We remember Pontiac’s eight greatest ideas
GM announced the brand’s demise on this day, in 2009
On April 27, 2009, GM announced it was going to axe the Pontiac brand. Named after an Ottawa chief, the brand can trace its roots to 1926 when it was an upscale alternative to the basic Chevrolet offerings. The brand rose to become the sportiest and arguably most stylish of GM’s many divisions, but then suffered a slow death-from-a-thousand-cuts demise from literally decades of selling half-hearted rebadge jobs. But along the way, the automaker brought many pioneering ideas to the automotive world. In honour of the eight years they’ve been absent, here are Pontiac’s eight greatest ideas (in chronological order).
The fuel-injected 1958 Pontiac Bonneville
Here’s a list of the fuel-injected passenger cars you could buy in 1958: Chevrolet Corvette, Chevrolet Impala, Mercedes-Benz 300 SL and Pontiac Bonneville. Among all of those, the Bonneville was the most powerful. Its 370cubic inch (6.1-L) V8 was good for an impressive 310 horsepower. Of course, it had a lot more chrome and mass to move around than the 300 SL or Corvette, but it was an impressive powerhouse nonetheless. The fuel injection system itself was a completely mechanical unit with no electronic controls, and it was extremely complex and finicky. Because of this, drivability wasn’t as good as the less powerful, carbureted versions, and the option was dropped after just one year.
Eight Lug wheels
DrumbrakeswerethenormforbigAmerican cars in the 1960s but the issue of the time was cooling. The drums, usually made of steel, would get blazingly hot and the steel wheel with a decorative chrome hubcap hardly provided any airflow to cool the 20-pound chunk of iron. Pontiac came up with a beautiful solution in the form of the integrated brake drum/ wheel, called the Eight Lug. The big drum itself was cast from aluminum with an iron liner for the brake shoes to slide on; aluminum is lighter than steel and has superior heat dissipation properties. But here’s where Pontiac got really creative: The drum itself is the wheel. The fins you see on the wheel are the actual brake-drum cooling fins. A steel hoop that actually holds the tire was bolted to the drum; the hoop is attached to the drum with eight chrome lug nuts, lending it the name. The wheels were used on full-size Pontiacs from 1960 to 1968.
Rear-mounted transaxle
In the days before Nader and the EPA, GM used to take huge risks and put out cars with unheard of technology, seemingly just for the hell of it. One of these cases was the transmission used in the 1962 Pontiac Tempest compact car. Like every other American car of the era, it was frontengined and rear-drive. But unlike any other car made until the Porsche 944, it had its transmission (properly called a transaxle, in this instance) in the back of the car behind the rear wheels. Putting the heavy engine on one end and the heavy transaxle on the other gave the Tempest a near perfect 50:50 weight distribution. The transaxle could be configured as a three- or four-speed manual, or an automatic. The other benefit was that the design allowed the car to have no transmission hump at all up front. The engine and transaxle were linked by a long, flexible cable, called a “rope drive.”
The half V8 slant-four
One day some Pontiac engineers were (probably) chatting around the water cooler trying to figure out how to make an efficient, lightweight engine for the new 1962 Tempest. One likely said to the other, “Why don’t we just chop a V8 in half?” So they did. Pontiac literally removed the left cylinder bank of its 389-cubic inch (6.4-L) V8 to make a 195-cubic inch (3.2-L) in-line four. Predictably, this massive, improvised four-cylinder had major vibration issues that were only partially quelled by a heavily counterweighted crankshaft. But the little four was lighter than a V8 or in-line six, and was able to be produced on the V8 assembly line, saving huge amounts of production costs. The engines proved to be reliable, if somewhat agricultural in nature. It was a shaky start (ha! get it?) to the modern American in-line four, but now they’re the norm in compact cars.
The muscle car
With the 1964 GTO, Pontiac created the American muscle car. Yes, I know about the 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket 88, but the GTO had what teenagers wanted and what the 88 never had: panache and sex appeal. The Ford Mustang was also introduced in 1964, albeit halfway through the year, but for all its sporty looks, it was no faster than the Ford Falcon it was based on and could bring only 289 cubic inches to the table. The GTO, John Z. DeLorean’s brainchild, squashed that with a 389-cubic inch (6.4-L) V8 and available triple-carburetors. It was affordable, it looked great and, most importantly, it was fast. Pontiac swiped the GTO name from the Ferrari 250 GTO of 1962, and a highly imaginative road test between the two even said the Pontiac was faster (it wasn’t). Soon, the Mustang grew to offer big-block power and the Chevelle became more sporty, all to compete with the GTO. There have been faster muscle cars since, but the GTO was the first.
The OHC Six
The vast majority of engines in 1966 were OHV pushrod designs. On exotic vehicles, such as Ferrari V12s or Jaguar E-Types, you might find overhead cams, but they were just unheard of in American cars. That was, until Pontiac released its simply named OHC Six in 1966. The engine was available in 230cubic inch (3.8-L) or 250-cubic inch (4.1-L) versions and with a one-, two- or four-barrel carburetor. The pioneering component of the OHC Six was its timing belt. Every OHC engine up to that point (except for the tiny German Glas brand) had used a timing chain to link the crank at the bottom of the engine to the cam(s) at the top. Pontiac designed a fibreglass-reinforced belt that was designed to last for the life of the engine. And it was also designed so that if a belt did break, the valves wouldn’t meet the pistons and engine damage would be avoided. The OHC Six was a brilliant design; the Sprint version made 215 horsepower. But gas was cheap in the 1960s and few saw the virtues of a lighter, more fuel-efficient six when a boisterous V8 could be bought for only slightly more money.
The Endura bumper
Take a glance at a 1968 GTO and you might see that it’s lacking something that most every other classic car has: a chrome bumper. That’s because the minds at Pontiac were among the first to put a flexible rubber bumper on a car. Yeah, rubber bumperettes had been around since the 1950s, but they weren’t integrated into the bodywork and colour-matched like the Pontiac. The rubber bumper, dubbed the Endura bumper, was energy-absorbing and returned to its natural shape even after being whacked with a crowbar by DeLorean himself. Rubber bumpers would become the norm in the following years, right up until the five-mph bumper laws were loosened and replaced with the 2.5-mph bumper laws we still have today.
The Turbo Trans Am
The 1970s were nothing short of disastrous for performance-car lovers. Unleaded gas, impact bumpers, catalytic converters, plus the skyrocketing price of gasoline and insurance, sucked the life out of fast cars. Pontiac’s Firebird soldiered on with big-block 400 power long after others had wimped out, but by 1980 there was nothing left they could do. The 400 was gone, and Pontiac needed a replacement. What it did was design an extremely sturdy, 301-cubic inch (4.9-L) V8 block with extra webbing for strength, and fit it with a Garrett turbocharger making nine pounds of boost; it was rated at a conservative 210 horsepower and 340 pound-feet of torque. For comparison, the outgoing 400cubic inch (6.6-L) V8 made 220 hp and 340 lb-ft of torque. It matched the old 400’s output with 100 fewer cubic inches.
The turbo engine was only offered in 1980 and ’81; in 1982 the Firebird and all other Pontiac models went to Chevrolet engines as part of a shift that gave Pontiac less and less engineering input into its vehicles. Pontiac existed for decades afterward, but it never again had the same autonomy from the GM mother ship. The automaker went on to make the Solstice, G8 and the revamped GTO, but none were sales successes. And more poignantly, Pontiac never again innovated or deviated from the engineering norm like it did in the pre-1981 days. After years of neglect, the brand finally folded.