Pontiac Aztek Owners Club

• What was going on at this time in Pontiac’s History (2000-2005)
• Where did the idea of Aztek come from?
• What were the sales specs like on the Aztek?
• What kinds of unique features did the vehicle have? What is the best thing about the Aztek?
• When the Aztek was phased out, did it morph into another vehicle? Does it live on as something else?
• Are there any famous/celebrity Aztek owners? Who’s got the biggest collection? What are some of the craziest mods you have done (or have seen others do) to an Aztek? 

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts, but we’ve expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we want to share our stories with you. Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge and information through our podcast, Brake Fix.

The ugliest car of all time.

One of our friends who works here has this project that he’s working on, and it, it’s a, it’s a spectacle. You’re the

Bill Warner: most unattractive car. There’s so many.

Adam Jabaay: Oh, whatever the thing was that was the cousin to the Buick Rendezvous.

What is that, uh, Pontiac car that

Adam Jabaay: They said it was the best car of all time, and I just, I don’t know, man, they’re just really ugly.

I don’t know if people were buying those sight unseen or what happened.

Matthew Yip: I’ve seen the, uh, car that, uh, Heisenberg drove. Was it the Aztek? The Aztek? The Aztek looks like he got beat by the ugly stick.

Mike Crutchfield: What was that, Aztek? An Aztek. Aztek. [00:01:00] Was that the Aztek? Yeah.

Bill Warner: Yeah, Pontiac Aztek. I’m gonna speak in its defense for a minute.

The Aztek did have some

Crew Chief Eric: cool options. Did you just use cool and Aztek in the same sentence? Sadly, yes. It was But did it have

Crew Chief Brad: to be shaped like a juice box?

Crew Chief Eric: Please tell me it’s an Aztek. We really want to interview somebody with an Aztek Pulitzer Prize winning automotive journalist Dan Neal named tonight’s featured vehicle one of the 50 worst cars of all time, saying it violated one of the principal rules of car design.

We like cars that look like us. With its multiple eyes and supernumerary nostrils, the Aztek looks deformed and scary, something that dogs bark at and cathedrals employ to ring bells. The shame is, under all that ugliness, there was actually a useful, competent crossover.

Mountain Man Dan: The Aztek has always been noted for its controversial styling, but thanks in part to Hollywood and passions of folks like our panel tonight, the [00:02:00] Aztek has gained more than just a cult following, and we want to explore that.

So without further ado, we want to welcome John

Crew Chief Eric: Peterson and Paul Gunn from the Aztek Owners Club to Break Fix to unpack this legendary Pontiac Aztek story. So welcome to Break Fix, gentlemen.

Paul Gunn: Yeah, thank you. Glad to be here.

Crew Chief Eric: We got to talk not about Pontiac’s history about its origin. We have to fast forward the clock in the 85 year span of Pontiac to the year 2000 and talk about what was going on when a lot of critics were saying this was supposed to be the renaissance.

for Pontiac.

Paul Gunn: Just a lot of bad things happened around that time. So the Aztek had been around for a year. Then 9 11 happens and the whole nation’s focus goes toward the Middle East and fun kind of goes away for a while. People become rather conservative. on their spending because people are uncertain about the future and all that sort of thing.

Crew Chief Eric: So at that time we had the Grand Am, the Bonneville, the [00:03:00] Montana, and the reintroduction of the GTO, which was a Holden, the Monaro, we came to find out later, an Australian product. And then suddenly comes The Aztek. All these other cars are carryovers from the 1990s, but again, here comes the Aztek. Where did it come from?

Where did this idea for this crossover SUV suddenly emerge?

Mountain Man Dan: Other than that, I didn’t really have much following of Pontiac. During that time, I think that’s around the same time that came out with the solstice, which was to compete with the small little two door coupe type cars and things like that, other than the little bit of knowledge I do have with the Aztek, I don’t know it’s baseline of where it came from the thoughts of building it or anything like that.

And luckily we’ve got the guys here tonight to give us those details.

Paul Gunn: Pontiac was experimenting with it and they created their prototype, which got all these great reviews. You know, you hear that these cars that are anomalies. Many times have these great reviews at car shows back through history. You’ve got the Edsel, the Nash Metropolitan, some of these cars that are [00:04:00] just some car show in New York and the public reaction is so strong that the manufacturer just thinks we’ve got a winner right here.

They got Tom Peters involved in designing this crossover. I’m not even sure if they’d used the word crossover at that time, but you know, it’s real angular there, all these angles and which, oh, by the way, Peter’s said that we wanted to build a bold in your face vehicle. That was not for everybody. So, I mean, he did that.

And so while many people consider the car failure, except for fans of the car, of course, Tom Peters ended up designing the Corvette C7. You know, you see all those angles that come out now on this wildly popular sports car. When the Aztek came out, it was an odd vehicle at the time. You know, the Montana was just another nerd minivan.

And so now all of a sudden you’ve got this car that’s got all these unusual features. And I remember the first time I saw an Aztek, it was a yellow one. I just couldn’t quit staring. I thought, you know, what planet did this come from? And then I saw that it was a [00:05:00] Pontiac, and I thought, This just doesn’t line up with Pontiacs as we know Pontiacs.

You know, this is not my dad’s Pontiac. GM estimated that they would sell 75, 000 Azteks per year. You know, you think Jim’s been around for a long time. So that type of market study, they missed it, but why do they miss it? And they needed to produce 30, 000 per year to break even. But in none of the production years, did they reach 30, 000?

GM lost money all the way around. Let’s see, you’ve got. The last year, only 5, 020 sold, plus 90 to Mexico, and then in 2006, there were still 2, 005 lingering, and there were 247 sold in 2006, and then there were still 2, 005 lingering in 2007, and 69 of them sold. So you, you know, you had 69 that were Had been on the lot for two years.

Crew Chief Eric: Brad would love this. It’s like Lost in Town where you can buy a new 2016 Dodge Dart still [00:06:00] today on Chrysler Lots.

Paul Gunn: Their best selling year was one of the earlier ones. They only made like, they only sold like 27, 000, so.

Matthew Yip: Then how

Paul Gunn: did, then

Matthew Yip: how did the Aztek make it into production? The same reason the Ford LTD made it into production.

Say what you will about the Ford LTD, but it was, Just another big American car.

Mike Crutchfield: They went to all the focus groups and picked one thing out of each focus groups that they said they wanted. Did they, everything else out?

Crew Chief Eric: There was some redneck in the background. Go. I like them nostrils on the firebird. I need that on my SUV.

Crew Chief Brad: I, for the Aztek. I think the writers and directors from Breaking Bad, long before the story was written, went to General Motors and said, we’ve got a story we want to write and broadcast. We need a vehicle that says, I’m a midlife crisis. I need a car for that. They already made that.

Mike Crutchfield: It’s

Crew Chief Brad: called the GeoMetro.

Matthew Yip: You know who bought the Aztek? If you look at the packages Nobody. Nobody

Crew Chief Brad: bought the Aztek. Well I’ve [00:07:00] seen exactly zero on the road.

Matthew Yip: You can lease a General Motors product if you work for General Motors, you know, for practically nothing. This is when I was working in Detroit. Apparently, quite a few of those middle managers had Azteks because there was nothing else on the roster.

In other words, you want to lease a, uh, Pontiac 6000 STE, you have to have an Aztek. You want to get a Firebird, you have to have an Aztek. You want a Cadillac, you You have to have an Aztek because he couldn’t sell them. Was the same reason why four corporate guys were driving two door Explorer Sports forever.

Couldn’t sell them.

Paul Gunn: So it’s just one of those cars that slipped through the cracks of design and promotion. It picked up a niche market.

Crew Chief Eric: The Grand Am and the Bonneville both had history going on many, many, many years. Oh yeah. The Montana evolved from the Silhouette. The dust buster of the 80s, right?

Paul Gunn: Yeah. Well, that was a weird car too, but you know, that’s another, [00:08:00] that’s another podcast.

Mountain Man Dan: Well, for that generation, for the, uh, the Grand Ams, I do know they did have, I think it was a 3. 8 liter supercharged V6 in some of them.

Crew Chief Eric: The GTP. Yeah.

Mountain Man Dan: My mom, she had the regular Grand Am GT and she actually still has that car. And it was just the natural aspirated engine. I’ve actually looked around at junkyard to see if I can find the ECU and supercharge off one to put on hers.

Engine and bottom end was the same.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. That was the hot, hot thing at the time at Pontiac that everything was just kind of, it was just there.

Paul Gunn: Yeah. It’s kind of boring.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. But the part that perplexes most people is where did the Aztek come from? Just from somebody’s imagination, because it’s not based on anything.

