The Last American Indian an FWD Ground Pounder

[Last American Indian]

The Last American Indian

The “97”-“03” Grand Prix (MS2000) platform, under the GM-10 umbrella. This was the last America designed & built Pontiac! The W-body l was designed in Canada & some was built there. The W-body lll was a redesign of the MS2000 platform. It was once again designed in Canada & much of the car was built in Canada!

A little back history to explain The Last Indian’s progression.
I’m not that guy that does car shows. So I just do cars for me! To please me! For the pleasure of seeing an idea live! But in 1984 a Swedish magazine, (Start & Speed) was here in the Cleveland area and was told of my custom 1969 Z/28 by a friend of a friend. They approached me for a cover piece so I allowed it. Most of the car was custom designed and handmade, including the full frame with an OEM suspension front and rear, not coil overs in the back like you often see with full frame conversions, but it was so much more than that! For a myriad of reasons I sold it and a “74” Z/28 that was custom as well in 2004 after 35 and 30 years of ownership!
I had bought a brand new 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix, so after selling the Camaros I decided to take the GP for a summer only car and for a FWD it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good mind you, but I did love the updated Coke bottle shape and styling. So I thought I was done modifying & customizing cars after 36 years of doing so!

I was just going to drive it. I had done a lot with cars at multiple levels, maybe it was time to refocus on something new, not sure what, maybe bird watching? Well the boredom lasted a year! So I embarked on a new path, a path that I didn’t know would become that of The Last American Indian! With the “97”-“03” Grand Prix being the last American designed & built Pontiac and the end of Pontiac as a car company occurring just a few short years later!
I had always owned RWD cars until the GP, but I found myself realizing all I had ever seen anyone do with a FWD, was either cosmetic things or on the engineering side, power or drifting. Yet no true performance handling, no true blend of drivetrain performance, handling and style! Especially not in an American car and not in the vein of the old muscle car era ground pounders and most assuredly not performance handling. I remember when the first gen Camaro was called the poor man’s Porsche and that was what inspired me to make mine better than a Porsche. Why not a similar mind set with FWD I thought? Drifting isn’t powering thru a corner and it certainly isn’t handling, so l thought, try something different!

Stay tuned! This is a build you will want to see if you love the W-body ll!

 

[Last American Indian]

So a quick overview of the two Camaro’s as a point of what can be done, even to the extent of the W-body ll.
Putting full frames under these cars, while utilizing the rear leaf spring suspension transforms the characteristics of the entire mathematical physics, relative to ground adhesion & lateral G force. The process lowered CG & RC, but had a more dramatic impact on RC. It also altered weight distribution.

 

[Last American Indian]

A few more.

 

[Last American Indian]

The very first thing I wanted to address was handling! This platform (MS2000) possesses all the attributes it needs to become a great handling car. I looked at all the math that applied to the physical perimeters of the platform. It has the ability to achieve at the very least 1.1 G’s in a 300’ skid pad test. But a skid pad test is only a small indicator of handling performance. Yes, 300’ skid pads & tight turns are heavily affected by yaw, which is a fundamental part of handling, but abrupt 90 degree turns, aka hard cornering are actually more affected by yaw than those types of turns & they are what truly defines a great handling car! I am talking about making a 15’ to 20’ hard right turn onto a side street at 15-17 mph! Or like autoslalom racing or road courses.

So first on the agenda was to change the CG, the RC & weight distribution! These three things become the cornerstone of which everything else is based on.

Remember this, lowering a car by changing springs affects CG, but, and it is important to remember, it has little to no effect on RC! What it does do is negatively impact suspension travel & as such suspension response! Yes, because the CG is lower than it was, the vehicle feels more stable, corners tighter! But if put to the test it will fail at true maneuverability! Not to mention those ground clearance issues.

So my very first task was to change the structural stiffness of the car. Creating an even better, more dynamic resonance phenomenon! In stiffening the frame/unibody structure with a two part structural urethane foam. Notice in the pictures there are no open cavities left. You will notice that all the metal expansion holes that are found in the floor & rail stampings are gone.