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Celebrating Pontiac’s 100th Anniversary (Tim Dye) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Welcome to Automotive History Live, where the stories drive us.
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From the grand lawns of Concours to the icons that shape the road
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ahead, we celebrate the machines, the makers, and the moments
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that define automotive history.
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Our next presentation celebrates a milestone for one of America's
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most influential marks.
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Tim Dye will take us back to the origins of Pontiac as we
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mark its 100th anniversary.
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Tim's talk will explore the events inside General Motors that led to
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Pontiac's introduction in 1926, including the lesser-known decisions,
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personalities, and turning points that shaped the brand's identity.
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He'll highlight Pontiac's impact on the industry, its evolution over the decades,
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and the broader legacy it left behind.
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And in the modern era, Tim brings one especially compelling
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story, how he tracked down the very last Pontiac ever built.
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So please welcome Tim Dye as we celebrate a century of Pontiac history.
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Tim.
1:02
Thanks for coming So yeah, 100 years this year.
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We just finished up with the Pontiac National Convention in
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Pontiac, Michigan, which was the largest ever POCI convention.
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I didn't get to enjoy it very much, which was the sad part,
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but we'll get started here.
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So the history of the Pontiac begins with the Pontiac Buggy Company in 1893.
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It was started by Edward Murphy, and this is the Pontiac Buggy Company on
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Oakland Avenue in Pontiac, Michigan.
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This is one of my Pontiac buggies that my brother and I restored.
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They had a large range of different carriages and buggies and so forth.
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This is a 1907 brochure and what the tag looks like on the
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back of one of the buggies.
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And then this is another buggy I have.
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This one is an all original.
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There's no VIN number on a buggy, and you can't really date them very much.
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There's only two ways to kind of give a little date to them.
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One of them is that pre-1900s have staggered spokes, but after
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1900, they're all in a row.
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And then pre-1900 have a clamp on for the shafts, and the post-1900 have
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pin system to hold the shafts on.
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So that's about the only way to date them.
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They used images of Chief Pontiac in most of the Pontiac buggy advertisements
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and brochures and so forth.
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Anything named Pontiac is after Chief Pontiac.
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So he was born, we think, in 1720 and killed in 1769.
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He was a very influential Native American leader in North America.
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So, and there's a lot of things named after him, a lot.
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So this is the only known Pontiac sleigh that exists.
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This is on display at the Pontiac Museum in Pontiac, Illinois.
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We're going to restore this in the near future, but it's the only one.
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So there was 16 different carriage and buggy manufacturers in
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Pontiac, Michigan at one time.
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So it was a big industry there.
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And so it was just natural to move on to the autos.
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But here's the front of that building I just showed you a picture
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of, the Pontiac Buggy Company.
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Right there is Oakland Avenue.
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This is the Dunlop Buggy Company.
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This is the Crescent Buggy Company, all based on the railroad tracks
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that went, ran right through them.
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It was this building where the Oakland car got its beginning.
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In 1907, Edward Murphy started the Oakland Motor Car Company.
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It was started in that building.
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They took about three of the cars to the, the auto show that year, and
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that's about all they made in '07.
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'08 is when they got more serious about it.
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So here's a picture of the same building with the Oakland Motor Car
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Company name on the front of it.
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And again, the railroad tracks were very essential.
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And then here's loading up completed Oaklands onto train cars to ship them out.
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I show these because there's not that many pictures of the company at that time.
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And then here's a little sliver of that building you saw on the
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postcard right there In 1909, Edward Murphy unexpectedly dies.
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General Motors ends up buying the Oakland Motor Car Company, and
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the buggy went away at that time.
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And then this is Joe Stout, whose family has a long history with roots
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back to Pontiac, Michigan, actually.
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He had a Pontiac dealer in Wichita, Kansas, and this is his 1916 Oakland.
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This is the only picture I've been able to find with the old administration
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building and the new one built in 1920.
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For reference, there's the railroad track, and this is Oakland Avenue
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going right by in front of it.
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That building still stands today.
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You can see the building was gone over there on the right.
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The original buggy company building is gone, and they have added on to
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the end of this building, and the railroad tracks are now gone as well.
