Heh... Well, the auction just finished. I did one Hail-Mary bid of my own for $52.51, the most I'd pay for a used one (including a little extra to circumvent anyone who'd tossed in a flat fifty-buck bid), but no joy. Whoever "josephstephen" is, he _really_ wanted that grille, but I hope he'* not a BC member, because my last-minute counterbid served to sock him for an extra $22.00 beyond what he was otherwise going to score it for (there were no other bids except mine this morning).

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...tem=7945014741

I think I'm going to order a new one. The car deserves it anyway.

bottom line, the grills are interchangable. even though the SE grill shpw more black plastic than the SSE/SSEi grill, they will still fit. There is an SE that is 10 houses down from me and has an SSE grill on it. Kenn, if you see this post, pm me. I need you to take a pic for me so i can show them it will still work. There is a gap but it will fit.

the SSE/SSEi grille will fit on the SE/SLE but the SE/SLE grille WILL NOT fit on the SSE/SSEI

Right; please let'* not abuse the language... I don't think it'* accurate to say that they're really interchangeable. They're not the same shape, and each is intended to mate up with a different front bumper cover.

The fact that one mismatch will cause the parts to collide (SE grille over SSE cover), and the other mismatch will cause a larger-than-normal gap (SSE grille over SE cover) should be a tipoff that they're really not intended to go together any old way. The SE grille goes with the SE bumper cover, and the SSE/SSEi grille goes with the SSE/SSEi bumper cover.

If you want to go back a few years, it was possible to bolt a 1968 LeMans/Tempest nose onto a 1969 car, and vice versa, and that was a completely painless transformation; anyone who didn't notice what kind of taillight design it had wouldn't notice the change at all.

(If you wanted to get seriously weird, you could swap steering columns as well. The 1968 had its ignition switch on the dashboard; the 1969 had it in the steering column. Depending on how you combined steering column with year of car, it was possible to wind up with a LeMans that had two ignition switches... or none at all.)