It was large enough for four people and their luggage, with cupholders front and back. It had adequate power, and most of the controls were decipherable to a new driver in the dark within at least a few minutes of needing to use them (such as headlights and the remote trunk release).
We picked up the car after dark, however, which concealed an unbelievably stupid design flaw that only revealed itself, painfully, in the bright light of a Florida day. As soon as we hit the road the next morning, I was startled by a bright and persistent glare from the dashboard. A few more glances at the instrument panel as we drove down unfamiliar roads in an unfamiliar car confirmed the most ludicrous discovery. In their zeal for a swoopiness quotient that some focus group presumably told Pontiac's middle management was necessary to fight back 'ginst them furriners, Pontiac's dashboard designer came up with an instrument panel that actively reflects sunlight from the windshield into the driver's eyes. NASA wishes that the Hubble Space Telescope's optics were as finely tuned as the shapely piece of clear plastic that covers the instrument panel in the Grand Prix. Not only does the instrument binnacle fail to shade the instruments, but the clear cover is curved in such a way as to gather light that otherwise might have been harmlessly deflected elsewhere and aim it straight at the driver.
Here is a picture (taken at a stoplight in traffic at about midday) of the dashboard:
Those two bright areas of light on either side of the instruments are Pontiac's driver-blinding contribution to GM's ever-growing dishonor roll of horrible human factor design elements (wouldn't you agree, Chris?). The picture does not do the intensity of the glare justice, since it tries to stop down the shutter to prevent the glare from washing out the picture. The human eye, though, must engage in the same effort in order to read the instruments. It is a very, very poor product that forces users of a dangerous machine to make radical and constant adjustments to their vision in order to operate it effectively. Don't they test these cars in the daylight before they release them on an unsuspecting public? Truly embarassing. Any enterprising product development engineer with a heat gun could have reshaped the instrument plastic at the prototype stage to solve the problem. It's such a small thing, yet so incredibly annoying.
And GM wonders why it is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Yes, a century of unionization is a spear-sized thorn in the corporate side, but garbage design over the last 35 years is the root cause. This is not the Field of Dreams, boys: just because you build them does not mean the buyers will come. If market share is any indication, it has been that way for a long time.
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