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But you can still see where they ran there 1924 was kind of a big year at Oakland.
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There was a couple of major innovations that kind of, uh, that
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they were able to tout that year.
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One of them was the True Blue Travelers that they did.
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They sent out six 24 Oaklands across the country to run predetermined routes.
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But one of the new things was, and this was a big one for the auto industry, the
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24 Oaklands were the first cars in the auto industry to have quick-drying paint.
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And this is how they promoted it, that you didn't even need to wash it.
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You just let it get all filthy, and then you just clean it off with a rag.
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And this is my '24 Oakland, and it's pretty much all original.
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Maybe the only one left with the original paint on it and everything.
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It's not real pretty, but it's historic, I believe.
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And then the other thing they were touting in '24 was the four-wheel brakes.
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Oakland was not the first to have it, but it was early for four-wheel brakes.
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So I believe this is in San Francisco, and they have a '24 Oakland back here.
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Nobody at the wheel of this car, so the brakes on the '24 were holding all these
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dignitaries on the hill with both of them.
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So that was kind of a big deal.
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So when they went around the country, they demonstrated the
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brakes in various ways and paint.
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That was the big deal that year.
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So in '23, this was kind of GM's, where they were at.
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They had the Chevrolet at the bottom, the Buick, the Oakland, the
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Oldsmobile, and the Cadillac at the top.
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Alfred Sloan became president and chief executive officer that year,
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but things were about to change.
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So they came up with a thing called a car for every person purpose.
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There was different price breaks at which they felt that people would buy cars.
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They wanted to create cars and put in those price slots.
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So before the car came out, they were kind of teasing people with these ads.
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There was no name on the ad. They weren't sharing the name with you yet.
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This would have been late in twen- in, in 1925.
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And so Alfred Sloan said, "General Motors was convinced that there is a,
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an enormous potential market for a car of quality. The Pontiac is a quality
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product." At a price between the Chevrolet and the Oldsmobile, there are many who
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require more than the four-cylinder Chevrolet affords, yet do not need what
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the Oldsmobile six-cylinder offers.
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Therefore, the Pontiac Six is a logical step toward General Motors' goal of
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building a car for every person purpose.
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Pontiac was the first of the companion cars that GM did.
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And then this is a great photo of the introduction of the Pontiac
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in New York City at the auto show, first week of January 1926.
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And this is Alfred Sloan, and this is Alfred Clancy, who was general manager
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of the Oakland Motor Car Company.
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So it was the Oakland Motor Car Company making Pontiacs e- early on.
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And then they had Algonquin Indians there, which Chief Pontiac was
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chief of the Ottawa, which was a family of the Algonquin Indians.
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Unlike today, they were proud about having the car named after him.
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So this is one of the initial advertisements for the Pontiac.
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It was offered at $825, and it had some things that we take for
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granted today, like crank-up windows.
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It was an enclosed car, which a lot of cars were open at that time.
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High and low beam headlights, 1926, standard on a Pontiac.
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The closed body, the six-cylinder engine.
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A lot of cars still had four cylinders at that time.
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So for a fairly low-priced car, it had a lot of features that people liked.
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I just learned not long ago that this is Mrs. Clancy, and she is
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christening the first Pontiac on the steps of that administration building
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I showed you that was built in 1920.
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Now, this is during Prohibition, so how'd she get the bottle?
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I don't know.
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And then this is right after she, uh, busted the bottle over the hood ornament.
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So an interesting thing, like I said, this just came up not long ago.
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So I got a letter from a gentleman whose father was a car collector in Pontiac,
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Michigan, a doctor and a collector.
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He collected a lot of early Pontiac transportation.
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His uncle was an executive at Oakland at this time.
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So Glancy liked the new hood ornament so much that he had some made and
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mounted them on a little wood base and gave them to some of his executives,
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and they put them on their desk as a paperweight or a decoration.
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So this letter I got, along with a hood ornament on one of the wood holders, said
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that right after this happened, the car was driven back around to the factory.
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He then took the hood ornament that Glancy gave him, went out and swapped
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it with the one on the car, and he kept it on his desk, and then when he
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retired to Florida, he took it with him.
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And then eventually he sent it to his nephew, the car
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collector in Pontiac, Michigan.
