So I inherited this car at the age of 19 when my dear old man lost his license due to a DUI. The first time the problem of the collapsing window occurred, my dad had it fixed at a dealer. Anyway, the same door ate the same window again about a year after I started driving the car. I was broke at the time and there was no way I had $300 to spend on this sort of !@#, rent and food were far more important. But winter was coming, so I took off the door panel and took out the window regulator and cables and got the window back on its runners and shoved back up into place. It kept falling back down so I shoved a piece of the regulator under the window to hold it up. Eventually I replaced this with a 2 x 4 under the window, which has worked the best to date. If I want the window down, I just take the 2 x 4 out. I am 26 now, finished school, and have my journeyman heavy equipment technician red seal tickets, both on and off road. I'm no longer broke and struggling to pay my bills, but the Grand Am still has a 2 x 4 holding the driver's side window up. Some people question my logic. But why would I even pay for parts and waste my time putting a new regulator and cable assembly into a coupe door when the probability is so high that the window would just pop off the runners again?

The 2002 Grand AM apparently has a common issue of poor workmanship and GM cutting corners. The window regulators have these cheap pieces of plastic they call clips that secure the window to the linkages, of course this plastic is flimsy and will fail and the window will suddenly fall into the door. I lost both front windows and one rear to this issue and GM, being as brilliant as they are, decided half way through the production year of this model to change the type of motor and regulator, so I had to pay nearly twice as much since mine happened to fall under the old setup and throw away a perfectly good motor that would not mate with the new (barely changed from what I saw) setup. It cost me close to $1000 to fix the front windows and I refused to fix the rear window that failed. I have never had a vehicle, or heard of one, with this problem until I experienced it. I guess there is a good reason why Pontiac is no longer in existence. I finally got rid of this thing and went with a Toyota.

The clip that holds my window has broken 3 times.... so far! I have had my 3 times to the GM dealer to have this fixed and the only thing that they can say is that it's a big problem with Grand Ams. Most recently I came out to my car thinking I left my window down only to realize it was broken again. Anyone could have gotten into my car! The GM dealer refused to fix it the last time because it was over a year since the last time it broke. What a joke. So now to close my window all the way I have to stand outside the door and push it up the rest of the way. Lets just say this is the least of my problems. The car has a water leak into the backseat. It looks like I have a kiddie pool on my floorboard everytime it rains. The alternator went at 50,000 miles. The breaks have had to be fixed 3 times and the back brakes had to be rebuilt. The drivers seat does not screw down all the way and squeaks and slides while driving. The steering wheel started making noises at 30,000 and dealer said they would have to take apart the whole steering system to try and figure out the problem. The ticking noise that the turn signal puts out stays on for about 15 minutes after the turn signal goes off. Annoying! The latest is that my timing belt went out, it needs a new water pump and new valves. The whole engine needs to be rebuilt. After calling around to several places i was told that the 2002 Grand Am SE was known for these problems and that everything typically starts to go on them at around 70,000. Well that was not very comforting. The Pontiac dealership that I bought my car from even told me that they think the car is a LEMON and to get rid of it.