Parking Lot Spotlight – 1967 Pontiac Bonneville!!

I haven’t written a Parking Lot Spotlight (#ParkingLotSpotlight) in a while, but this beautiful Bonneville was worth breaking the dry spell for.

Spotted this beauty just today as I had to run back to the grocery store because there are days, although armed with a list, things just don’t make in the shopping cart.  This particular return trip paid off.

The ’67 Pontiac lineup these days are pretty much dominated, at least in the collector world, by the Firebird, GTO, Tempest, LaMans, Gran Prix but I love the other two door offerings you could find in the showrooms.   These include some awesome cars with long, low lines, roomy interiors and massive trunks.  They came in hard and soft tops as well.  Some of those sported model names like Executive series which in NO-WAY looked like a stuffy exec car.  These were muscular and sporting.  Cars like the  Catalina 2+2 with (eight lug wheels) and the Pontiac Executive are exceptional looking cars and powered with V8s and 4bbl carbs.

I have always coveted the Bonneville models of the mid-1960, they remind me of my first car, 1966 Impala.  Same long lines  and big interiors and I loved the dash and instrument setup.

So check out this beauty:

Great looking paint - not original but beautiful

Great looking paint – not original but beautiful

1967PontiacBonne-2

These are the lines I’m talking about. Long and low….AWESOME.

1967PontiacBonne-7

HUGE trunk!!! Love those inset taillights and how the bumper is incorporated into the design of the rear end.

1967PontiacBonne-8

Long and sleek belt lines and the white-painted top does this car justice!!

1967PontiacBonne-9

Over/Under headlights with the bottom set incorporated in to a beautiful distinctive chrome bumper.  (One drawback of having to manage a good pic in a crowded parking lot – I couldn’t get the perfect front end shot.)

That year the Bonneville came in a 2 door hard top like this beauty as well as 4 door sedan, 2 door convertible and even a station wagon.   Engines available were the 230 CID in various configurations as well as the 326 CID and the 400 CID engine and the 428 CID  all as options.  Sychromesh or Turbo-Hydromatic transmission were available.  There were 96,708 passenger Bonnevilles produced.  Of interest was that 483 Bonnevilles were sold to car converters and at least one of those turned up as the car that the fictitious (at the time) band the “Monkees” tooled around on the television show of the same name.  Oh, you might have heard of the guy that bought at least one of the Bonnevilles and turned it into the this cool car – George Barris!!

MonkeeMobile

MonkeeMobile

According to the for sales sign this Bonneville is powered by the 400 CID topped with a 4bbl carb which would put this between 333 HP and 350 HP.  The transmission is the 400 Turbo-Hydromatic.

I love the interior  of this factory air car!!!

1967PontiacBonne-4

Love the linear gauges!! Is that a factory 8 Track!?!?!!! Come on that is SO COOL!!!!  Options list I found doesn’t show this as an option.

1967PontiacBonne-6

Cloth seats and look at all the room!!! Love the large center speaker and it has the front bench seats with the pull down arm rest. It looks as it should!!!

 

Of course I’m at the grocery store and no time to hang around and wait for the owner to show up.

As a side note I don’t know this car nor the owner.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

I don't really need a Lambo....but.....

 

Jason Horn’s 1969 Pontiac GTO!!

I was contacted by one of my followers on Twitter (@CarRestoration), I follow him as well (love a nice GTO) Jason Horn of Beattyville, KY.

He is currently heal up from an injury but he provided a link to what is a monster power plant that he’s build for his 1969 GTO rebuild.

Check out this how this mild-mannered 375 wants to jump right out off its motor mounts!!

 

 

Here’s why: It is a Butler performance stroked factory 375 that is now a 474.
Jason is looking at 650 – 700 HP and he’s connecting that up to TKO 5 speed!!!!

This is his 28th Pontiac engine rebuild.

Rest that injury Jason and drop us a note when you are back at the project.

Best of luck
Tim Sweet

1969 gto

Lingenfelter Brings Back Trans Am SEMA 2012 – Hot Rod Magazine Blog

I really like this one!!!!

 

Lingenfelter Brings Back Trans Am SEMA 2012 – Hot Rod Magazine Blog.

2012_Ligenfelter_Trans_Am_

Pontiac is back… Well kind of. This is Lingenfelter’s Pontiac Trans Am based off of a 5th-Gen Camaro. It’s a turn-key package Lingenfelter introduced at the 2012 SEMA show.  Mike Copeland, who used to head special projects for GM and built previous HOT ROD project cars, said the only thing left is to sell them.

