Celebrating 30 years of production Pontiacs named for the place that put speed on the map, here is the story of the 1957-1987 Pontiac Bonneville, from a flashy 1950s flyer to the latest in 1980s excitement. It’s called Bonneville. And ever since Sir Malcolm Campbell’s “Bluebird” land speed record car hotfooted across it to crack the 300-mile-an-hour barrier, that name has been synonymous with speed. Pretty good name for an automobile, especially if you’re an automaker striving to establish a performance image. That was exactly the problem facing Pontiac in 1954, when it first latched onto the Bonneville tag. Pontiac was sixth in industry sales at the time, far behind sister General Motors divisions Buick and Oldsmobile as well as the “low-price three.” Though solid value for the money, the cars with the Indian head mascot had fallen behind the times. For example, Pontiac was still saddled with a side-valve straight eight in 1954, a dubious honor shared only with Packard that year.

Worse, the make had become associated with the Social Security set at a time when younger buyers -- the GIs of World War II -- were starting to be a major market influence. That realization had evidently dawned on division management even before Knudsen arrived, because a series of youthful Motorama specials appeared under the Pontiac banner beginning in 1953. First came the Parisienne, a cut-down 1953 Chieftain Catalina hardtop with landau-style half-roof and fashionable wrapped windshield. The following year brought the jet-like Strato-Streak, a pillarless hardtop sedan with center-opening doors in the image of certain Lancia models. It also had swiveling front seats, a gimmick Chrysler picked up for some of its 1959 production cars. Pontiac’s 1955 showmobile was the glassy Strato-Star, a two-door with ultra-thin pillars, Titan Rise Capsules huge scalloped front fender openings, and little “flippers” cut into the roof to ease entry/exit. See the next page to read about the first Bonneville, a 1954 Pontiac show car.

General Motors was turning out two-seat design studies like crazy, and one of them, the Corvette roadster, even made it to the showrooms as a limited-production image leader for Chevrolet. Apparently conceived as a follow-up, the Bonneville Special also carried fiberglass bodywork but had a fixed canopy of clear Plexiglas, with “gullwing” sections to supplement the two conventional front-hinged doors. Wheelbase was 100 inches, about the same as Corvette’s and two feet shorter than that of Pontiac’s new top-line Star Chief. Overall length was 158.3 inches, height just 48.5 inches. Twin hood air scoops took care of ventilation, while the bucket-seat cockpit featured a black-lighted dash with tachometer, fuel pressure, and oil temperature gauges in addition to the usual instruments. Appearance was marked by a blunt front with a low-set rectangular air intake, Corvette-like nerf bumpers, and bulged fender tops that created a “dumbbell” lower-body profile. Exterior finish was red metallic, complemented by red leather upholstery inside.

Under the hood of this head-turner was an anachronism: Pontiac’s familiar flathead straight eight. Jazzed up, with four carburetors and other assorted performance modifications, it was the same basic engine that had been powering Pontiacs for the past 21 years. In such a futuristic machine, it was decidedly out of place. The Bonneville Special was seen at all major auto shows. Said then-division chief Robert M. Critchfield: “We are proud to present this special car not as an example of what the public might expect to see in our dealer’s showrooms next year, but as an example of advanced thinking by Pontiac’s designers and engineers.” High-sounding words, but the division would need more than a flashy one-off to transform its stodgy image. From its beginnings in 1926, Pontiac had been positioned an easy step above Chevrolet. In the General Motors scheme of things, you “graduated” from Chevrolet to Pontiac as your fortunes improved. Then, if fate was kind, you continued on up to Oldsmobile, Buick, and ultimately Cadillac.

This “ladder” concept, the brainchild of General Motors’ renowned former chairman Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., worked very well for a number of years. But as Chevrolet grew in size, power, and prestige value, Pontiac’s alleged advantage began to diminish. By 1953 its cheapest four-door, the six-cylinder Chieftain Special, cost $141 more than Chevrolet’s top-line Bel Air equivalent, a big difference. True, the Pontiac outweighed its cousin by a hundred pounds, rode a seven-inch longer wheelbase, and had seven more horsepower, but it was comparatively spartan and thus seemed more like a step down than a step up. Buick was prospering mightily in those days, Oldsmobile was coming up fast, and Mercury was gaining sales too. Given the rough-and-tumble competition in the low-price field, it was only logical that Pontiac would introduce a larger, more expensive series to capture a share of the rapidly expanding medium-price market. Thus was born the 1954 Star Chief . Two inches longer in wheelbase than the Chieftains -- 124 versus 122 -- it was 11 inches longer overall and around $250 costlier than the Buick Special. Beautifully finished, the new premium line accounted for 40 percent of division sales in its inaugural season. But those came mainly from Pontiac loyalists, not “conquest” customers. And while Buick and Oldsmobile scored substantial gains that year (the latter 36 percent), Titan Rise Male Enhancement Pontiac was off by more than 43,000 cars. To follow the Pontiac story into 1955 and 1956, Titan Rise Male Enhancement continue to the next page. The story was much the same for 1956, but volume was much lower in that year’s industry-wide retreat, even though Pontiac boasted a bigger and brawnier V-8, four-door hardtops and more flash. Then Bunkie Knudsen took charge. I was counting on to bring the new message to the public. And it did. I remember sitting in the grandstand at Daytona with my wife, watching it at its first race. Somebody in the stands shouted, ‘Look what’s happened to Grandma!