It’s not like some of the Japanese entries where it’s like, well, we took a Toyota Camry and we built a minivan on top of it. So we already had a chassis. It was a ground up, just start from scratch. Wow. The world. And the intention that I heard was that it needed to feature this extreme futuristic [00:09:00] styling and it promised all this versatility for people of Dan and my generation, the Gen Xers, right?

And we’re like, is this what we wanted? You know, is this what we were looking for?

Bill Warner: Wayne Cherry, who was head of design at GM at that time, when I asked him one time, I said, Wayne, what were y’all thinking when you came out with the Aztek? And the answer was, well, it played well in the clinics. But you know, that was back when General Motors had what they call vehicle line engineers, VLEs, and they had the last word statement on manufacturing.

So the designers would come up with a great design, but the VLE would say, well, you know, if we use the sunroof from the previous car, car. We can save 2 a car. So it makes the roof look goofy. And then they decided they needed more air coming in the front. So they made the front end look like some sort of a car pumpkin.

And then they decided to save money on the wheel size. So they put these little dinky wheels on it. And when the VLEs were finished with it, it didn’t look a bit like what the designers had come up with.

Crew Chief Eric: So that’s when the bean counters are in charge of what’s going on. But I’ve also [00:10:00] heard that Tom Peters was the head of design for the Aztek who happens to be the gentleman that designed the C7 Corvette.

I was just with him. Yeah. I’m curious how we get from A to B, but maybe that’s a whole other episode

Bill Warner: into itself. I think it determines what marketing and the division says they want in a package. And then they got to design a package for it. But that, that was a, that was a pretty good failure, I thought.

And I think the market proved that too. That and the Buick Rendezvous built on the same platform where General Motors watermarks. And the guy who really turned that around was Bob Lutz.

Paul Gunn: The distant cousin, well the close cousin, no Aztek owner wants to admit it, but the cousin is the Buick Rendezvous, basically the same vehicle, although every Aztek owner is going to disagree with me on that.

Same engine, same unibody, different metal, and a third seat. So you did have that luxury. rendezvous version. And I’m not sure which came first out of those two is [00:11:00] probably a simultaneous, you know, in case that the Aztek didn’t make it or in case the rendezvous didn’t make it, they would still have all these parts that could go into the other car.

You know, no doubt it was an unusual car for its day.

Crew Chief Eric: The rendezvous, especially later became part of the GM 360 chassis, which shared with the trailblazer, that last of the body on frame SUVs that GM was building in the later two thousands, they rebadged that, you know, you had the envoy and a bunch of others.

So it was kind of a drastic shift from that Aztek platform to the trailblazer platform. But that also begs the question, where did the name come from? I’ve heard some different rumors about where the name Aztek came from, because it’s really a. Step away from Grand Dam and Bonneville and Lamont’s and all these other names that Pontiacs are synonymous with.

Paul Gunn: Honestly, I’m not sure where the name Aztek came from. It’s

Jon Peterson: the one thing online that like you dig and dig and dig and you can’t find it. You know, I’ve looked for that answer everywhere. Maybe we should ask Tom Peters. The one

Crew Chief Eric: thing I [00:12:00] found that lends me to sort of in a halfway understanding why it’s called the Aztek was apparently they were built in Mexico.

So it was to pay homage to the Mexican culture coming from the Aztek, something like that. And I went, that’s a bunch of malarkey. I don’t know, but to John’s point. That’s the closest thing I’ve been able to find in my research as to why they named it what they did. A lot

Paul Gunn: of cars have been made in Mexico, so I don’t know.

That’s kind of a stretch.

Mountain Man Dan: Maybe like the Aztek and the Mayan buildings, they were all very square, you know, not very circular. Maybe it took some of its, you know, square design from that as where they got some of their ideas from.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that what explains those fender wheels?

Paul Gunn: I read an article about how a lot of the Aztek was designed by a computer.

It’s one of the first cars that was solely computerized before it was actually manufactured. I don’t know exactly what that means, but you’ve got like the, the rear window on the side is a little lower than the [00:13:00] driver’s window and the passenger’s window, which is. Kind of odd. Apparently that’s part of the computer program that helped design the car.

Crew Chief Eric: But wasn’t that also the issue, like with, was it the pacer, where one door was longer than the other? Did they do that on purpose? Yeah, the

Paul Gunn: pacer. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Accidentally on purpose?

Paul Gunn: Yeah, you know, I think the Aztek was probably really an AMC. That just slipped into the Pontiac world. You know, it really is. It’s kind of like an AMC, right?

It fits in there with all those oddball, the Gremlin, the all the Pacer, Hornet, or whatever that car was called.

Jon Peterson: I’ve been in a lot of sticky situations being, you know, from Pennsylvania and my Aztek, those, uh, big fender wells have actually, you know, protected my car from getting quite a lot of damages.

Just from everything from deer to potholes in the Pennsylvania roads, I like them more than I did when I first got the car.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s talk about each of yours Azteks. And we’ll start with John. When did you get yours? But even before that, what was your first impression of the vehicle and what drew you

Jon Peterson: [00:14:00] to it?

When I first saw one, it was probably about in 2006. And to be honest, I was just entering middle school. I had a friend whose parents bought him one and I just thought it was the coolest car I ever saw. He had the complete 10 package and everything. And I go camping all the time. And I just thought that was rad, but 27, 000 sticker price.

I was a pretty poor kid from the outer Erie area. So there was no way like I was ever going to be able to afford one. So I bided my time and I drove a 2003 Ford Taurus. Until about five years ago, I found one pretty close to Pittsburgh for a few grand and it ended up being rusted out. I ended up saving more money and then finding the queen in Florida and I hauled it back up and I’ve undercoded it like every year since.

I absolutely love it. There’s nothing I found that I really can’t haul. And

Crew Chief Eric: that’s a very important point about the Aztek. One of its features, which we’ll talk more about the special features of the vehicle in a little bit here, is that it’s one of the few [00:15:00] vehicles that can hold inside of its entire cargo space a 4×8 sheet of plywood without any sort of interruption.

There’s a lot of pickup trucks that struggle to do that because of fender arches and things like that. Like the Dodge Caravan, the early ones. The Aztek can swallow a piece of sheet rock or a piece of plywood, which is pretty

Mountain Man Dan: quite incredible because a lot of people give the Aztek a lot of flack and everything, but like John was mentioning, he camped a lot and everything.

And that was for me being an outdoors type person, I thought the Aztek was phenomenal for a lot of the options it had for the aspect of camping related type stuff. Because Subaru was catering to, with the Outback and things like that, catering to all the people that like to go outdoors and hiking and stuff like that.

And I think that was the market Pontiac was intending to go for, but I don’t know if it really worked out for them the way they possibly thinking. And the way I saw it,

Paul Gunn: there was

Mountain Man Dan: an

Paul Gunn: article that talked about how the Pontiac Aztek concept car was supposed to have this extreme futuristic styling to reach this intended generation X buyer demographic.

Well, I’m Gen X. [00:16:00] I’m, I’m like the oldest of the Gen X. You know, no one’s really been able to market anything to us. So you, do you remember the, uh, Suzuki X10? Yeah. You know, the little squatty thing, you know, that was supposed to be a Gen X car, but you know, it bombed. And so they came out with this and, uh, tried to reach the Gen X buyer demographic.

But I, I think on resale it’s happening. I don’t think it really happened at the beginning because Gen X’ers Couldn’t afford like he was talking about the price

Crew Chief Eric: or maybe Subaru capitalized on where Pontiac failed because that marketing campaign didn’t come till later and then they were able to pick up where the Azteks sort of left off.

So we got to kind of look at it chronologically and say, you know, it’s not a chicken and egg. It’s where Pontiac tried and didn’t succeed. Others took that ball and ran with it. I want to talk to Paul about his impressions. The first time he saw an Aztek and what led him to buy one and what has. You know, first one was like, and things like that.

Paul Gunn: I had a friend who had one and I, I just kept asking, every time I saw her, I said, how do you like this card? And she just said, we love it. And then I’d [00:17:00] see her a few months later and said, how, how do you like this? How do you like it? We love it. I just, I couldn’t really quit looking at it, but I didn’t know if I liked it or not.

But here’s what happened. My son came home from college just a few years ago. He said, dad, uh. There’s this tv show called Breaking Bad. Something got me thinking that maybe I could get one of these and it would build community between my sons and me. I started looking on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace and this and I found one.

Price was right. I bought it from the woman and did not tell my sons that I bought it. So they came home from college for Christmas. It was in the driveway. My sons just. Freaked out

Mountain Man Dan: yellow, just the, in your face, yellow Paulson. And she mentioned breaking bad. Did you go out and buy yourself one of the pork pie hats, like Heisenberg war to where, no,

Paul Gunn: no,

Mountain Man Dan: not yet.

Crew Chief Eric: Sounds like a stocking stuffer to me, Dan.