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When he passed, he gave it to his son, who just gave it to me a couple months ago.
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So we have the very first hood ornament off of a Pontiac.
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So here's what they look like on a car, and of course, they used the two
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tokens, and they made thousands and thousands of these little tokens and
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coins that they gave away back then.
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They're very common.
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Pontiac set a record for that time for the introduction of a new car
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at 76,742 cars sold that year, 1926.
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And then this one belonged to Don Bucher, who was the s- who started
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the Pontiac Oakland Club in 1972.
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This was his car.
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I have the original radiator shell off of this car, which is what started the club.
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He went to look for parts for his car and thought it would be nice
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if there was a group of like-minded people that he could help to find
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his parts and them parts they needed.
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So this is Monrovia Canyon in California.
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Has any, anybody ever heard of that?
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I hadn't heard of it, but this is some research I did about things that happened
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after the Pontiac was introduced.
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Anyway, there was supposedly a secret meeting between about 14 different
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chiefs and Glancy in the woods of this park in 1926, and at this
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time they named him Chief Pontiac and gave him gifts and all that.
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And I thought, "That is awesome," and how different from today.
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You know, they were so excited about this car being named
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after one of their own, right?
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Well, then it got a little cloudy and a little fuzzy because that guy
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on the left right there, his name is Chief Mad Wolf, and when I looked into
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him, his name was Wayne Abbott, which is not very much of an Indian name.
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And he worked at Seal Beach at the park there, but he was an interesting guy.
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He did wing walking on airplanes.
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He developed, he even holds a patent for World War I. He developed
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some incineraries and bombs and so forth that they used in World War
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I, which he developed for shows that he did here at the park.
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And what an interesting character.
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Well, he fell on hard times.
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Well, he had been in some movies and some different things as Chief Mad Wolf.
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But Glancy liked him so much from that day in the park there that he
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hired him to promote the Pontiac.
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So they gave him a Pontiac every year.
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He drove it around, dressed up as Chief Mad Wolf.
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I get the idea he's a lot like Iron Eyes Cody, who lived like an Indian,
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dressed like an Indian, wrote Indian books, but was full-blooded Italian.
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I kinda got the idea Wayne was kinda like that, so And then while he was in
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California, Glancy attended a Pontiac meeting of the Oakland and Pontiac
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dealers on February 23rd, 1926, and this is the only image of Chief Pontiac you
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will ever see of him wearing a sombrero.
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So it's right here.
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And this is the program from that dinner.
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Now I'm getting off track here a little bit, but this is fun stuff.
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So this is a guy that changed his name to Chief Pontiac, and he lived
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in Farmington Hills, Michigan, and he had a brick and mortar building, and
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he sold Indian medicine to people.
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And he says, "You know, if it worked for our, you know, forefathers,
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it'll work for you," you know.
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I learned about him from eBay.
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I was looking at a Chief Pontiac book, and there was a letter inserted in
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this book, and it said Chief Pontiac at the top, and he was selling mice
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to the local hospital for tests.
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But anyway, he would entertain every year at the Florida State Fair as Chief
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Pontiac, and he was a member of the local, I don't know if it was the Elks.
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I forget what lodge he was a member of there in Pontiac, Michigan.
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And I called him up to check on him, and the guy thought I was pulling his leg.
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And he called me back in a few minutes.
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He goes, "You wouldn't believe what I'm holding in my hand.
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I'm holding the membership card for Chief Pontiac right here."
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Interesting character.
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Then retired and moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and this is his listing in the
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phone book in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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Again, I apologize.
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I got a little off track there.
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So we're getting back to the 76,000 Pontiacs that were sold in '26.
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This outgrew the facilities that Oakland had because Oakland wasn't selling
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and producing near that many cars.
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So before '26 was over, they had bought property and were breaking
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ground for a new factory, and they called it the Daylight plant
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because it had so many windows.
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So this is the plant inside.
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You'll notice on the left is all the coupes, and on
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the right is all the sedans.
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So we're going down the line.
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But this plant was built, and it got up into production very, very quickly.
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We're up to 1930, and this is what their car for every person
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purpose looked like by 1930.
