99 Intrigue 3.5L. Loud bang noise now car won't start

This happend to my wife. She says she tried to start the car when she heard a loud bang, and the car would not start. I thought it was the starter, I had it checked out and everything was fine with it. Does anybody have any ideas as to what may be the problem?

That is known as the big Bang. Chances are you blew the crank shaft. The engine is toast. Junk it and buy another Intrigue for around $800 that is what they are selling for in the Toronto area. later

the 3.5 lx5 has a powder forged crank and is fairly hard to break = in fact I believe the aluminum block would break first.

If the car turns over you are still good. Most likely a misfire or some sort of timing issue. Exhaust issue.

I always thought the lx5 aluminum block was a weakness, but GM designed it well and it's held up well under WI winters. = I honestly wouldn't want the ironblock 3800 besides the rebuildability factor.

maybe the engine hydrolocked due to a coolant leak...my truck did this last winter after sitting for days during a cold snap...went to start it and it made this horrible BANG and I assume it broke a connecting rod...old truck so i just got rid of it for scrap. what happens is a cylinder will fill up with coolant due to a leak, and it locks your engine because the coolant has nowhere to go..it was fairly common occurrence on the 3800's that had the intake leak, ive never heard of it on a 3.5

This is some scary stuff didn't think it could happen. Turn the crank 1st check your oil and coolant if it gets harder to figure out drain all the oil and take off the oil pan and look into the moving parts. Oh yeah pull out those damn spark plugs look in the cylinders stick a paper towel in thier with somthing or rag