Paul Gunn: Yeah. Stocking stuffer. I bought it kind of as a joke, but not really a joke because I wanted my [00:18:00] sons to have reliable transportation in college. They took it to their university, a big university in a small town. It was the only Aztek they think in the whole County.

My son said all day long, they would get videos from their friends of them driving the Aztek going down the road. And then my daughter saw it and she got jealous. She said, you know, I’d really like to have one of these. So I ended up getting a copper colored one. She drove it through part of college and I ended up giving it to her.

And she loves, she teaches at an inner city school and the children, when she drove in, one of the kids said, wow, Ms. Gunn, it looks like you’ve got something that came from outer space. And they, they had never seen one before. Now here, my kids had them and I wanted one. I

Crew Chief Eric: know,

Paul Gunn: I know we have a fleet of them, you know, so.

I was able to get a gray silver one that is probably the best got the highest miles of the ones that I have was a one owner car price was like cheap, like 1400, you know, a bit of work done to it. It’s just been great [00:19:00] for us. And fortunately, I have a son who’s gone overseas with the military. So he brought the Aztek home and I told him to prepare to buy his own car.

I want this one for me.

Crew Chief Eric: It sounds like with the yellow and the copper, are these the all body colored Azteks, the later ones or these early Azteks? Yes.

Paul Gunn: I do not have a 2001 it they are the all body color, same plastic on the, whatever they call it, some kind of protection guard or something. But

Jon Peterson: I, but I think it was just a

Paul Gunn: 2001.

You guys correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it was just a 2001 that had the, the black at the bottom.

Crew Chief Eric: Yep. So John, how about you? What year is your Aztek?

Jon Peterson: I have a 2002 Arctic White. And a 2003 Arctic white. And my mom has a 2002 steel blue.

Paul Gunn: The fleet,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s like Lay’s potato chips. You can’t just have one, right?

Paul Gunn: Yeah, you can’t have one. And, uh, the fleet kind of worked good for the kids in college, you know, because I could go to pull apart, you know, just pick all kinds of parts.

Crew Chief Eric: Now, the ones that you guys have, are they all front wheel drive or are you [00:20:00] guys fortunate enough to have picked up an all

Jon Peterson: wheel drive Versa track?

Mine are all front wheel drive. Unfortunately, that’s like one of the bad things that I hear about it is that the Versatrack is unpredictable. Yeah. And hard to manage. So did they

Crew Chief Eric: borrow that system from like the, the safari vans or something like that, or was it its own? I think it was its own thing, because it had

Jon Peterson: its own fluid.

Crew Chief Eric: Dan would probably know. He knows all that technical stuff. Our resident GM bow tie expert.

Mountain Man Dan: The VersaTrack that was in them, I did a quick look up on that and it showed that other than the Aztek, it was also offered in the Montanas, the Silhouettes, and the Rendezvous.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, wow. So it was like a Haldex system, like they use later in the, um, probably in the SRXs and some of the, you know, the Cadillacs and things like that.

Mountain Man Dan: So they did have it in quite a few. And that’s a common thing with most manufacturers, in GM in particular, they use stuff across the board throughout multiple Whole different vehicles, and that’s in my opinion, following

Bill Warner: GM parts.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah, in my opinion, GM is one of the most versatile with being able to have parts off of one vehicle can fit on 10 other [00:21:00] vehicles.

And that’s big reason I’m a GM guy.

Jon Peterson: As soon as I got my Aztek, I knew nothing about cars before then. I just drove them until they crap. I love to the cars so much. I, I had to start learning about it in order to start fixing it. So I’m learning slowly but surely. So you talked about the price.

Crew Chief Eric: John mentioned about 27, 28, 000 when they were new.

I happened to see the Aztek at the New York auto show when they debuted in 2000, saw them again in DC, 2002 with a friend of mine, we would go on a pilgrimage to DC auto show every year. And it was always one of these things where there was a huge crowd around the car. And yes, you would see the sticker in the window and go, my God, really?

30, 000 after destination charges and taxes. Can you really stomach that? So now here we are 22 years later. What’s the market look like? Especially this crazy used car market for an Aztek. Have they held any value or are they pretty reasonable?

Paul Gunn: Yeah, they’re pretty reasonable. Yeah, the other guys may have some [00:22:00] opinions there, but you know, I’ll see them anywhere from running 2, 500 to one with really low mileage of like 45, 000 miles.

I think one was on our page there and our group page sold for maybe 7, It’s like in, you know, garage condition. They’re pretty inexpensive on the used market. At least that’s my experience here in the South.

Jon Peterson: I can say that some dealers are starting to get wise. It’s growing popularity. I have seen some people try to ask four or 5, 000 for one with over 200, 000 miles.

I’ve seen those Facebook ads, but generally you can find pretty reasonable prices for them. I have too, if that tells you anything.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And to that point, you know, before we sat down for this episode, I was texting back and forth with you guys. There are some Azteks showing up even in museums, obviously from the popularity of Breaking Bad, but you spot them.

I mean, they stand out and you’re like, look, there’s an Aztek in the museum. There are quite a few out there. So to your point, Paul, I think it’s a good starter vehicle, especially if you’re [00:23:00] looking for something a little bit older. You know, you guys talked about higher mileage Azteks. What motor is in the Aztek?

The center of reliability is that engine. Is this a borrowed GM power plant from something else or did they develop a new engine just for the Aztek?

Jon Peterson: I don’t know. I’ve actually bought some Montana, like engine covers, they fit right on. They both are 3. 4 V6. So that would have been a

Crew Chief Eric: carryover from like the Beretta that also had a 3, 400.

What else had a 3, 400 in it, Dan? The Montana had it in it.

Mountain Man Dan: Grindavu showing a handful of different vehicles that had that engine in it. And I know even the Grand Am, I think at one point had 3.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it was an odd size. It didn’t come in a lot of cars. So it’s kind of interesting that they decided to put that motor in the Aztek.

Something to be said about that GM V6, right? They run forever as long as you take care of them. And that actually leads into a great conversation about cost of ownership. You guys are both turning wrenches on your Azteks. You’re maintaining them now, 22 year old cars, right? 20 year old [00:24:00] cars in some cases.

What’s it like to own, operate, and maintain one of these? Like, what are some of the known, let’s say, fail issues or things that you guys have had to deal with? You know, do a lot of things go wrong with them, especially now being as old as they are?

Jon Peterson: I’d say the main thing is the cooling system. It’s the one thing that can make or break your engine.

You see a lot of these things in scrap yards for cooling failures. Blown head

Matthew Yip: gaskets.

Jon Peterson: My experience is you check that coolant level and you check that oil level and you keep checking them. And if you start getting a leak, you fix it. Now, my first one, I did let it go when they overheat, they are done.

Mountain Man Dan: So keep it cool.

If I recall correctly, those were aluminum engines and the aluminum they were using during that generation did not like. I

Jon Peterson: discovered the fans come on at an unreasonable temperature. It’s higher than it should be. I was talking with my mechanic and he said something about it being like 40 or 50 degrees higher than when the fans kick on in other vehicles.[00:25:00]

It’s outrageous. And it’s why I tell people in our group, when I see mine going. Even a little bit past that halfway mark on the heat meter, I kicked the heat on and bring it right back down just to be safe. I haven’t had any problems with mine.

Mountain Man Dan: With the heat being an issue on those, GM having so much, like, interchangeability, I wonder if the sensor for when it kicks the fans on for the relay, if it could be changed out with another vehicle to where it would bring it down.

Because I know A lot of the GM’s normal operating temperature for thermostats is normally around 190 degrees. And when you’re going down the road, it’ll sit a little bit above that 190 because the thermostat opens at 190. I know with the older V8s and stuff, I always run a 160 degree thermostat to keep them running cooler.

I wonder if they offer a lower running temperature one for the Azteks that could help with that cooling issue.

Jon Peterson: We’ve also discussed like a switch. Just the cooling. Override the fans and kick them on. And I’ve got like the seat warmers and stuff. There’s one button I have in the middle of the center console there.

It doesn’t do anything. So I thought of having him wire switched directly to them.

Crew Chief Eric: And you know, John, that little trick [00:26:00] that you’re using is something we actually use on the track. You use the heater core as an auxiliary radiator to dissipate heat when you’re, it’s on a really, really hot day. So that’s actually very insightful for you to do that.

Another trick some people do is. Kick on the air conditioning without actually kicking it over to cold. So because that’ll force both fans to turn on as well for extra cooling, but the trick that you’re using, though, it stinks on a super hot day is to kick on that heater and dissipate some of that heat.

Jon Peterson: Well, when you’re in Pennsylvania and it’s only summer, you know, for It’s not too bad. You roll the windows down, you get used to it.

Crew Chief Eric: Paul, what other known issues with the Aztek have you faced, you know, with having so many in your fleet as well, or things that you guys have learned from the forums?