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So they had the Chevrolet at the bottom.
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The Pontiac was next.
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They advertised it as a car of lower cost but with features of higher priced cars.
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Now you'll notice I told you a while ago the Pontiac was $825.
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You go, "What are you talking about?
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Now it's seven." Well, it was the Depression, and the
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prices of cars went down.
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Pontiac in '30 was cheaper than it was in '26.
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And then you have the other companion cars, the Marquette.
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Then you got the pair at the Oakland, Buick.
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The Viking was the companion to the Oldsmobile, LaSalle to the Cadillac.
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Marquette was to the Buick.
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So they had their ladder, but the Depression hit them, and it kind of
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messed up the whole plan that they had So this was my '31 Oakland Sport Coupe
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I owned for 13 years, and that would be the last year for Oakland, 1931.
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The, all '30 and '31 Oaklands had the flathead V8 that predated
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the Ford flathead by two years, and it was an interesting motor.
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So then in '35, Pontiac had some innovations.
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That was the first year for the silver streaks, which was
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on every Pontiac through 1956.
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First year that the hood ornament was that, just an ornament
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and not the radiator cap.
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First year for a solid top.
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They didn't have the technology to stamp out a solid piece of sheet
15:59
metal that big prior to 1935.
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And then the war came.
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Pontiac, of course, was very involved, had eight major assignments during the war.
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The most complicated one they built was a guided torpedo dropped from an airplane.
16:14
I can't even imagine the technology and what would've went into that to
16:17
make that work, but that was their most complicated project And then in 1951,
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they celebrated their 25th anniversary, and they were known as just a solid,
16:29
dependable, average guy car, right?
16:33
But they were running around sixth or seventh in sales in the country,
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and so GM wasn't too happy with that.
16:40
So in 1956, they hired Bunky Knudsen to be the general manager of Pontiac Motor
16:45
Division, and he made some major changes.
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But one of the best things he did was hire these two gentlemen.
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John DeLorean was named Director of Advanced Engineering, Assistant
16:56
Chief Engineer, and Pete Estes as Chief Engineer, both in 1956.
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So the '57s were pretty well already underway when Knudsen was hired, but
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the one thing he could do was take the silver streaks off of the hood.
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This was a very rare photo of a '57 with the streaks on the hood.
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The other thing he did was want to get rid of the image of Chief Pontiac.
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He wanted to do that, and that didn't happen overnight.
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As a matter of fact, the high beam indicator on a 1970 Bonneville
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is the image of Chief Pontiac.
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He hung in there for a long time after 1956.
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And then he said, "We're going racing," and everybody laughed at him.
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"What? That old man's car, we're gonna go racing with it?" Well, they won Daytona
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in 1957 with Cotton Owens driving.
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Everybody then after that knew it was on.
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And then in '59, Pontiac introduced the Wide Track, and I can tell you
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that that is more than a slogan.
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It is a wider track.
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I have a '64 Parisian Safari, a Canadian-built Pontiac, which
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is built on a Chevrolet chassis and has a Chevrolet drivetrain.
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And you can see how far the wheels are sucked in on it.
18:04
It looks kind of funny.
18:05
But that demonstrates very well how the Wide Track was a real thing.
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And this is a Bonneville, top of the line.
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And then that same year, they hired Van Kauffman and Art Fitzpatrick to do all
18:17
the illustrations for the brochures, and these guys were amazing, and they
18:22
won many awards for their illustrations.
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And then Pontiac won the first of their Motor Trend Car of the
18:29
Years for 1959 in the Wide Track.
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Back then, it was a big deal to, to win this because it was a very
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prestigious thing to win, and it meant more sales, and it meant a
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lot more promotion for your car.
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And then Knudsen was named Chief Wide Track Runner.
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And, and so They always had that connection with the Indians.
18:52
And then here's the 1959, the administration building that was
18:55
built in '20, and that's the billboard at the end with the 59 on it.
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And then the seven millionth Pontiac was sold in 1960.
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And then in '61, they introduced the Tempest, and once again won
19:07
the Motor Trend Car of the Year.
19:09
It had the transaxle, it had the engine, which was half of an eight.