The Trans Ams will be offered in three price point packages that can be expanded upon or ditched for an entirely custom order.  The base model is the $40,000 package which includes exterior work and cat-back exhaust. Package two is $69,000 and includes exterior, interior, paint job, and wheels. The top of the line package, what you see here, includes: exterior, paint, interior, Brembo brakes, full exhaust, and a 455ci V8. Lingenfelter starts with an RHS block and builds a custom 455ci with LSX heads and 655hp to the flywheel. The cars are built to order and don’t include the Camaro (they will buy one for you if you can’t show up with your own).

In 2009 Lingenfelter built four prototypes and thrashed on them for several years tweaking them before production was ready. The body kits were designed and now built by Lingenfelter. The car has specially designed wheels built by Forgeline and no, you can’t buy them, they will only be offered on the Lingenfelter Trans Am.

2012 Trans Am 455 Ligenfelter 650x433 image
Read more: http://blogs.hotrod.com/lingenfelter-brings-back-trans-am-sema-2012-39685.html#ixzz2BajfisUW

 

Auto Factoids for the Week of September 9, 2012

Here are you Auto Factoids for the week.

Sept. 9, 1935 –  Studebaker ships its first order of cars (163) exports  to New York via the Pennsylvanian RR, final destination?   London, England.

photo

Sept 10, 1942 – Gas rationing began to help the war effort.

Three year and three days later, Sept. 13, 1945 Pontiac started making cars again after WWII.

1945  Pontiac  Silver  Streaks

Then on Sept 14, 1899, Henry H. Bliss was the first individual to be killed in a car accident.  He stepped from street car (trolley) and was struck by an electric taxi and died of his injuries the next morning.

September 15, 1881 in Milan, Italy, Ettore Bugatti was born.

Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance 2003
1908 Bugatti Runabout

Thanks for reading

Tim

Demise of Olds – What Happened to GM?

Often a comment sparks an entire blog entry.  Nothing gets me going more than a discussion about US auto makers, especially if I can lay out my thoughts about “what’s happened to (insert brand here)”.

In a comment to my Auto Factoids for the Week of Aug 19, 2012 (http://wp.me/pKHNM-1fG) Bill wrote:

“If I were in charge of GM, I would not have left Oldsmobile for death. I liked the idea of ‘Saturn-izing’ Olds into a Lexus level car. There might have been only one, or two models under the Olds badge, but I would not have left the world’s oldest car company for dead.

Oldsmobile was GM’s ‘experimental’ division both in terms of engineering and product marketing. Many automotive firsts such as automatic transmission (Hydramatic), OHV V8s, and even the ‘self winding’ car clock……….Which brings me to the time I find myself saying in many of my comments in your BLOG:
“What happend to GM????””

I’ve mentioned this before,  it never really made any sense to me why you would have so many divisions in a car company as GM did. Some say, it was to offer different levels of options that were affordable on up to expensive.  But lets take the Chevrolet for instance. At one time they had the Biscayne, Belair, Impala and Caprice (and I think that was the correct order from lowest optioned to the highest) as option levels and pricing to reach everyone. This doesn’t seem too bad. But now add in  the other divisions with Chevy being the lowest, then there’s Pontiac, Buick, Olds, and Caddy and I think that would be the correct order for options and pricing as well.  A further break down in what as suppose to be different classes of automobile for different classes of society was the norm for those divisions as well.  For example the Tempest and La Mans, GTO were basically  the same car with different options.

I understand brand/model loyalty, especially at the initial merging/acquisition of a brand, but at some point that stopped being the only valid reason for keeping them separate.  By the time the ’70s and ’80s rolled around they all started looking the same.  For example take the Chevy Monte Carlo for 1978 and compare with the Buick and Olds of the same year:

78 Buick Regal

78 Chevy Monte Carlo

1978 Olds Cutlass

Minus the big tires on the Olds, tell me why I should purchase one over the other or purchase one at all (beside the fact they were fairly ugly)?

Frankly, I would have kept Pontiac over Olds any day but then again the difference between a Camaro and a Firebird in 2000 wasn’t much -but they are both gone now.

2000 Firebird

2000 Camaro

There just wasn’t much different.  They diluted the brand and it became impossible to find any major differences – unless you were a gear head and most consumers were not.