Paul Gunn: Cooling problem is a problem when you read about it on our website.

group page. And when you look at the ads, but I haven’t had that problem, but I’ve done my best to use really good radiator fluid. Cardinal rule with my sons was you’ve got to check your radiator fluid [00:27:00] level and you’ve got to pay attention to this hot and cold thermostat in there. The other problems that we’ve had the dashboard warps, it shrinks the pad over the top of the hard plastic shrinks.

Now, I think in the latest models, They were probably okay, but in the earlier models, it just shrinks. But I think it did that on other Pontiacs too. The glue broke down and then the actual pad shrank. It’s ugly. It’s just part of it. You know, I’d like to see an aftermarket pad that would fit over that.

That’s a cosmetic problem.

Crew Chief Eric: Was the Aztek plagued with the same issues that a lot of cars during that time period had, which was the whole soft touch where they made a lot of the hard plastics feel almost leathery? Where they would spray on whatever that chemical was. I know like the German cars, man, they were drenched in that stuff.

And it’d be, Oh yeah,

Paul Gunn: no, no, this was

Crew Chief Eric: gross. Yeah.

Paul Gunn: Yeah, no, this is different. It’s, it’s just an actual typical soft pad, but I saw, I think it was a Bonneville from the same era and it was the same deal on the dash. [00:28:00] So it’s just something about the GM glue they were using. I think the

Mountain Man Dan: materials GM was using at that time too were just subpar material.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. A lot of plastics would crack and it was just horrible.

Paul Gunn: Yeah. Unfortunately, pulling one from a junkyard and trying to repair all that is just almost impossible. We had some people who had some clever repairs that they’ve done that look okay. I can tell you the one that’s the death of my yellow Aztek, unfortunately, and I’m about to post it.

As a giveaway, if somebody wants it, John, you may have seen this too on the driver’s side rear fender. Well, there was a sticker. Yeah. And this sticker was something in the manufacturing process. And the stickers about the size of a cigarette pack picture, a car going down the assembly line and the wheel is not on yet.

And there’s some kind of sticker that just went on that fender. Then they put the weather coating. Over that, you know, what happens here, the weight of the weather coating over [00:29:00] time, pulled that sticker away. And then that’s become a classic rust spot in the driver’s side, rear fender well. And so salt water, especially in our Northern States, the one I got was from Illinois.

It just creeped into the suspension in the unibody one day, just, you know, the, the spot welds in there just broke loose. Here’s my son driving this thing that’s just going all over the road. And I said, what in the world are you doing? And I drove and I said, the car is finished. No way we can fix it.

Somebody is looking at an Aztek. They need to look that over really well, and they need to get under it. And you can see visually if there’s damage that’s been caused by that flaw. Trying to think through some repairs on how to fix that. John, if you have any idea there, but I think I’m just going to get some type of roofing material with mesh.

Just cover it. I’m not sure what to do, but that is a, it’s a major problem. And then transmissions are also can be problems. I’ve had two rebuilds overall. When I look at getting three kids [00:30:00] through college, you don’t want to put a lot of money into your kid’s college car. It’s been well worth the money, even including the, uh, transmission rebuilds.

I feel like we’ve got our money’s worth. Now the best running Aztek I have has probably 330, 000 miles. Wow. Get in it and ride. It’s just as smooth as a brand new car.

Jon Peterson: Yep.

Mountain Man Dan: What kind of unique features did the Aztek have?

Jon Peterson: So many. I mean, it’s got the tent package, of course. There’s a sliding rollout cargo tray, which I love.

Never have I ever not spilled more groceries in my life. Then when I’ve had this car, like it’s amazing. I drive carelessly with bags full of glass jars in that cargo tray. And I don’t worry about it ever. There was a DVD player. It had on star many different leather and cloth seat packages. They had cargo nets.

They had these little bags that. sat in the doors. They were like leather pouches, lots and lots of stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: I distinctly remember the vents. I don’t want to say they’re 360, but they’re just gyro, right? I mean, they can [00:31:00] move almost in any direction. Is that, is that

Jon Peterson: right? They’re kind of bug eyed. That’s how I’ve heard a lot of people describe them.

Really bug eyed ever since I heard that. Now I can’t think of anything else to describe it, but yeah, yeah, they are interesting vents. They do blow very hard. They’re huge too, right? So that kind of helps.

Paul Gunn: There’s two that right on the back of the console that blow toward the back too. So that’s kind of a neat feature in a vehicle like that.

Crew Chief Eric: Reminds me of the ball chiller they had in the Fords, right Dan? That being said, what’s one of the best things about the Aztek? I mean, John has told us about this camping package, I guess what they used to call a camper special, you know, back in the old days, is that the best thing about the Aztek or is there something else that is just like one of these creature comforts that you’re like, I don’t find this in any other car.

Jon Peterson: I just think it’s more comfortable than any other car I’ve driven. I’ve never been more at one with a vehicle than I have with this car. It’s just so smooth. I

Paul Gunn: would agree. Very smooth car, despite the miles, despite the age, the seating [00:32:00] position, back support, the seats are very well made. Maybe they didn’t spend money on the dash, but they did on the seats.

One of the real clever features is that the back seats can come out easily. And so you have this large flat space. Now John’s got this cargo tray that can hold up to like 400 pounds of cargo. But if you take that tray out, you just got a flat bed there. There’s an inflatable mattress that fits for the tent.

You can put a four by eight. piece of plywood or drywall in the back of this car. It fits great. You’ve got a hatchback and a tailgate, the same vehicle, just the versatility of it, the cooler between the seats there. That’s cool, but, uh, I don’t really use it that much, but it’s a hot item that gets stolen.

I hear from Azteks. The overall versatility of the vehicle is what makes it so unique and the comfort of the driving.

Crew Chief Eric: So you mentioned it’s a third row SUV, right? Yeah.

Paul Gunn: No, that was the rendezvous.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. So they added a row to that. So when you fold down the seats to get that plywood in there, are they like [00:33:00] a tuck and fall into the floor like a caravan?

Or do you have to pull the seats out? Or did they fold down like a Volkswagen Golf? Like, how does that work from an interior composition perspective?

Paul Gunn: You would just fold down the back of the seat, which would go flat over the chair of the seat. And then there’s just a clip on the bottom, similar to, uh, how I remember a Suburban that I had one time, it just pulls right off of the fasteners on the floor and you just pull it out.

You know, it’s a little heavy, but you can take them out in no time. They’re compact, put them in the corner of your garage, your house, and then you’ve got all the space.

Crew Chief Eric: More room than a pickup truck in some

Paul Gunn: respects, right?

Jon Peterson: Yeah. Another cool feature that I liked was on the tailgate. They have kind of imprinted in the plastic, two seats with cup holders.

Matthew Yip: Yeah.

Jon Peterson: And also in the back, some models had controls for the radio. And I use that all the time. We have a drive in out here and it’s amazing. Like I don’t even have to go up front, mess with the radio. I can mess with the radio while I’m sitting back there looking at the movie. Volume, [00:34:00] everything. That’s one of my favorite features.

Paul Gunn: They came with pioneer speakers that model with the, uh, the rear controls. Powerful pioneer speakers that tailgate that was a great thing with my sons when they went places, you know, they’ve got the seats, the tailgate goes down as he seats and these inserts for your cups. You know, those were great features.

Mountain Man Dan: Well, you mentioned the controls in the back and one of the key things that stuck out to me was affected. I don’t recall. Many or any vehicles prior to that, that had a power port in the back that you could plug into to power accessories and things like that. Now it’s a common thing across the board with so many manufacturers.

And I think the Aztek was one of the first cars that I recall ever seeing have that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Also had an air pump. My SS Trailblazer had an air compressor in the back. It also doubled to work the air suspension as well. So it was kind of interesting.

Jon Peterson: Aztek too.

Crew Chief Eric: The Aztek has air ride as well.

Jon Peterson: Yep. I have air ride shocks.

Crew Chief Eric: So it’s self leveling in the rear. I mean, who knew, obviously you guys, [00:35:00] that’s pretty cool.

Paul Gunn: Not all Azteks, but some.

Crew Chief Eric: So are there different trim levels then when you’re shopping for an Aztek? Like what’s the name of the base model versus the mid versus the top of the line, like, you know, Pontiac’s famous for the GT model sort of being the top, but is there an Aztek GT?

Jon Peterson: There is an Aztek GT and it’s identifiable by A’s on the rear doors. There’s little plastic A’s that they put near the window. To be honest, I’ve went and checked out ones for sale, base models for sales that have way more options than some GT models I’ve seen. Dealers ordered these on a custom basis to what some people wanted.

Because I found a few very weird base models out there. Yeah, like mine I got from Florida is loaded, is absolutely loaded. But my 2002 that I got from Pennsylvania that’s rusted out is a GT and it has nothing. So I actually took the A’s off of the 2002 and I put them on the 2003. Because I mean it’s just, the car’s loaded.

