decade-long SUV craze. So, besides some typical wear and accidental encounters with curbs, it seems the front brakes might need some attention. Slowing from freeway speeds makes the steering wheel wiggle slightly which could mean warped rotors or the really tired front tires need replacing or both. We'll put our chassis guru, Dan Edmunds on the case to determine what's going on there. I also discovered the window switches had been by used by somebody as a fulcrum. A photo wouldn't show it well so here's a video.
Chief Road Test Editor, Chris Walton @ 32,813 miles
Well, why not? After all, Toyota just issued a humungous recall of 3.8 million vehicles because of a link between floor mats and sticking throttles. And I received a lot of questions in the immediate aftermath of that announcement, such as: Is this a Toyota-specific issue?
Well, this recall is specific to Toyota and Lexus, but my mind flashes back to numerous times when my own floor mats got fowled with the pedals in several of my personal vehicles over the years, Toyota and non-Toyota alike. And I know of the fear and panic that can come with a stuck throttle experience, because it happened to me at top speed on a racetrack, though that incident wasn't quite floor mat related.
So I grabbed a dozen random keys to some of our long-term test cars to see what I could see. No Toyota keys were handy, though. I'll catch the Prius later.
Before we make the jump, take a gander at the photo above. This is a typical Toyota/Lexus floor mat installation: An top-hinged "pendulum-style" gas pedal is paired with a generous cut-out in the mat to produce a large clearance. The floor mat is kept from creeping forward by two plastic hooks just in front of the seat. As long as it remains hooked and the floor mat is the right size and shape, things should be fine.
Below are the fuel economy numbers for September 2009. We've listed the best, worst and overall average tanks.
As always, a couple of cars are out on the road or unavailable at the time of this writing. I'll continue to add them as they come in and let you know in the comments.
Car
Best
Worst
Average
2009 Audi A4 Avant
26.8
15.2
21.7
2009 Audi S5
22.3
11.8
17.0
2008 BMW 750i
21.8
13.0
17.3
2009 BMW M3
20.5
10.8
15.6
2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS
23.1
13.8
17.7
2009 Dodge Challenger R/T
26.4
10.3
16.7
2009 Dodge Ram 1500
16.3
10.5
13.3
2009 Ford Flex Limited
26.7
13.3
19.1
2007 Honda Civic GX
47.3
12.7
31.7
2009 Honda Fit Sport
39.0
24.9
30.8
2010 Honda Insight EX
43.9
27.9
38.0
2009 Hyundai Genesis
28.5
14.3
21.3
2009 Infiniti FX50
22.0
10.7
17.2
2009 Mazda 6
29.4
20.7
23.7
2008 Mitsubishi Evo X GSR
22.6
11.0
17.0
2009 Nissan 370Z
24.4
13.2
18.3
2009 Nissan GT-R
21.8
11.5
16.4
2009 Pontiac G8 GT
24.3
12.0
18.0
2009 Suzuki SX4
28.3
17.2
22.9
After the jump you can see the list sorted by best average MPG.
With more than 30,000 miles on the odometer, our Pontiac G8 has led a hard life. The transmission lurches from gear to gear when it's cold and there's an annoying flutter from the back of the car (subframe, body panel?) that registers over stutter bumps. It's as if the car has spent a little time flat-out on the dirt roads of the Australian outback. Or maybe our Josh Jacquot has driven it more than a little.
I've lamented previously that the G8 won't be living on as a Chevy Caprice, Buick Park Avenue, Saturn G8 or Geely Gwokdong or whatever. All that was important was that this interesting car didn't die. However, I now see why GM's death panel decided to pull the plug on Grandpa G8.
I've enjoyed my time with our long-term Pontiac G8 GT, particularly when I drove it to Napa Valley last fall. But there are some things Pontiac might have handled better (not that this is of great consequence anymore). Over the weekend, I was conscious of how much noise there is as the suspension extends over particularly nasty bumps and ruts. Maybe I wouldn't notice this as much if the cabin wasn't so serene otherwise. I don't think it's a fatal flaw on a $32K car.
deagle13 doesn't seem to take those notifications very seriously, but by doing so, he's managed to win the top spot this week. There were some good ones here, well done everyone.
Other notable entries follow.
"We ticket excitement"
-stpawyfrmdonut (So close to being the winner today.)
"Again, the gov't pushes the Pontiacs out of their native territory."
-oldchap
"Rebadges? We don't need no stinking rebadges!"
-thejohnp
"Do you know how fast you were going, meow?"
ampim
"Holden on a sec officer. Don't be a Monaro. I wasn't Vauxhalling."
-Actualsize
"Fishtails and Chips"
-Ergsum
Mike Magrath, Vehicle Testing Assistant and Temporary Donna DeRosa