19:13
They literally cut four of the cylinders off, and that way, very inexpensively,
19:18
you could introduce a new engine because it had a V8 valve cover, V8
19:22
head, V8 timing chain cover, V8 water pump, V8 oil pan, exhaust manifold.
19:28
It was all from the V8.
19:29
So very few new parts had to be created for this engine.
19:33
And the transmission was in the back, and what they call a flexible drive
19:37
shaft is a little bit of a misnomer.
19:40
It's actually a rod.
19:41
It's enclosed, and it's actually what holds the engine to the transmission.
19:46
It's in a flex tube, they call it.
19:48
But because the torque was in the back, you didn't need a big old fat drive
19:53
shaft because the torque was back here.
19:55
It wasn't up front here.
19:57
So very different, very unique.
19:59
It ended up having some problems.
20:01
It lasted for about three years, but very interesting.
20:05
This is one that I picked up for the museum out of Tulsa that's got
20:09
twenty-four thousand miles on it.
20:11
It's all original.
20:13
Big fifteen-inch wheels on the Tempest.
20:15
Kind of unusual And then this is the hundred thousandth car with
20:19
Bunky, hundred thousandth Tempest.
20:22
And then in 1961, Pete Estes became the general manager, and he just
20:27
picked up right where Bunky left off.
20:30
Pontiac became number three in sales that year, which continued all
20:34
through the 1960s, which was a pretty big deal behind Ford and Chevrolet.
20:39
They continued the racing program, and actually in 1962 and 1963, they really
20:44
dominated NASCAR and quarter-mile racing with the 421 Super Duty, which had two
20:49
four barrels on it, aluminum front end.
20:52
They dominated so much that look at this, the top six qualifiers in this
20:57
race are all Pontiacs and the pace car.
21:00
That's pretty much dominating.
21:02
I'm not making that up.
21:03
But this is something that maybe a lot of people don't know about, but maybe
21:08
Pontiac's height of racing was right here, and this is 1963 at Speedweeks at
21:13
Daytona during the Challenge Cup race.
21:16
This single Tempest was leading the field of all these Corvettes with the
21:20
new mystery motor, they called it, the 427, and the Ferraris and all the
21:25
Porsches and all the rest of them.
21:28
It literally embarrassed them.
21:30
This was the top Ferrari, and I think he was eight laps down in a 250-mile race.
21:38
So think about that.
21:39
They lapped all the Corvettes several times as well, and it
21:43
was the only Pontiac in the race.
21:45
Paul Goldsmith was driving it.
21:47
By the way, this is a '63, and they even took it a step farther
21:52
in '63 and drilled big holes in the frame to lighten it some more.
21:56
Here it is after the race, and you know what happened?
21:59
Mercedes-Benz bought the car, shipped it to Germany, dissected it to see what made
22:05
it tick, and we never heard from it again.
22:07
That's what happened to the car So Pontiac was making their living,
22:12
you've heard this saying, you know, win on Sunday, sell on Monday.
22:15
Well, Pontiac was living that big time.
22:18
And so they decided, well, we can't race anymore at the track.
22:22
We'll just take it to the street.
22:23
They introduced the GTO the very next year in '64, and GM had a ban,
22:29
a corporate ban on, there was so much horsepower per weight ratio, and this
22:34
exceeded that greatly, but they got away with it by offering it as an option.
22:39
It was a Tempest with a, you know, oh, by the way, we got this 389 Tri-Power
22:44
and a four-speed and a posi rear end, you know, that you can get in it.
22:47
And so you c- picture a young man with his dad sitting at the Pontiac dealer
22:51
with the salesman, and the salesman goes, "Yep, we got this posi rear end.
22:56
You know, it's, it's safe in the snow.
22:58
Your son won't, he won't get in a wreck 'cause he's got that posi rear
23:01
end, and it's got a four-speed and, and a Tri-Power so he can quickly get
23:06
out into traffic safely, you know?" And so that's what the salesman is
23:10
saying, and the son is thinking this.
23:12
This is what he's thinking, right?
23:15
He's gonna burn some rubber.
23:17
And Jim Wangers, who was the promoter for the GTO, said, he goes, "Yeah, we
23:21
put those Redline Uniroyal Tiger Paws on there," and he said, "They smoked
23:26
more than any other tire you could get." They were promoting that big time.
