Adam, Thats a nice Pontiac. I swear John Candy should have had one instead of a Ford for Uncle Buck.
A Grandville was a likely variation of a Bonneville to add some sport to their full-size line. After what they did to the GTO that year, it was needed to maintain some semblance of performance.
That very model is what made me go for old Pontiac over 40 years ago. I had a 72 GP with 455, rebuilt at 136K and now in a 69 GP whose 428 was long gone.
A good friend of mine's parents ordered one new as a rare two-door version with a padded vinyl roof, triple maroon. It was nicknamed "the rocket" though it wasn't an Oldsmobile. I drove it quite often after it was handed down to him by his family, as we shared an apartment then and sometimes my 73 Fury 440 police car didn't quite run right on cold rainy days. That is One HUGE reason MoPar was not as popular in the rust belt. We had a classmate with a 1973 Olds "98" also a 2 door, that was basically another powerboat and we would race on the highway between Tech school and our apartments. Believe it or not, there was little traffic then and this was easy to do.
The 455-4V was lower compression but it sure didn't take away much, it had a performance rear axle. Mostly, it started and ran super. As it was never garaged, it had a block heater with the plug hanging out above a headlight. Got lots of curious looks, especially after it started showing signs of rust everywhere and his younger brother sideswiped a guard rail. It was only 9 years old when it would no longer pass inspection and taken for its last ride to the junkyard with only 99K on the clock. I last sat in it in 1984 at that yard, before it was crushed.
remembering the good times when it dusted just about anything made after 1971. It was fun to put the pretentious spoiled punks in their place on cruise nights.
Best night ever on the streets of Allentown (before they banned cruising) was when four of us were out in the Rocket and had some wiseass jocks pull alongside in a clean, modified 69 camaro and begin acting up at the red light. Laughing they were at the old beast with its creased-in passenger side and flapping roof with white fuzz exposed, then took off in a peel of smoking tires. Just mashing it down in the Rocket would smoke the radials, so he launched soft and then mashed it at 15 mph. The speedo literally jumped from 20 to 45 in 1 second, passing the chevy at 50 before we had to hard brake a block later.
Reaching the next red light, we looked over to see some sullen little b***ches not laughing anymore - that was a face-off for Chevy LOFL