I'm going to ignore all of the "INTIMIDATOR SS" and horrible styling and catastrophic early 2000s GM quality and that this is basically just an elaborate refresh of a car that was already showing its age when it was new in 1995, and focus instead on one thing:
Story time:
Back when the W-Body was new, Pontiac bolted a turbo on their top spec V6 at the time, leading to a massive 70+ jump in horsepower but curiously only 40 more pound feet for a total of 205/220. It still made it a reasonable performance car for the times, though Pontiac had clearly had goals higher than "slightly less performance than what the SHO already had" when making it; particularly since the car-specific engine that the Grand Prix Turbo had pushed prices way beyond being competitive with the most obvious contemporary.
Knowing that wasn't a long term solution, GM as a whole went and bolted a DOHC head onto their normal pushrod V6 (making it both fantastic sounding and impossible to service). It was noted at the time that they had intended to make it had 250/250 in preproduction (which would blow even the later V8 SHO into the weeds) and had reliably tested the engine to
275 hp; but ultimately had to detune it to 210/225 stop it from eating the manual drivetrain (and detune it even further when paired with a slushbox to keep it from destroying the automatic). This is, of course, kind of pathetic, since at this point GM had spent 3 years developing a Taurus SHO competitor and come up with something that essentially was only "as good" as the SHO immediately before the Taurus went through a full model change and only as good if you weren't paying for the maintenance costs.
This engine soldered on, destroying people's wallets in spark plug changes, until it was replaced with the normally aspirated Buick V6. A notable drop on horsepower (down to 200/225) and character, but in all honestly only barely worse performing (6 years is a long time for a performance engine to basically not be improved upon) and significantly more reliable, much cheaper to build and service, and more fuel efficient; and besides at that point GM had largely abandoned trying to make actually sporty cars out of the W-Body (outside of Pontiac who kept putting up the good fight) since Ford had also basically given up when the oval Taurus SHO met the market with a thud.
Clearly, ~225 lb-ft of torque is a magic number for this:
And conveniently that brings us all the way up to speed to today's subject, since Chevrolet not
horribly tried to shoehorn already questionable 1970s RWD car styling cues into an upright stubby-looking FWD car, but they continued by adding wholesale name debasement by applying "SS" and horrible NASCAR theming to something that had no more power than mid-trim Accord or Taurus. But we'll ignore those things others have already touched on in order to continue the theme of this post.
2004 has rolled around. The Grand Prix coupe is discontinued and the Camaro is long gone, so Chevrolet is
finally interested in actually adding some sport to the Monte Carlo
Super Sport.
240 horsepower, 280 pound feet of torque. Finally, this engine makes its way to the Chevrolet W-Body. It's
7 years after Pontiac had put it in their Grand Prix and so late that now you can get an Accord
and Altima coupe with the same amount of horsepower and a 6 speed (and that the Grand Prix moved on to a more powerful version with 260 hp), but hey, at least things are looking up. I'm sure GM also did stuff to make sure that, having finally broken the ~225 mark, the transmission will finally be upgraded to deal with the problems that had plagued it all the way back to 1989; especially since Pontiac has been putting that engine in thousands of cars for nearly a decade now.
Right?
Wow look new engines!
The skinflint model is even more powerful than the SS of just a few years ago, with 211/214! And the the mid-spec engine breaks the mark of the immediately previous SS, with 242/242! Those Accord coupe drivers can't make fun of you now (yes they can, and just stay away from Altima Coupe drivers)!
And then all of the engine gaskets on it disintegrate at once because GM rushed the 3800 out of production; then the tranny grenades anyway.
Nevermind wow look here's a V8!
303 hp! 323 ft-lbs! Even the Northstar owners can't make fun of you now!
Wait what was that transmission rated for?
Oh well I'm sure that GM significantly upgraded the internals when they started attaching it to engines that have exactly that amount of torque (or
15% more).
Right?
Oh.
"But wait," you may say, "How come Cadillac sold hundreds of thousands of Northstars that had more torque across more RPM than any but the latest of W-Body cars and the last problem any of those has is the transmission even when being used as hearses or limos?"
Well:
Northstars
always used the 4T80 (the big transmission) even when put in the Aurora, and W-Body cars
always used the 4T6x (the small transmission) even when attached to engines more powerful than the FWD Northstar ever was.
Now I'm not saying that the Monte Carlo
specifically is why GM declared bankruptcy immediately after it was discontinued. But selling millions of cars as corner-cut and underveloped as the Monte Carlo was across two decades, up to and including selling hundreds of thousands of cars with engines more powerful than the transmission they were attached to was rated to handle (a problem that GM knew was going to be an issue almost immediately after the platform debuted in 1987), probably
did have something to do with it.
Now credit to Oldsmobile and especially Pontiac, because they both
tried to turn the W-Body into actually-good cars and mostly just kind of hit the wall at GM foisting increasingly uncompetitive pap on them as bases to work from (and look at how the brands were rewarded for their efforts). But the Impala? The Monte Carlo? The Regal and Century? Hopeless.