23:30
So on the dash was the GTO crest and the hood scoops on the hood.
23:35
Pontiac just couldn't do no wrong in the '60s, just one hit after the other.
23:39
So July 1, DeLorean becomes general manager.
23:43
This is him in his office at that headquarters building I showed
23:46
you on Oakland Avenue there.
23:48
And so then they come out with the overhead Cam
23:53
VI in 1966, and they had two versions of this.
23:55
One was called the Sprint, had a four barrel on it, had bigger exhaust.
23:59
But the whole key to this engine was the timing belt.
24:02
A lot of European engines, a lot of four cylinders and so forth,
24:05
had an overhead cam with a belt.
24:07
But after 20,000, 30,000 miles, the belt would break, and then that would be it.
24:11
So Pontiac concentrated on making this bulletproof belt, and that was really
24:15
the key to the success of this engine.
24:17
And so they advertised it as the six that drives like an eight.
24:21
It was in a lot of the Tempest at the time, which the Tempest got bigger.
24:25
And then in '67, the Firebird was introduced.
24:27
That engine was also in some of those in the Firebird.
24:31
And then in '68, the GTO with the new Endura front end was MotorTrend
24:36
Car of the Year once again.
24:38
First car in the auto industry not to have a chrome bumper.
24:41
Maybe you were around back then.
24:43
I was very young.
24:44
I don't remember, but how funny that would've looked to you probably.
24:47
So one of the fun things they did, and I have this in my collection, they
24:51
sent every dealer an Endura bumper kit.
24:54
And what that was was a tube with a baseball bat in it and a letter
24:57
saying how the salesman could demonstrate the new bumper on the GTO.
25:01
So imagine walking into a dealership and seeing the salesman wailing away
25:05
on the front of a new car on the showroom floor with a baseball bat.
25:09
That would get your attention, I think.
25:11
So there's John getting the Car of the Year.
25:14
So you may have seen all these pictures, but I think I got a
25:16
picture here you may not have seen.
25:18
This is Paul Hines on the right, and he's at Inland Manufacturing,
25:23
a division of General Motors who developed the nose for the '68 GTO.
25:27
And this is nose number one right here for the '68 GTO.
25:31
So I got to know Paul.
25:33
I was relaxing one evening on Facebook, and I saw this guy who
25:37
commented, and he used the word we like he had something to do with it.
25:41
So I reached out to him and it ended up, "Oh, yeah, I was the head guy on
25:46
the development of the GTO bumper." And I'm like, "Ugh," you know?
25:49
Next year I had him speaking at the convention, you know?
25:52
What a great find.
25:53
You know, there's a lot of worthless things to do on the internet,
25:55
but every once in a while you get a jewel like this, you know?
25:59
So number three, sales keep going up.
26:03
Almost to the point in '66 where GM was afraid the government was gonna step
26:07
in and break them up as a monopoly.
26:09
'Cause Chevrolet was at the top, Pontiac was number three.
26:12
Couple of the other divisions were in, you know, the top 10 as well.
26:16
So anyway, so we need a new administration building that's equal to our success.
26:21
So this is John DeLorean breaking ground for the new admini- This is on
26:26
Joslin Avenue in Pontiac, Michigan.
26:28
Unfortunately, they're getting ready to tear this building down.
26:32
It probably won't be there by the end of the year.
26:35
I wrote a story about it in the magazine I was doing.
26:37
I called it DeLorean's Palace, and the odd thing about it was he designed, planned
26:43
the whole thing down to the art screen.
26:45
It was in the entryway, but he never got to sit in the office a day
26:50
because he got promoted to Chevrolet right before they opened this.
26:53
So he planned it, but never got to sit in it.
26:55
And then on February 3rd of '69, James McDonald took over.
26:59
John DeLorean moved on to Chevrolet, which to me, John's best years were at Pontiac.
27:06
Pontiac was kinda out there a little ways, not under the,
27:09
you know, eye of GM as much.
27:11
But when you're, uh, heading up their number one division, you're
27:15
right in everybody's eyesight.
27:16
And of course, he didn't get along very well with everybody at that level.
