While GM has a well-deserved reputation for building mechanically ordinary V8 powered, live rear axle body-on-frame cars, they deserve more recognition for their innovative phase in the 1960s, where they really pushed some engineering boundaries to market some cars that should be truly interesting to the automotive enginerds among you. That’s how Chevrolet ended up with a rear-engine, flat-6 powered compact, and Pontiac sold a compact car powered by a straight 4 or aluminum V8 running through a torque shaft to a rear transaxle. Unfortunately, these haven’t survived in the same numbers as their full-size siblings, in spite of handsome styling and technological advancement – they’re probably in some purgatory between the big cars and 4-cylinder European imports, destined to be ignored by both American and European car fans. Check out this 1962 Pontiac Tempest convertible for sale for $3500 in Portland, OR.
Posts Tagged ‘pontiac’
The Un-Corvair – 1962 Pontiac Tempest Convertible
June 5, 2015Goat’s Big Brother – 1964 Pontiac Grand Prix
April 7, 2014If you like the styling of post-war European cars, you definitely owe it to yourself to take a closer look at American cars of the 1960s. Their simple, clean styling is very mid-century modern, in stark contrast to the garish designs of the 1950s and many of the dated and/or cliched designs of the 1970s. Among the design icons of that period, people might quickly come up with a list including the Lincoln Continental, Buick Riviera, and Oldsmobile Toronado (and get angry with you for leaving out the Mustang and the Impala, which, while successful cars in their own right, were not design icons). In that shortlist, however, they’d be forgetting Pontiac’s Grand Prix, which had equal measures of innovation and style. Check out this 1964 Pontiac Grand Prix, for sale for $3000 in Jay, FL (just north of Pensacola).
Rusty But Trusty on the Street – BMW 2002tii, Jaguar XJ6, Pontiac Catalina, Datsun 2000, and Mercedes 280SL
April 1, 2014Time for more catching up on the local sights. First off is an early-morning sighting of a BMW 2002tii the way we like them – daily driven and a little crispy around the edges. This would probably horrify the local BMWCCA show crowd – after all, no amount of Q-tips will clean the dirt out of the nooks and crannies on this one – but it’s great to see someone actually using their 2002 – a tii no less – as intended. This looks to be the Agave green color, and aside from the rust, it looks really straight and complete, down to the steel tii wheels with hubcaps. This has been a California car since at least the early 1980s, judging by the sunrise plates.


