Topic: Used Vehicle Review: Pontiac Wave, 2005-2010

[Autos_Editor]

 "Ultimately, I wouldn't recommend the Wave," says Chris Chase. "It may be cheap to buy, but its poor reliability and higher-than-expected fuel consumption are big reasons to look elsewhere for a similarly-priced car."

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[dkaz]

I hear crickets chirping.

[tortoise]

Never been in one but from what I gathered they had the distinction of being the worst new car one could buy.

[Schmengie]

Pontiac - the Performance Division - had a long, sad history of putting it's label on POS cars like this one. Anyone remember the Korean LeMans of the mid-eighties?  This rolling turd was just the latest and worst. No wonder Pontiac had to 'wave' bye-bye, and good riddance.

[aaronk]

Pontiac - the Performance Division - had a long, sad history of putting it's label on POS cars like this one. Anyone remember the Korean LeMans of the mid-eighties?  This rolling turd was just the latest and worst. No wonder Pontiac had to 'wave' bye-bye, and good riddance.

Hey now, while Pontiac did some terrible things in its past it also had some real hits. Classic muscle cars were at one time defined by Pontiac, not to mention the drag strip. More recently cars like the Solstice have polarizing love it or hate it looks but was arguably unique, and the G8 most people agree was a powerhouse sport sedan bargain. The Wave (and someone mentioned the mid-80's LeMans - yuck!) was awful, I hate to send them away with such poor wishes for a company that did bring about many great cars.

[northsparrow]

Another bullseye article Chris . I hope you get a big raise in the new year.

I sincerely hope that every executive at GM who came up with the  idea of re-badging Daewoo junk as Pontiacs or Chevs is well and truly unemployed today because Lord knows they caused a lot of other people to lose their jobs .

GM completely failed to capitalize on  partnerships with Subaru and Suzuki who actually make some decent vehicles and then decided to partner up with the worst purveyor of junk on the market. In a couple of years we will see whether the latest Daewoo merchandise in GM's remaining showrooms holds up any better than this garbage.

Yes, GM bought Asian market share for 20 cents on the dollar when they bought bankrupt Daewoo but in the long term will this stuff bolster GM's reputation or
further erode it?

[Schmengie]

Pontiac - the Performance Division - had a long, sad history of putting it's label on POS cars like this one. Anyone remember the Korean LeMans of the mid-eighties?  This rolling turd was just the latest and worst. No wonder Pontiac had to 'wave' bye-bye, and good riddance.

Hey now, while Pontiac did some terrible things in its past it also had some real hits. Classic muscle cars were at one time defined by Pontiac, not to mention the drag strip. More recently cars like the Solstice have polarizing love it or hate it looks but was arguably unique, and the G8 most people agree was a powerhouse sport sedan bargain. The Wave (and someone mentioned the mid-80's LeMans - yuck!) was awful, I hate to send them away with such poor wishes for a company that did bring about many great cars.

Pontiac hasn't built a really great, memorable car for decades. Instead of concentrating on the affordable, high-performance cars that it used to be famous for, Pontiac went downhill begining in the late Seventies and became just another cookie-cutter division of GM. The horrid Sunfire\G4, the Firefly, the Korean LeMans, the Wave and the Gawd-awful Aztec are proof enough of that. And the G8 wasn't a real Pontiac, just a re-badged Australian Holden. Did I miss any?   

[Gardiner Westbound]

Poo-poo on a stick. Another GM triumph!

[JohnM]

Sounds like a brutal vehicle.  I particularly liked these items: "One was for valves that don’t “seat” properly, meaning that they don’t close completely, ..Next up, is the issue of frequent timing belt failures, in some cases, before the 96,000 km recommended interval."

It must be tough being a valve in one of these cars.  If you don't burn up due to poor sealing, you could get bent up when the timing belt lets go.

I'll definitely pass on this one.

Cheers,
John Meyer

[Mike]

My friend had the very first Wave 5 and seemed to really like it and it's fuel economy...then again he came from 1991 Tempo and 1993 Buick Century