27:21
But anyway, some people say this was kind of the beginning of the end for
27:25
Pontiac, the real diehard Pontiac guys.
27:28
Because the three guys, you know, Pete Estes and DeLorean and Bunkie
27:32
Knudsen, were all performance-oriented.
27:34
They were all kind of together on what was going on.
27:36
But so in '65, they won the Motor Trend Car of the Year again for the whole line.
27:41
This has gotta be the greatest issue if you're a Pontiac guy of MotorTrend.
27:45
I mean, the whole magazine is Pontiac, basically.
27:47
And if it didn't have a story about Pontiac, it had an ad about Pontiac in it.
27:51
So what makes this today somebody's dream car?
27:55
This car, '65 GTO convertible, in this condition is somebody's dream
28:00
car, and it was this right here.
28:03
McManus, John, and Adams was the advertising agency for Pontiac that
28:07
promoted them so well And Jim Wangers and Mickey McGuire were the two guys
28:12
that really promoted that image and made everybody wanna have a Pontiac.
28:17
Mickey was the art director, and he was seven feet tall, so
28:20
he stood out wherever he went.
28:22
Jim would race cars on the weekend and then go to the office and be
28:27
writing the ad copy for a GTO.
28:30
So the two of them really worked well together.
28:32
And then here's Art Fitzpatrick and Van Kauffman with John
28:36
DeLorean in the '69 GTO ad.
28:38
So again, they just, Pontiac just had everything going from the
28:41
advertising to the art to the cars, the design, engineering.
28:46
It was just all … Here's another Art Fitzpatrick, Van Kauffman.
28:50
You can see the AF and the VK down here.
28:53
They just did beautiful work.
28:55
Like I said, some of them you couldn't tell wasn't a photograph.
28:57
They were just beautiful.
28:59
And Mickey was a word and letter type guy.
29:02
So where everybody else in the industry had photos of the car on the
29:05
cover, he put letters and numbers.
29:08
And in some instances, he never even used ink.
29:11
This is just a Grand Prix brochure.
29:13
It has raised, you know, embossed letters.
29:16
But inside, it's full of the beautiful illustrations from Van and Fitz in there.
29:20
But he, he loved type, and he loved playing with the type.
29:24
This is one of my favorite pictures because these are four
29:26
of the guys that were so most influential for Pontiac's success.
29:31
Bill Porter was the head of design in the late '60s.
29:36
He designed the GTO.
29:37
He designed the 70 Formula hood.
29:39
He designed honeycomb wheels.
29:41
He did so many iconic, uh, design things for Pontiac.
29:45
And of course, John DeLorean, general manager.
29:47
Steve Malone was chief engineer, and Bill Collins was assistant chief engineer.
29:52
Real quickly, Bill went with DeLorean to be the, the, uh,
29:56
chief engineer for the DeLorean.
29:58
And when that ended, he came back to Pontiac and started his own
30:01
company making RVs called the Vixen.
30:03
So look that up.
30:04
We have the prototype Vixen at the museum.
30:07
And this is the color and art room here.
30:10
So one of the neat things Pontiac did was they took a trip in 1976 to celebrate
30:14
this bicentennial and took a Grand Prix and a Sunbird around the world, and they
30:19
had Paula Murphy and Johnny Parsons.
30:21
He drove the Grand Prix, and she drove the Sunbird.
30:24
And, uh, I have a copy of the diary that they wrote that,
30:27
when they went around the world.
30:29
So this is John Sorrick, an engineer, and used to be the historian for
30:33
Pontiac with Paula and the Sunbird.
30:35
The Sunbird, we don't know what happened.
30:37
The Grand Prix, we know what happened to.
30:39
And then moving up to 1982, this is the last car made at the
30:43
home plant in Pontiac, Michigan.
30:45
Or I shouldn't say the last car, the last Pontiac made at the
30:48
home plant in Pontiac, Michigan.
30:50
It was a gray interior, gray half vinyl top.
30:52
They brought in a 27 to represent the building of the plant to come
30:56
down the line in front of it.
30:58
Bill Hoagland with the owner of the 27 out in front of the administration building.