Paul Gunn: John probably knows more information on this than I do, but you [00:36:00] have the Aztek rally, which was like the sport model of the Aztek and I think the suspension was the vehicle road one inch lower than the other ones. So my copper one is rally. You do feel like you’ve gripped the road. A lot better, even though it’s just one inch lower.

You can tell that the rally by these, uh, aggressive looking chrome wheels. There was all kinds of different wheel options with the Aztek, but John, you may know a little more about the rally than I do.

Jon Peterson: And the only other thing is that the grill inserts for the rally are the same color as the car. Yeah.

Mountain Man Dan: So, and

Jon Peterson: they have rally under the, yeah.

Mountain Man Dan: So now you mentioned the Raleigh sits an inch lower compared to the conventional Aztek it’s that inch higher and you said it rides a little better. The center of gravity is it high on that vehicle to where going around turns you kind of have a lot of body roll.

Jon Peterson: It has potential to roll. Personally went 360 on not very snowed roads.

I mean maybe about half an inch of snow on the road. My back end slipped out from under me and I. Did 360 probably four or five [00:37:00] times. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how well the Versatrack performs in the snow because I don’t have it, but I actually bought a 1988 Buick Riata. So I don’t have to drive that in the snow anymore.

I mean,

Crew Chief Eric: talk about another, another odd ball too, right? It’s

Jon Peterson: an odd

Crew Chief Eric: ball.

Jon Peterson: Yeah. I like odd, odd cars.

Mountain Man Dan: With features, what do you guys consider to be the worst feature of the Aztek?

Jon Peterson: I’d probably say the dashboard and the, uh, instrument panel, the lights, the gas gauges, they always go out. My lights are going out now.

It sucks at night. I’ve not found many people who are willing to fix it yet.

Mountain Man Dan: So you mentioned the, uh, dash is, uh, the Aztek of vehicle. Cause I know a handful of late nineties, early two thousands model GM, even Dodge cars, their gauge clusters were horrible for like the lousy electronics in them to where they would eventually go bad.

Is that a common thing for that to happen in the Azteks?

Jon Peterson: The radio display, they always go out. It’s rare to find one, I think, that’s [00:38:00] working perfectly. Mine worked a little bit. I mean, I could actually see it when I bought it, but now it’s completely black. Thankfully, I have the heads up display, so I can see where I’m tuning the radio to and stuff.

If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to tell.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, so this has the heads up display that Cadillac five years ago and some of the other GM brands were touting that was super awesome, and they just invented it? You’re saying it already existed? On the Aztek

Jon Peterson: 2001.

Crew Chief Eric: Again, who knew you guys

Mountain Man Dan: knew? I think the first car I ever saw that had that was back in the 90s.

It was, I think a Plymouth Acclaim. And I’m like, why does this car have that as an option? I was like, that option didn’t seem to go with the car. Cause the car was like, why would you put that effort into a car like this? But they did.

Jon Peterson: You know, it’s so convenient though. To not have to look down to see your speed.

Yeah, I do a little bit of speeding on my way to work and stuff. I know where the cops sit. I don’t even have to not pay attention to the road and I work third ship. So it’s really, really nice.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s always good, bad, and indifferent with [00:39:00] every car, right? Whether you’re a Pontiac fan, a Volkswagen fan, Honda, Porsche, you know, you name it.

They’ve all got their issues, right? And they all have their ups and their downs. As we know, the Aztek only live For five years, did it really? And I started digging into this a little bit and I’m going to ask you guys as the experts, did the Aztek morph into another vehicle? Does it live on as something else?

If so, what is that? Something else?

Paul Gunn: I think maybe that’s still being defined in our Facebook group. We’ve got people who want to own one. They can’t afford to go get the free one. That’s only, you know, an hour from them. And then we’ve got these guys who are really like John, who just really baby in their card.

Keeping it up as much as possible. So I don’t know that it’s morphed into anything else. Are you talking about a modern vehicle that echoes the Aztek or has the Aztek become like its own brand?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, maybe a little bit of both, but here’s what I’m thinking. So the Aztek went away in 2005 and then suddenly in 2006, there [00:40:00] was a slightly less aggressive looking, similar styling cues.

The torrent. Oh, right. The torrent. And that lasted through almost 2010. Right. So the question is, is the torrent really the Aztek generation too? And if so, did they water it down too much and take away the personality of the Aztek? Not just in its aesthetics and its styling, but overall, and do people look for the torrent over the Aztek?

Jon Peterson: I think that’s a fair assumption. Anywhere you go and dig about the Aztek, you’ll read that they were trying to be aggressive for aggressiveness sake. They were trying to be so out there. Obviously, when it fails, the company doesn’t want to eat that. It has to be fixed. So, I think that’s fair. They trimmed it down, made this car.

They’re going back to being safe.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah, that’s it. If you look at the body lines and the way they changed the torrent, In my opinion, it was a predecessor to the vehicles like the Acadia and things like that, because it looks very similar to an older version of [00:41:00] the

Crew Chief Eric: equinox space cars. Yeah, I could see that too.

I mean, granted the first equinox was based on the trailblazer that GM built. 360 chassis that only lasted during that time period. And then they replaced it with the new chassis, which now everything seems to be based on that. So I see where you’re going, but there’s certain design cues in the torrent, especially that back window and the snout and some of you’re like, man, that is still an Aztek rose by any other name.

Still a rose, right? So to John’s point, I think they watered it down. They took the safe approach to keep the Aztek line going now, changing the engine, changing some other things. The 3. 4 liter was out by that point. So yeah, it’s a modern version. So something to consider if you’re not a big fan of the look of the Aztek, but you still want some of those cool features and some of the other stuff, the torrent might be a place to look.

That also brings me to something really interesting that I think would make you guys really happy. And I’m sure you’ll post about it on the club page. We interviewed team Cadillac captain, team Corvette, Mr. Andy Pilgrim, you know, who was a factory [00:42:00] GM driver for years. And I asked him during his session, what is the coolest car of all time?

And he said, point blank

outside of all the race cars. Is there a sexiest car of all time? Something that really gets you excited.

Andy Pilgrim: I’m not going to say what I normally say, which would be a Kia Soul. Um, because. I kind of like boxy cars, and I’m a big fan of the Pontiac Aztek. So, the fact that most people have just turned off the broadcast I do like funny, weird looking cars, but

Crew Chief Eric: He’s the first person on the show to say that.

So you guys can take that to the bank. And we haven’t recorded that any program says he loves the Pontiac Aztek. That’s pretty cool.

Paul Gunn: That’s cool. So

Crew Chief Eric: that brings me to my next question, which is, are there any famous or celebrity folks out there that are Aztek [00:43:00] owners?

Jon Peterson: Not that I know of. I tell everyone Breaking Bad is a five season commercial for that car.

Yeah. When people think about the Aztek, they think Bryan Cranston, they think Breaking Bad.

Crew Chief Eric: So in the club, there’s always that one guy, right? Or there’s multiple guys that strive for the biggest collection. Who’s got the biggest collection of Azteks out there? Where are they? And how many are there?

Jon Peterson: I mean, there’s quite a few collectors.

We have a guy who done his Aztek up, just like the Breaking Bad Aztek. It looks phenomenal. You wouldn’t be able to tell that it wasn’t that car that’s in the show. We’ve got people that own like four or five of them. People like me, I own some of the dealer items, you know, like the jackets and stuff that they would have that has Aztek printed on them.

I have a videotape, a VHS tape. It’s kind of like they’d pop it in before they’d try to give you the sales pitch. And it would go over all the features of the car and everything. So that way they’d walk out knowing like everything about the car. It’s like 20 minutes long. It’s something that only existed in a [00:44:00] dealership just to train the employees.

I found somebody and I bought it for them. Shirts. I have ultra rare seating for the car interiors, bunch of stuff. I have almost every accessory except for the DVD player. I don’t have five aspects though.

Bill Warner: So you mentioned the Jack John, did Pontiac have a lot of promotional things like that when they were pushing it?

Jon Peterson: I have, uh, like booklets, magnets. They used to have like these whole set of little magnets that stick on the cars, um, in the dealerships. And it was like just pictures of the Aztek, pictures of like road signs, camping, trying to like appeal to those people. We want to find the guy that’s got like 50 of them.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, there’s somebody out there that’s collecting these things.

Jon Peterson: One in

Crew Chief Eric: every color, one in every year and every color, you know, there’s somebody out there that’s nerding out on these things. That said, how big is the club? It seems like you guys have a good presence on Facebook. You keep it under lock and key because obviously you don’t people coming in trolling you and things like that.

It’s got to be a growing population, especially I’m sure there was a huge surge [00:45:00] after and during breaking bad, but what’s the community like for Aztek owners as you guys are part of that.

