Join us for a detailed look at Pontiac’s all-new, Euro-flavored 1973 Grand Am in this original factory sales film.

It’s not difficult to follow Pontiac’s product strategy in the creation of the 1973 Grand Am. The original generation of muscle car buyers who made the 1964 GTO a showroom sensation were nearly 10 years older now, building careers and raising families. They were in need of more practical transportation, and their driving tastes had grown more sophisticated, too. Straight-line performance wasn’t enough. Now handling, ride, and comfort were important as well, as demonstrated by the growing popularity of European touring sedans from Mercedes and BMW. The Grand Am was tailored to fit an evolving, post-muscle car performance market.

As we see in the five-minute factory film, the Grand Am’s marketing pitch reflected in past Pontiac glories. “Grand Prix ride and luxury, Trans Am handling, GTO performance,” the narrator boasts. The Grand Am did depart from previous Pontiac performance models in one noteworthy way: It was available in both two-door and four-door body styles.

A distinctive Endura front fascia with a beak-like profile distinguished the Grand Am from the rest of the Pontiac A-body models, while available engines included 400 and 455 cubic-inch Pontiac V8s. The well-tuned suspension package, which included front and rear antiroll bars as thick your wrist and variable-ratio power steering, produced one of the best handling American sedans of the ’70s. All these points and more are covered at length in the video below.