31:03
And then when they announced on April 27th the end of the Pontiac I went down
31:07
to my local dealer and took some pictures 'cause I knew it was gonna go away.
31:11
So one of the neatest cars they were making at the end was the G8 GXP.
31:16
Right now, a G8 GXP standard shift in good shape costs no less
31:21
than it did the day they sold it.
31:22
It's one of the very few cars that never went down in value.
31:26
This is Batch's Pontiac, one of the handful of Pontiac dealers in
31:29
the country that was not a Pontiac GMC Buick dealer at the end, and I
31:34
ended up getting half of this sign.
31:36
So I got the sign.
31:37
And then the last Pontiac was built the day before Thanksgiving 2009 in
31:43
about seven miles north of Pontiac at the Orion plant, and it was a white G6.
31:49
All the last Pontiacs were rental cars, every one of them.
31:53
They were built to satisfy contracts, and this is the actual last one right here.
31:59
So a story came out on the internet a couple years ago, how sad it
32:02
was at the end of the Pontiac, the last one was totaled and wrecked.
32:06
And they give a VIN number, and so this is where, you know, about don't believe what
32:10
you read or see on the internet, right?
32:12
So I'm sitting in my office with a friend of mine who used to be a Pontiac
32:16
dealer and he goes, "You know, at the end of Pontiac, I was so sad." He
32:19
goes, "I printed out all the invoices at the end off of my GM computer."
32:24
And he goes, "I think there's one more." And I'm like, "Really?" So he
32:28
goes home and gets out his paperwork.
32:29
He calls me up and he goes, "Yeah, there's one more." This VIN number
32:32
ended in two and the one he had paperwork for ended in a three.
32:36
I said, "Let's find it." So we hit the internet and started looking,
32:40
and the records, and sure enough, we found it in Scott City, Kansas.
32:46
So how do you turn a VIN number into name and address?
32:49
CARFAX won't give you personal information.
32:52
They'll give you service records.
32:54
They'll tell you what dealers it was at, but they won't give you a personal.
32:57
So I called the Oakland County Sheriff's Department in Michigan,
33:01
and they said, "Well, we can't do that." I said, "Okay." So I'm thinking
33:05
to myself, "We need to go small."
33:06
So I have a friend in Alva, Oklahoma.
33:08
It's like population 1,200 people.
33:11
He's on the volunteer fire department.
33:13
He shares the desk with the police there.
33:15
A couple days later, I had a name and address.
33:19
So it was a 94-year-old lady in Scott City, Kansas, and within four
33:24
months we had the car, and it was in really good shape being in Western
33:28
Kansas with her only going to the grocery store, you know, couple
33:32
bags of groceries in the front seat.
33:34
So this is actually the last Pontiac with the last Fiero, and the last
33:39
Fiero happens to be the last, very last Pontiac built in Pontiac, Michigan.
33:44
And this is our museum up in Pontiac with the mural.
33:47
So we just finished hosting the National Pontiac Convention,
33:51
celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Pontiac, and it was the largest
33:55
convention ever that they ever had.
33:57
We had 900 registered, 501 cars on display, and we had a, a, uh, 100th
34:04
anniversary parade through downtown with 200 Pontiacs in it, so it was great.
34:09
So there's our museum in Michigan, and you'll notice that we have a '27 just like
34:15
the one that come down the line, and we have a gray '82 Grand Prix just like the
34:19
one that was the last car built there.
34:21
Come and see us whenever you have time in either Pontiac, Illinois, or
34:25
Pontiac, Michigan, to the Pontiac Museum.
34:27
Thank you.
34:42
This episode is made possible by the Studebaker National Museum,
34:46
the home of South Bend, Indiana's automotive and industrial heritage.
34:50
The museum preserves and interprets the legacy of Studebaker through
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its world-class collection of vehicles, artifacts, and archival
34:58
materials, including several nationally designated treasures.
35:03
As a center for history, design, and innovation, the museum inspires
35:07
enthusiasts and the community alike through its exhibits, programming, and
35:12
commitment to safeguarding the stories that shaped American transportation.
35:17
To learn more or plan your visit, check out www.studebakermuseum.org.
35:26
This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians.
35:32
They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history.
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The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational
35:42
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35:56
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