Jon Peterson: We just try to help each other. Fix our cars, keep them running, keep them on the road. Generally, everybody’s pretty helpful.

Passions run high, especially when car theory gets involved. When there’s problems, generally, everybody’s really nice and respectful. We do keep it under lock and key. We have been trolled before. Like I said, I don’t know a whole bunch about cars. I actually do like comic books and I’m a collector and I come from like the meme world and like the people who are trying to come in and troll us.

So I review the people that come into the group, make sure that we’re not getting trolled.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, since you brought that up, John, I got, I got to ask because, you know, there’s a lot of memes out there and some of them, they’re good. Like, you got to say, like, they make you chuckle. I mean, there’s ones for Volkswagen owners.

There’s ones for Honda guys, you know, there’s ones for Subaru peoples and all that kind of stuff. What are some of your favorite Pontiac memes? Or you go, you know, you do crack a smile and go, all right, all right, you got me. That was fun.

Jon Peterson: The best one that I ever [00:46:00] saw, there was a meme that went around where it was like the astronauts and he’s like looking at the planet and the astronaut behind the astronaut looking at the planet has a gun to his head, where the earth is it has like all the GMU bodies, the guys like wait, It was all the same.

You’ve already, and he’s like, always was,

I mean, I’ve always considered the Montana to be the mother of the rendezvous and the Aztek because of that new body. It was the same chassis.

Mountain Man Dan: You mentioned in your group that you guys just help each other out with knowledge on how to fix them and stuff. Is there any particular parts with the Aztek that are one off to the Aztek?

It is hard to find. Or that key part that everybody’s looking for.

Jon Peterson: Usually coolers, tent packages. I find in like my repairs, it’s not hard to get the parts just a little pricey. Sometimes wheel bearings are up to 124. The Aztek is unusually heavy. And so I think it chews through wheel bearings a little bit faster.

I [00:47:00] definitely chew through them on these Pennsylvania mountains pretty quick. And it gets expensive, but I don’t have trouble finding like maintenance parts. Some really, really rare brush guards, tail light guards, and step bars. Those are incredibly hard to find. They were made by a brand called Manic

Mountain Man Dan: very rare.

So they were aftermarket, not factory parts,

Jon Peterson: right? They’re not factory parts.

Mountain Man Dan: So speaking of aftermarket parts, is there a decent size aftermarket out there for the Aztek? Is there a variety for that or is it not between companies?

Paul Gunn: There’s nobody out there rebuilding the Aztek like the DeLorean is being, what’s the company in Texas?

It just, that’s all they do. So the Aztek is a long way from something like that, but it might come someday.

Crew Chief Eric: We can all hold out hope. Yes.

Mountain Man Dan: If there was one area of aftermarket, you guys would like to see more for that. What sort of products would you like to see from the aftermarket community that would be beneficial to the Aztek?

Paul Gunn: For me, it would be, uh, some type of simple dash [00:48:00] repair system, whether it’s a replacement cover, something that could fix that whole dash situation. The gauges, you know, some type of pop in, pop out gauge replacements that would be helpful. Some fragile plastic here and there. A good one that we need out there are the headlight.

We need good replacement headlights. John might know the source for that. You know, those do tend to go dull and need to be buffed out quite often. And then at some point you’ll just. you’re going to run out of plastic to buff out. So I’m not aware of any aftermarket lenses that we can buy. Occasionally there are problems with the hatch, the spoiler in the back.

There’s a piece when you raise the hatch, there’s a trim piece inside that that’s just kind of where the It’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s just a trim piece that’s inside the hatchback on the back of the spoiler. Once it goes, it goes, I don’t know how you could fix that. Yeah, there’s probably a small market out there for some aftermarket things that would be helpful to people.

Crew Chief Eric: For a lot of us, the aftermarket is rock auto, right? It’s greatest [00:49:00] place to get parts in the world. You never know what you’re going to find in their inventory. But that kind of brings up the question. What are some of the craziest mods you’ve seen other people in the club do? Are there any people racing Azteks?

Are there any people like slamming them, putting on bags? Like, do you guys do car shows for the Azteks? Do you have get togethers within the club?

Paul Gunn: There have been some Aztek get togethers. I haven’t been able to go to one. I don’t really see a lot of racing mods or anything like that.

Crew Chief Eric: And the reason I brought up racing Azteks, by the way, is I can’t believe somebody hasn’t run one in the 24 hours of lemons yet, but I’m going to dig into that a little bit further and see if, you know, somebody has, you know, campaign and Aztek in racing.

Jon Peterson: I believe I saw somebody who ran one in some race or something. thing, but they had the tent attached. Oh yeah. Like they were forced. I saw that.

Paul Gunn: I saw that the tent was attached in the race. Yeah, that was crazy. Well, you know, you take a whimsical design like that. You know, if you had somebody that was really great at custom work, they could do one of those crazy, uh, dual axles [00:50:00] in the back, you And sink an engine in that big empty section in the back.

Yeah, I could see that. Probably somebody will turn a rally into one of those and just Or a

Crew Chief Eric: dragster, right? Put the body on top of a drag car and then go for it. They’ve done that with school buses and stuff. It’d be pretty cool, you know?

Paul Gunn: Yeah, it’s going to happen. Fastest Aztek

Jon Peterson: on the planet, you know?

Didn’t one of the head guys at GM have like a super customized Aztek? The thing looked tough. I’ve seen some renderings where

Crew Chief Eric: they added additional nostrils and wide body kits. There’s all sorts of people that are like put out these, you know, highly photoshopped. What they think the Aztek could have been had they kept going with it.

And I think they’re pretty cool. They’re pretty mean. I mean, obviously they’re lowered big wheels, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I can see the potential there, right? If you dress it up a little bit and you add some of the modern things that we’re accustomed to on, like you were saying with the C7 Corvette, some of those, you know, more sporty touches, I could see.

The Aztek being appealing to a [00:51:00] modern crowd outside of the current generation of style and cues that are out there. You know,

Paul Gunn: the culture of the group, I would call it a lot of people, like this is their first collector car that are in this Facebook group. They’re trying to, uh, accumulate parts. So if I go to the junkyard.

I’ll put some photos on there of what I have. And then we just work out some kind of financial transaction and I’ll mail the parts or what everybody’s, everybody’s real helpful to each other. One of the things that kind of reaches out to me, that’s kind of inspirational every now and then, I’m sure John has seen it, some kid from another country whose English is just challenged will practice for a long time, probably to put out this sentence.

And he lives in wherever on the planet. And it’s just his dream to own an Aztek, proud to be a member of the club. And these are real sincere guys who want to be a part of something unusual like this.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a car club for everybody, right?

Mountain Man Dan: Were the Azteks sold overseas?

Paul Gunn: Actually, I do have [00:52:00] some stats right here for that.

Only in 2005, the Aztek was sold in Mexico. Now, they were made in Mexico, but 90 were sold in Mexico in 2005. I wonder what they called them. Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know. Other than that, it looks like they were all sold in the US. I got to say though, this is kind of a philosophical side of it all.

I don’t think it’s just that ugly of a car. If you Google worst cars ever made, the Aztek is always in that list, but I really don’t know why, you know, I had a Ford Tempo and let me tell you, that was the worst car ever made.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, you had the limpo. I had the

John Davis: limpo. That’s pretty awesome. It’s really hard to, you know, top that, so.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, so it’s funny, as we talked about the tempo on another episode, I’m just waiting for the day that somebody comes on this show and was like, yeah, and I owned an Aztek. So what do you, what do you want to say about that?

Crew Chief Brad: So that leads us into the next question. What do you think is the ugliest car of all time, vehicle, ugliest vehicle of all time?

The Aztek [00:53:00] is pretty damn clever. to have one. Um,

Crew Chief Eric: he’s a b that’s why he’s not telli drive one off

Crew Chief Brad: a cliff.

Paul Gunn: And ugliest car ever made. You You know, I look at some of these cars today, like the Nissan Juke, what, that is an ugly car that takes the place of any ugly car on those lists. And, you know, there’s other cars out there that are just ugly, but you know, in every generation of cars, there’s all this finger pointing that happens from car enthusiasts and people who write articles kind of just tag onto it.

If there’s something that’s just a little non traditional out there, they just go after it. And then it’s a snowball effect. And then every car writer everywhere has to have his article about that. I think that’s really what happened to the Aztek as much as anything.

Crew Chief Eric: Now, it’s

Paul Gunn: funny you mentioned that

Crew Chief Eric: because, you know, we put together something called the uncool wall.

We’ve done a couple of what should I buy episodes of [00:54:00] revolving around, you know, ugly cars and uncool cars and things like that. And there’s some real diamonds in the rough there, right? Things that were not cool when they were introduced are cool now. Let’s take the Aztek into consideration. It’s funny you say that because we ask people a lot on this show as part of our pit stop.

