2001 Pontiac Grand Am Car over heated—blown head/gasket?

Hello,

First and foremost I just want to stress how little I know about cars. I recently bought a 2001 Pontiac Grand AM GT w/ 100k miles on it at a buy here/pay here lot; I paid 3 k down and owe 1900 on it. I know now that’s a huge mistake so please don’t ridicule me because of it. The lot owner was a mechanic and has a mechanic shop on site so I figured he’d be very reputable.

So I had the car for one week exactly. On my way home the car over heated. As I stated I know nothing about cars. I didn’t want to risk damaging the car even worse so I had it towed home. The car was full on all fluids until about 5 minutes after over-heating, at that point all the coolant leaked out and the car started smoking, the smoke was white in color.

I ended up taking it to a local mechanic (car lot would not assume responsibility) who did repairs on my old car. He told me he thought that the thermostat may be sticking and that’s a common problem if the car has sit on the lot for awhile without being started. He re-filled my coolant and told me to take it for a drive and see if it was overheating still. So, I drove probably about a quarter of a mile and it over heated. I let the car cool down and took it back to him. At this point it was making a hissing/screaming sound. He told me he’d repair the thermostat and get back with me.

So I patiently awaited to hear back from this mechanic. 4 days passed and not a word. I called over and spoke with him"”he said that he’d repaired the thermostat but that ended up not being the issue and he believes I may have blown a head or a gasket. He says if this is the case he would recommend getting an entire new motor because he’s had better luck with doing that in the past.

Can someone please let me know if I’d be better off with a new motor or if I’m okay with replacing the gasket/head? I’m really at a loss here. I feel helpless and do not know what to do. I reported that car lot to the BBB"”turns out nothing can be done but they are keeping the report on file.

Another thing I find very frustrating is that my mechanic could not give me an out-right answer as to whether or not the head or gasket was damaged. He just said he thought that it was. I’m going to be getting another mechanic look at this today. What’s the worse case scenario that I could be facing at the moment?