I lurk, here and at other forums. Created an account just to post this.

Some Personal Background, FYI:
For a few years, my '99 GTP has been my winter driver while I worked on summer projects. Unfortunately I went through a rough period of unemployment and had to sell off those projects, and the GTP has become my daily driver. I'm working again, so I need the car, but looong hours, and pretty crappy pay, so I have neither the money to spend on a shop, nor the time or workspace to do it myself, and the GTP is starting to need a lot of work.

The car is dead:
I love the car; It got driven a lot more often than the project cars and entirely through the past few winters. Unfortunately it missed an undercoating one year and ever since then its been rusting away... seriously bad. I brought it to a shop to put the summers on (right when I started the new job, really should have done it myself but soo tired/busy) and they knocked 4 holes in the floorpan from the lift pads not being positioned on the frame... that's how thin the metal is now :S. I pulled the rocker panel covers a few summers ago and there was nothing but metal filings underneath.

So the car's on it's last legs, and has been for a while. Last summer I had to do some work on the front end, with a new rack and pinion etc; last fall I redid the rad -> tranny cooling lines (god that was messy, one of them burst right over my head during the assessment phase, before draining :S), this spring I had to pay a shop to replace an injector and flush the others (no time/workspace anymore, some $600+ bill ) The summer before I'd done new bearings, installed the crap ones and learned that lesson hard; this winter, one of the front wheels broke off and rolled away, the posts into the bearings had shorn completely off. When I put the summers back on last week, the car is pulling about 10-15 degrees to the left :S.

My GTP is done.

I love this car:
Some of the features are just awesome, and I don't want to give them up. Powerful (enough for my daily drive, that is), aggressive styling, enough driver/storage room (I'm a big guy, 6'1"), leather interior, great sound system, heated seats, the HuD is very impressive for the car's categorization, power mirrors/doors/windows etc... only thing I would change is my AC is crap (gotten used to not having it tho) and I wish I had a standard transmission. I hadn't done much work on my GTP; basically just dropped it, got rid of the fat tires, and installed a u-bend delete straight pipe exhaust. Toyed with doing some tweaking to the sc but never got around to it. Rest of the changes were entirely cosmetic. It had enough power for my winter drive, and the features included in the GTP package were enough for me internally.

So... What now?

I'm still not-well-off financially - buying a *new* car is out (leasing a cheap one might be ok). I don't have the time to dedicate to a fixer. I'm lacking the funds to pay for repairs. And I'm really, really reluctant to put money into something I'm going to hate driving - a significant drop in performance characteristics is gonna make my daily commute a chore.

TLDR;

I guess I'm looking at a handful of options. Buy a crap car to get me through to when I can afford something better; find a different used car with the features I want, or buy another Grand Prix in better condition (maybe a GT only; think I could drop in some of the stuff outta my GTP (hud, sc, speakers, seats, etc?).

Thoughts? Anyone have any suggestions for other vehicles that are 'hidden gems' like my GTP?