What’s the ugliest car of all time? And I kid you not. I mean, the Aztek comes up more often than any other car, much like on the other side of the equation. What’s the most beautiful car? You hear the E type Jag, you know, things like that all the time. In your guy’s opinion, I’m going to ask you both this.

Let’s put the Aztek away. What’s the ugliest car of all time?

Jon Peterson: PT

Paul Gunn: Cruiser.

I’m going to have to agree with John. A unanimous vote right there.

Crew Chief Eric: I laugh and I expected it 100 percent and I’m glad you guys said that because I think that is right next in line. Europe, it’s the Fiat Multipla and then you kind of go down from there. There’s some awful looking cars out there. But I want to ask you guys, let’s take the Aztek off the table, keeping things neutral.

What [00:55:00] is the sexiest car of all time? Oh, wow.

Paul Gunn: I’ve had two BMWs. I absolutely loved them. 1994 318 base model. Probably my favorite car of all time. Got told some lady running out of control, hit me and told that I just got rid of a 2005 three series. I loved it, but it just wore out. It does have a similarity to the Aztek.

That’s the only similarity between the BMW three series and the Aztek is that the tolerances are real low on the cooling system, you know, that’s, that’s it. For me, for, uh, I guess, everyday drivers, it would probably be the BMW.

Jon Peterson: I always wanted to have a 71 Plymouth Superbird.

Paul Gunn: Oh yeah, sure.

Jon Peterson: Sure. That’s a really good answer.

I like that.

Paul Gunn: It is a good answer.

Crew Chief Brad: We can’t agree on what cars you should buy, but I think we can all agree on what car you should not

Crew Chief Eric: know. What car didn’t make this list?

Crew Chief Brad: Pontiac. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: a hundred percent. I’m going to get one just to be cool.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. It’s going to be a [00:56:00] collector breaking the ad. I think change the profile of that car.

I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s kind of switch gears a little bit and talk about some of the future things, right? If we could go back in time, you know, if we could do things over again,

Mountain Man Dan: are you all saddened by, or how do you feel about GM’s decision to sunset Pontiac as a brand?

Jon Peterson: It was bad. You know, we all just wish it came back or that one of the cars becomes so popular that they’re forced to bring it back with GM.

I don’t think it’ll ever happen.

Paul Gunn: I never had owned a Pontiac before. So, um, I don’t know. I think it ran its course, was no longer profitable for whatever reason. You know, that whole downhill spiral that started around what? 2008, 2009, when you know the economy tanked and the bailouts. I don’t think Ford got the bailout, but everybody else did and Saturn went down.

I don’t know. I think it had lived its life, just time to let it go. Unless you have all these pontiacs on the lots that aren’t selling and two years later, you know, they’re just trying to get rid of them. So. In [00:57:00] my opinion, it was probably best just to go ahead and kill it off. Would be great if they could bring it back because of demand, but I don’t know.

I think it’s probably gone.

Crew Chief Eric: So, John, with you being passionate about Pontiacs, if you could bring back one Pontiac or even a Holden, right, from Australia, which would it be? Would it be the Firebird, the Tempest, the GTO, the G8, the Aztek, or maybe

Jon Peterson: something else? You probably know I’m going to say the Aztek taking that off the table.

I really liked the Pontiac Grand Prix and the G sixes where I live. We’ve got two really, really nice G sixes around the corner. And every day I walk my dog and I look at those cars, wish there was a for sale sign on them. They got that hard body convertible one.

Mountain Man Dan: Definitely the 98 to two WS six trans am when they brought it back out as It’s an awesome looking car and one of my favorite versions of the Trans Am other than the earlier generations.

Yeah. That’s a nice car. It

Crew Chief Eric: looks slick, slick car. So what about you, Paul? If you could bring back a Pontiac or a Holden, what would it be?

Paul Gunn: It’d probably be the [00:58:00] GTO. You know, I was a little kid during the muscle car days, you know, I’ve never owned one of those muscle cars. Boy, I really liked them. I just remember the large motors, the street racing that went on in my neighborhood.

And there was just something about the GTO that was just kind of invincible, you know, the beast shows up kind of that’s America, you know, America in a

Mountain Man Dan: car to me is the GTO. So when you mentioned like when the GTO judge came out, like the Hurst shifter and things like that, those were key things

Paul Gunn: that.

Mountain Man Dan: Were solely with Pontiac. They weren’t across the board with the rest of the GMs.

Crew Chief Eric: If we look at GM and Pontiac specifically, obviously there’s some famous names associated with it. People like Bunky Knudsen or John Z. DeLorean. You mentioned DeLorean earlier. He’s famous for birthing the GTO from the Tempest.

DeLorean was still alive when the Aztek was produced. He died in 2005 at the tail end of the Aztek line. You guys, as Aztek experts, did DeLorean ever make a sound? [00:59:00] about his thoughts on GM at that time period, especially about Pontiac, you know, part of his namesake of where things were going. You know, he had his opinions in the seventies when he co wrote on a clear day, you can see GM, which was all about his exit from GM and things like that to go start DeLorean.

But what were his thoughts? If there were any, was he quoted as saying anything during that time?

Jon Peterson: You know, I am not too sure about that. Something to put on the message boards,

Crew Chief Eric: right? Something to dig into. If we could bring back a Pontiac product today, and it was the Aztek, if the Aztek came back as an EV, even leaving it in its original state and just making the Aztek an EV, knowing what we know today, more people are into camping and outdoors and all the work that Subaru has done to kind of change the latitude there in the automotive market.

Do you think people would be more accepting of the Aztek? If it was an EV and presented today, rather than 20 years ago,

Jon Peterson: I think so. And I’ll tell you why, because if you look at any modern SUV [01:00:00] now, man, they look awfully similar. Funny story about that. I work third shift and sometimes I stay up longer than I should.

And one night I was driving, I was falling asleep at the wheel and I rolled over onto this median, heard a big bump, woke me up. So I pulled over into a McDonald’s, checked out my wheels, everything looked good, went on my merry way. Two days later, cop shows up at my house. He says that my car went into the McDonald’s parking lot, rammed into a sign that hit a lady’s car, and then the car rammed up the sign.

And he’s looking at my car and there’s like no damage on it. Forces me to call this other cop, and this eventually admits to mistaking my car for a Honda CRV. Interesting. Yeah, just because I pulled over like 10 minutes before this happened and looked at my wheel, he thought that I had done this. He had to apologize to me and everything said, Oh man, this, you wouldn’t believe it.

This SRV, it looks just like your car. It’s got the back slanted window and everything. You know, in my mind, I thought you’re ridiculous. You get to [01:01:00] looking at them and you get to seeing the features. Like I think that GMC XUV, they have a tent now. Somebody just posted that on our group. Something that wasn’t popular back then, but you’re definitely seeing a lot more, I think, inspiration from the Aztek now.

Paul Gunn: You know, as far as design goes, cars, they go through these cycles. You’ve got boxy, round, angular, or whimsical. You know, those are the four classifications of car designs that I’ve noticed through the years. The angular parts of the design of the Aztek just came out of time when there were not a lot of angular cars.

However, now there are more angles in car designs, but I think if it were an EV, I’ll grit my teeth here, but promoted as a green vehicle, it’s going to be good for the environment and that type of thing. And if they included this outdoors concept, the tent, the versatility of it. Marketed a little stronger with some of those features like the tailgate, the rear controls.

I don’t really remember a lot of that being marketed, but yeah, I could see, I could see it [01:02:00] as an EV making a hit and because it is different than other EVs.

Crew Chief Eric: And I think you hit on something really, really important. about that angular design. There are some cars that I look at now and it’s like, why did you put the door handle there?

What’s up with this teeny little pennant window in the back that when the Aztek was introduced, we all gasped, went, Oh, what have they done? And now it’s become super acceptable to have all these strange things that in my mind. don’t make sense to even produce. It’s like, how much does it cost to make that tiny triangular eight by eight piece of glass that you could have just made metal and kind of change the shape of the door or whatever.

Some of these things just don’t make sense. You know, maybe just, maybe like we said at the beginning, the Aztek was actually ahead of its time. And like one of you guys was saying. It was the car of the future, but the future wasn’t then it’s now.

Paul Gunn: Yeah. But based on how we’ve enjoyed these, if I were doing it again, I would not have waited until my son said, Hey, have [01:03:00] you seen the TV show breaking bad?

You know, about this Pontiac Aztek. I probably would have gotten one a long time ago.

Mountain Man Dan: Eric was mentioning earlier how one of the things we’ve had episodes say, you know, what would I buy? So if an individual is looking for a track car, we get a panel together of people throw out suggestions of vehicles.

I’m going to twist that question a little bit. Why should I buy an Aztek?

