The Pontiac automobile brand grew from the Oakland Motor Car Company, which was founded in 1907 and based in Pontiac, Michigan. By 1909, Oakland was part of General Motors, and by 1931, the Oakland moniker was dropped entirely.
The first Pontiac was the Pontiac 6-27, which was later advertised as the Pontiac Six or Big Six. Whatever it was called, the first model arrived in 1926 and was offered as a two-door coupe or four-door sedan. These six-cylinder automobiles were deliberately priced lower than competing
Chevrolets and Buicks, which allowed GM to appeal to customers with different levels of income.
As the Great Depression deepened, Pontiacs were manufactured with Chevrolets to cut costs. By 1932, the Pontiac being assembled by Chevy employees was the Model 302, which featured a powerful V8 engine. A year later, that engine was replaced by a new straight-eight engine, with a body borrowed from Chevrolet (the Master). In 1935, the Straight Eight was adorned with a stripe of chrome that went from the
hood ornament to the windshield. Variations of these Silver Streaks, as they were known, were produced until the end of the 1950s, with later models such as the Chieftain Catalina and the Canadian-manufactured Laurentian dividing the single streak into a parallel pair.
Just before
World War II, Pontiac designers embraced Streamline Moderne with a line of Torpedo models, which came in top-of-the-line Custom, mid-priced Streamline, and base DeLuxe bodies and trims. After the war, the Torpedo got minor cosmetic upgrades to its hood ornament, grill, and trunk, which was given a stylish, fastback sweep.
For many car collectors and fans of vintage Pontiacs, the fun really started in the 1950s. In 1955, Pontiac released a version of the
Chevy Nomad station wagon, which it sold as the Safari. That was followed, in 1957, by the Bonneville, which was named after the salt flats in Utah where many a land-speed record had been set—in 1959,
Triumph named a...
The Pontiac automobile brand grew from the Oakland Motor Car Company, which was founded in 1907 and based in Pontiac, Michigan. By 1909, Oakland was part of General Motors, and by 1931, the Oakland moniker was dropped entirely.
The first Pontiac was the Pontiac 6-27, which was later advertised as the Pontiac Six or Big Six. Whatever it was called, the first model arrived in 1926 and was offered as a two-door coupe or four-door sedan. These six-cylinder automobiles were deliberately priced lower than competing
Chevrolets and Buicks, which allowed GM to appeal to customers with different levels of income.
As the Great Depression deepened, Pontiacs were manufactured with Chevrolets to cut costs. By 1932, the Pontiac being assembled by Chevy employees was the Model 302, which featured a powerful V8 engine. A year later, that engine was replaced by a new straight-eight engine, with a body borrowed from Chevrolet (the Master). In 1935, the Straight Eight was adorned with a stripe of chrome that went from the
hood ornament to the windshield. Variations of these Silver Streaks, as they were known, were produced until the end of the 1950s, with later models such as the Chieftain Catalina and the Canadian-manufactured Laurentian dividing the single streak into a parallel pair.
Just before
World War II, Pontiac designers embraced Streamline Moderne with a line of Torpedo models, which came in top-of-the-line Custom, mid-priced Streamline, and base DeLuxe bodies and trims. After the war, the Torpedo got minor cosmetic upgrades to its hood ornament, grill, and trunk, which was given a stylish, fastback sweep.
For many car collectors and fans of vintage Pontiacs, the fun really started in the 1950s. In 1955, Pontiac released a version of the
Chevy Nomad station wagon, which it sold as the Safari. That was followed, in 1957, by the Bonneville, which was named after the salt flats in Utah where many a land-speed record had been set—in 1959,
Triumph named a motorcycle after Bonneville for the same reason. The Bonneville was gorgeous in its two-tone paint job, and by 1958, its PK and PM V8s generated 315 and 330 horsepower respectively. This was definitely not your grandfather's or grandmother's Pontiac.
In 1959, Pontiac went wide when it pushed the track, or distance between the left and right front or back wheels, by four inches. These new Wide Track vehicles often featured split grilles, giving the headlamps on some Pontiacs the appearance of eyeballs. By the 1960s, Pontiac also introduced a number of "compacts," including the Tempest, which was small enough to be pulled down the highway by a 4-cylinder engine. Amid this, Pontiac also introduced larger performance cars such as the LeMans and the Grand Prix, whose names were references to the fact that Pontiac was now a force to be reckoned with on the race track.
One of Pontiac's senior engineers, John DeLorean, would take this impulse for performance cars that appealed to younger drivers to its logical conclusion when, in 1964, he stuffed a V8 designed for the Pontiac Bonneville into the smaller Tempest. The resulting Pontiac GTO is today considered by many to be the first muscle car, defined, basically, as a relatively small and light car with a big engine. The larger engine was offered as a $295 option—in its first year, Pontiac sold more that 30,000 of these powerful packages. Although the 1964 was the first GTO, many collectors agree that the GTOs produced between 1966 and 1969 were muscle-car perfection.
If the GTO was Pontiac's muscle car of the 1960s, the Firebird wore that crown in the 1970s and '80s. First sold to the public in 1967 as GM's answer to the
Ford Mustang, the Firebird was produced as both a hardtop and a convertible, only a fraction of which were initially available in a Trans Am trim. By the 1970s, the Firebird would feature a bird, wings spread, painted on its hood, a feature that
Hollywood found irresistible: Firebirds were driven on the small and big screens by James Garner ("The Rockford Files"), Burt Reynolds ("Smokey and the Bandit"), and David Hasselhoff ("Night Rider").
