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BFGoodrich® Tires help 2004 Grand Prix Win "Best-Handling Sport Sedan" Title
June 18, 2003


Comp T/A® tires help make new Comp G package King of the Hill

Remember the excitement of the GTO? The 2004 Pontiac Grand Prix GT keeps the Pontiac tradition alive with letter designations signifying special performance capability, in four stages of excitement: Grand Prix GT1, GT2, GTP — and GTP with Competition Group Package. Known as Comp G for short, that's the hot setup that enabled Pontiac to claim title to best handling sport sedan in its class. One that comes exclusively on BFGoodrich® Comp T/A tires.

Pontiac packs a snarly supercharged V6 under the hood of the GTP Comp G and delivers the power through a yaw sensor control called StabiliTrak that works with the variable effort steering and TAPshift — shorthand for Touch Activated Power mdash; which is F1-style fingertip shifting with steering wheel-mounted paddles.

If that's not enough, the GTP Comp G rides on 17-inch 10-spoke lightweight aluminum rims shod with P225/55R17 V-rated BFGoodrich® T/A® tires. And the ride and handling are the vectors where the GTP Comp G package really shines. To see just how well the car stacked up against the competition, Pontiac arranged a test at Arizona's Firebird International Raceway to run the GTP against comparably equipped cars — domestic and imports — on a course that measured acceleration, road course lap time, braking, skid pad velocity and transitional speed on a slalom course.

The testing was done by Pro Formance and sanctioned by the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). It measured road course lap time, 1/4-mile acceleration, slalom speed, 60-0 braking and speed around a skidpad. The GTP Comp G BFGoodrich-equipped Pontiac placed first (out of 18) in four out of five categories, winning everything except the skidpad test, in which it placed second.

An interesting window on just how serious Pontiac is with performance in their Comp G package is the comparison of the 2004 GTP Comp G package with this year's 2003 Pontiac GTP — without the Comp G extras. The 2004 car was two seconds faster on the road course; nine-tenths of a second faster in the quarter and 2 MPH faster in the slalom. The 2003 GTP took 14 more feet to brake from 60-0 and posted a lateral acceleration figure of .78 compared to the 2004 Comp G at .82. These are major improvements in the performance world, where often tenths of a second are considered major gains.

Road testers and race drivers know that one of the biggest, quickest improvements that can be made to a car is to fit more sophisticated tires. That would account for Pontiac's decision to go with BFGoodrich T/A tires exclusively for the Comp G-equipped GTP for 2004.
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