Jon Peterson: I guess it just depends on what you need out of it. Me, I used to be a very small car person. I like to be close to the road. I actually used to drive a 2013 Hyundai Elantra. Man, I loved how tiny that thing was. I just bought a house.

It’s a fixer upper, so I’ve been needing to haul tools, drywall, all this sort of stuff. And no way I could ever do it in a sedan. No way. As I said before, camping has never been better. With the Aztek and when you’re camping in it, you don’t wake up with that dew all over you, or all over your blankets. I love it.

It’s great for drive ins, it’s great for festivals, it’s great for the beach. I love it. It’s a Swiss [01:04:00] Army knife if you think about it, right? Yeah, yeah, really it is. The most versatile vehicle on the planet.

Paul Gunn: Well, why should I buy one? Good question. John said, depends on what you need or what you’re looking for.

I think it’s been great with kids. Been great for trips that we’ve taken now. Most of mine have been driven by my kids. So I’m looking forward to reclaiming the one that I bought for myself. You know, you could buy it as a conversation piece because wherever you go, people are going to ask you about it.

I’ll go down the road and kids will point, parents will look over at the car. Sometimes there’s a thumbs up. Sometimes there’s laughter, you know, that type of thing. So if you’re looking for a vehicle that just blends in, this is not the car for you, probably one of the top reasons to buy one would be to own an intriguing piece of history that is still maintainable with plenty of parts out there.

New old stock aftermarket parts, as well as plenty of junkyard parts. For the family thing with my sons, it’s been really good. We’ve enjoyed it and the repairs we’ve done, which haven’t been [01:05:00] many, we’ve done them together, features that we fixed on the inside. We’ve done those things together. So maybe just family togetherness with your kids would be my reason.

Crew Chief Eric: Paul, to your point, I bet if you’re the only Aztek out of cars and coffee. You’re going to be a really popular guy,

Matthew Yip: something

Crew Chief Eric: to consider as well. I mean, people show up with their fancy Porsches and their Ferraris. You show up with an Aztek. I guarantee you’re going to have a crowd. I need to do that.

Paul Gunn: That’s a great idea.

Jon Peterson: We’ve had some people in our group actually win awards at car shows just because they’ve had the tent package and stuff

Crew Chief Eric: for being so unique. Yeah, absolutely. Gentlemen, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share, maybe about the Aztek club before we close out here?

Jon Peterson: We’re the um, Pontiac Aztek Band Club, and we’re on Facebook, and if you want an Aztek or need help with your Aztek, join us. You just gotta answer a couple quick questions, and then you’re in.

Paul Gunn: I would agree with John. It’s a nice group of people. Everybody’s very helpful. People are very encouraging to each other.

We’ve got a lot of [01:06:00] young people on the site, and for any car enthusiasts that are listening to this, I really want to encourage you to get young people excited about our hobby, because it can fade away quickly. Hobbies like this are not cheap, and young people need that entry level car, vehicle, truck, whatever.

That’s affordable for them and they need older people that have experience to encourage them or the hobby is going to go away. I read an article in Hemmings magazine that said it was an appeal to car enthusiasts, these older guys that just said, guys, we’ve got to start embracing some of the older Japanese cars.

You know, we haven’t done that, but this is what the younger people like and they can afford to fix up. So I just want to throw that out as an encouragement to all of our car enthusiasts to encourage young people to get involved. On some entry level vehicle that is easy to work on and easy to get aftermarket parts for and affordable.

Mountain Man Dan: A big thing that’s become more common is like cars and coffee. Sure, you’re not racing or anything, but it’s just something you go out and hang out and look at other cars. If we can get the youth [01:07:00] involved in that, it’ll allow the whole car enthusiasm to survive because with EVs coming and stuff like that, it’s difficult.

I hate to say it, but it feels like it’s a dying thing out there.

Paul Gunn: I read one time an article that said that the mindset that used to be caught up in engine rebuilds and hot rods, that’s the same minds that has transferred over to computers today. And I’d like to pull some of those video game guys and those computer games guys out, you know, have one of those times where you go to a car show and you see what’s going on.

And you look at the art and the skill and the enthusiasm that’s behind, you know, these great museum pieces that are still drivable and that people have taken the time to restore. I want to say this one last thing, too. We got to remember Tom Peters. I mean, this guy, he designed this car. Which was considered by many to be a failure and to be an ugly car.

And, and then he designed the Corvette C7 and I don’t know how that happened. I mean, did Corvette say, Hey, let’s take the ugliest car of all time. Let’s take the [01:08:00] designer of the worst car of all time. And then let’s have him design the new Corvette. I don’t know how that conversation happened, but clearly when he designed the Corvette and his team worked on the C7.

They hit the market at the right time. You know, there’s the old saying, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. So everybody out there aspiring car designers, if your car design, just not getting a lot of thumbs up with your peers, keep working on it because you might hit gold one day.

Crew Chief Eric: That is absolutely true.

And you know what guys with your help, maybe we could get Tom Peters on here and ask him a, what the heck was he thinking, how he made that journey from the Aztek to the C7 Corvette. Stay tuned for that. Right?

Paul Gunn: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I definitely invite

Jon Peterson: us for that.

Crew Chief Eric: And to your point from before, Paul, Don Wieberg, who we work with over at Garage Style Magazine mentioned on his episode, resonating exactly with what you were saying is a lot of the older car enthusiasts need to embrace some of these odd [01:09:00] cars, some of these entry level cars, and stop telling the younger enthusiasts, you don’t want to deal with that piece of junk.

What you need to go buy is a 911, you know, or whatever, or Camaro, or something. No, embrace these folks because as we talk about on this show and why we exist is to spread that enthusiasm to remind people that the car world is really, really big. And that if we bring more people into the fold and we embrace the oddities like the Aztek that car culture will continue to thrive, even as it’s changing around us every day.

Well, to quote Paul, who quoted very eloquently Tom Peters, the chief designer of the Aztek during its 1999 concept debut, he said, We wanted to do a bold in your face vehicle that wasn’t for everybody. And to that I say, Touche, Tom. Touche. He

Paul Gunn: accomplished it. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So to learn more about the Pontiac Aztek, searching Google yields plenty of Pontiac and Aztek related clubs, forums, and technical [01:10:00] specs and memes to boot, but for the best community experience.

Please be sure to reach out to the folks like John and Paul and the team at the Pontiac Aztek owners club on Facebook to get yourself involved in that growing community. So I can’t thank you both enough for coming on the show and sharing your corner of the automotive world with us and with our listeners.

As many of the folks know, you know, jokes aside, this episode has been a long time coming and we really do appreciate you guys spending your evening with us and talking to us about the vehicles that you are most passionate about. No problem. Thanks for having us.

Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Dan. Enjoyed talking to you, John.

It was great to see you guys finally. Gosh, we’re petrol heads, right? Yeah, just least favorite in general.

Adam Jabaay: One of my roommates in college had an Aztek, or his girlfriend did, his now wife, and I think they still have it. It’s got like 400, 000 miles, the tent still works. Well, if you

Matthew Yip: don’t look at it, it was wonderful, but so’s the Porsche 928.

Adam Jabaay: Or, uh, [01:11:00] that Lamborghini SUV, you know?

Matthew Yip: The Urus. The

Crew Chief Brad: Urus,

Adam Jabaay: interesting. The Urus is like the best looking Aztek. Like, they’re really, they’re not bad at some angles.

Mike Crutchfield: Unfortunately, it doesn’t look as good as an Aztek. It is

better looking than the Botox looking, lipid injected Tesla front end. Oh yeah, because I’m not classically trained, I don’t have to pretend to be poetic about every single thing that’s made.

I don’t have to come up with these lies about, oh, whose key lines are from?

Crew Chief Eric: Because it’s Heisenberg, it’s Heisenberg’s part, so.

John Davis: Oh, I mean a lot of people like to pick on the poor Aztek from Pontiac, but I think If you know anybody that owns an Aztek, they love them. That’s very true. That’s a very true statement.[01:12:00]

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of BreakFix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers Fed on their [01:13:00] strict diet of fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motor sports, and remember without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to Grand Touring Motorsports
• 00:22 The Ugliest Car of All Time: Pontiac Aztek
• 01:03 Pontiac Aztek: A Controversial Design
• 05:06 The Aztek’s Market Performance
• 13:50 Personal Stories: Owning an Aztek
• 30:17 Unique Features of the Aztek
• 36:15 Rally Edition and Driving Experience
• 37:18 Dashboard and Instrument Panel Issues
• 38:13 Heads-Up Display and Unique Features
• 39:08 Aztek’s Evolution and Successor
• 41:47 Celebrity Endorsements and Pop Culture
• 43:23 Collector’s Items and Community
• 46:33 Aftermarket Parts and Modifications
• 56:12 Future of Pontiac and Aztek
• 01:03:18 Why Buy an Aztek?
• 01:05:35 Encouraging Young Car Enthusiasts