The necessity to cut cost and share parts made it nearly mandatory to have them all made from the same cookie cutter.

Now don’t get me started on the purchase of oversea brands and becoming a finance/mortgage company to defray cost.  (Did you know that at one time GM did more business in home/real estate loans then they did with their core car brands?

I rest my case.

 

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Car Production Numbers. They Made How Many? 1946

Fresh out of WWII the America car industry was facing the challenge of converting back to peace time auto production.  This as a huge task and the pressure was on, because if the average American owned a car there was a good change (50%) that it was 9 years old or older and needed replacing.   Materials were still in short supply, money wasn’t and to ensure that stayed the case most of the car company merely refreshed their 1942 cars.  Toss in labor issue and you can understand how tough the  situations was.

Ford lead the 17 manufacturers that year with 468,022 units produced. Chevy followed second with 398,028 cars. The others followed as such:

Plymouth – 264,660        Dodge – 163,490

Buick – 153, 627                Pontiac – 137,640

Olds – 117,623                    Nash – 94, 000

Hudson – 91,029               Mercury – 86,608

Chrysler – 83,310              DeSoto – 66,900

Packard – 30, 793             Caddy – 29,214

Studebaker – 19,275         Lincoln – 16,465

Corsley – 4, 99

1946 Crosely….not much to look at for sure but it did sport a 4 cylinder power plant.

I’m betting they meant to build this:

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Gorgeous ˜Wood Vehicles 1948 – Part III

Continuing with this series we’ll look at what Pontiac offered up in 1948 as a woody.

In a previous blog entry (Project Pontiac 1949 Silver Streak Delivery Van http://wp.me/pKHNM-Bx) I gave you a look at a Silver Streak owned by a co-worker.

1949 Silver Streak

Well one year earlier Pontiac offered the Silver Streak as a woody.

Side view...love the big fenders.

That is a lot of wood on that woody.

These were low production cars with most being build on the 6 cylinder chassis.

1948 Pontiac 6 cylinder power plant

 

These were the most commonly used power plants mated with an Automatic Hydra-Matic transmission.  It spec’d out as follows:

Cubic Inch         Horse power                   1bbl carb

239.2 93 (68.45) @ 3400 Carter WA-1 (1)

A very limited  were built with 8 cylinders engines.  Interesting enough these 8 cylinders were called “Silver Steak”.  It boosted the specs:

Cubic Inch                             Horse power                         2 bbl carb

248.9 cu in (4,079 cc) 108.00 (79.5) @ 3700 Carter WCD 630 (2)

Total Pontiac production for that year was only  333,957 cars.

 

Thanks for reading.

Tim

 

Gorgeous ˜Wood Vehicles 1948 – Part II

In this part we are picking up with Chrysler.

For 1948 Chrysler had the Town and Country (yes…even way back then) model with wood panels, it even came in a woody-vert (vert short for convertible).

It also came in a coupe/sedan.

Love the roof rack!!!

The wooden frame was white ash (adding structural rigidity to the doors and deck lid), fitted with interlocking miters.  Mahogany veneer plywood filled the spaces within the frames.

Now that is craftsmanship!!!!

The engine was the Spitfire Straight Eight with 323.5 cubic-inch displacement and 135 horsepower coupled to a fluid drive transmission.

135 HP

The convertible was the most favored of the Town and Country line with 8,368 sold. In 1948, the price tag showed $3,395.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Parts Car or Daily Driver

This pic came from over on Autoholics.com.   Good…reef!!!!  

Some tires and a couple headlights and we are good to go!!!  Look at that upholstery!!!

Thanks for reading.

Tim

 

Car Production Numbers. They Made How Many? 1926

Are you like me and like numbers and history?

Here are some numbers for car production for 1996.

At the number one spot was Ford with 1,426,612 followed by:

Chevy                    547,724

Buick                     266,753

Dodge                   265,000

Hudson/Essex   227,508

Willys-Overland/Whippet       182,000

Chrysler              135,520

Pontiac/Oakland     133,604

Ford was really knocking out some cars.

Here is a 1926 Willys-Overland Whippet

 

1926 Essex

 

In 1926 GM purchased all the shares of Fisher Body Company from the Fisher brothers and build a new building in 1927.

1926 was the first year for Pontiac, is sported a 40 bhp, 187 CID L-head 6.

Thanks for reading

Tim