Robadr found this Pontiac Parisienne in Nelson, B.C. sitting in front of what is probably the former Customs and Inland Revenue building. That’s fitting, as of course these Canadian Pontiacs, sitting on a Chevy chassis and using Chevy drive trains, were of course built in Canada to avoid the rather stiff import tariffs at the time.
This one is sporting a V8 badge, which means the Chevy 283. David Saunder’s ’61 had the Chevy 261 six; I’m not sure offhand what the last year for the six was.
Update: here’s the drive train page from the ’62 Canadian Pontiac brochure. The six was still available and the 327 was also optional.
The ’62 has to be the weakest of the early-mid ’60s Pontiacs. It’s ok, but it just doesn’t turn my crank. What a big change that was in 1963.
Automatic transmission, meaning Powerglide. But then that might be a good thing, as the American Catalina used the weak Roto-Flow Hydramatic.
The ’62 Pontiac front end is so similar to the one that was intended to be used on the ’60 Comet, when it was still going to be an Edsel. Well, not exactly a dead ringer, but the same general idea.
Plenty of back seat leg room. The driver must be short.
I can’t quite make out the city on that dealer sticker. It’s on Fort Street, but that’s all I can see.
Empress Motors, Ltd.
Pontiac-Buick-Vauxhall-GMC Truck(s)
Fort Street, Victoria BC
It’s now Wheaton GM, selling Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC Trucks. (according to some quick Google research.)
The equivalent of US$8835 will buy you a brand new Chevy Spark, with a 5-speed and no a/c.
I guess I still don’t understand what justified producing different makes in Canada. Even when I was there, I didn’t understand why an obviously recognizable US brand carried a Canadian brand name. Was Canada like some kind of experimental market? Did Canadians not want the same car with the US branding?
Right now, Canadian cars are like some kind of curbside classic game of trivia to me.
Must have had to do with tariffs or local content rules. I don’t know why they had to be different from the US version, but GM, Ford, and Chrysler all did it, and all in different ways. Ford made Fords with different grilles, trim, tail lights etc. Chrysler made Plodges – Plymouth in front and Dodge in back, including in compact Valiant/Dart form.
When I was a kid in Buffalo NY, just across a bridge from Canada, I never read about it but noticed all of these. Also Canadian coins might be mixed in with American ones but no one cared. There were too many of them to bother with.
I’m sure someone here knows the answer to this mystery. Probably written about at some point.
First off, there’s a difference between “brand” and “model name”. In both cases, the brand is Pontiac. But the model names are different, because they weren’t the same models/cars as the US Pontiacs.
US-built cars had a high import tariff in Canada, so they were built locally in Canada. But Canada wasn’t big enough to support the full divisions there, so they were consolidated. Meaning the Canadian factory that built Chevys also built the Pontiacs, and used Chevy frames, suspension, and drive trains in them. To build their own Pontiac frames, suspension and drive trains would have been too expensive.
So these are essentially Chevys with Pontiac bodies. Hence the different names on them, as they are quite different than their US-made counterparts. To sell this as a Bonneville or such would have created confusion, and even possibly litigation, as they would not have been a true Bonneville. Also, some US-made cars were imported, so there might well have been some genuine Bonnevilles and other US-made Pontiacs around in Canada. That would have created confusion and other issues.
So until the Auto Pact with Canada was signed in ’67 ‘or ’68, there needed to be different model names for the different Canadian cars. This was the case for Ford and Chrysler too. The Canadian market was too small to be able to build the full range of American models.
Got it?
Your points are all valid, but perhaps Vanilla is asking why bother to sell Pontiac at all in Canada. Or have Pontiac dealers. Why not just build and sell them all as Chevrolets, and leave Pontiac south of the border.
Google is our friend. From a Wheels.CA site article;
While GM grew in the U.S. as William Durant assembled his empire, Canadian versions of the cars started to appear in domestic manufacturing facilities. Chevrolet, started in Canada in 1915, was tied in with McLaughlin when it became part of GM in 1918. In 1920 the building of Oldsmobiles in Canada got underway, and Pontiacs were first built in Oshawa in 1926. Of interest here is that GM Canada built Cadillacs from 1923 to 1936 and LaSalles from 1927 to 1935, although in limited quantities.
By 1930, aside from the Oshawa facility, GM had plants in St. Catharines (the former McKinnon Industries), an engine plant in Walkerville (Windsor) and an assembly facility in Regina, Saskatchewan, the only auto-related enterprise west of Ontario.
Of the five GM divisions, Pontiac was “Canadianized” the most. It was the same as its U.S. counterpart from 1926 until 1937, when the Model 224 was introduced with a 224-cubic inch Chevrolet engine. In 1938, the Pontiac Special and Deluxe, models were based on a Chevrolet with Pontiac front-end treatment and fenders. The cars were called the Arrow and Arrow Deluxe befitting their name heritage, and in 1941 the names Fleetleader and Fleetleader Deluxe were used.
Pontiac was a big seller in Canada, with about 30 per cent of GM sales at this time. The cars remained the same after the Second World War, but the expensive models such as convertibles and station wagons were imported from the U.S., as were cars with GM’s new Hydramatic automatic transmission.
When a totally new lineup was introduced in 1949, Pontiacs were still Chevrolets under the body, and sales rose to third overall in Canada.
In 1953 the marque received new names — the Pathfinder and Pathfinder Deluxe — but the name Laurentian was adopted for the top-of-the-line hardtops.
When Chevrolet reinvented itself with a new car and engine in 1955, Pontiac followed suit in the U.S., but these were totally different autos with longer wheelbases. In Canada, the method of building Pontiacs incorporated the 115-inch wheelbase platform and engines of Chevy. The U.S. cars had their own family of engines, but Canadian Pontiacs used the new Chevy small-block and a bored-out (to 261 cubic inches) version of the Chevy Stovebolt Six.
Big changes in body style and names came to Pontiac in 1958. While still Chevy-based, the Oshawa-built cars were now available in three models: the low-priced Strato-Chief, the Laurentian and the top-line Parisienne. The car-buying public liked what it saw, as the GM division was second in sales to Ford that year, and sold 26 per cent more autos than all of Chrysler Canada.
In 1959, Pontiac introduced its famous “Wide Track” line of cars Stateside, but Canada adhered to the now-familiar Pontiac body on a Chevy application. Buyers didn’t care, though, as GM built over 73,000 Pontiacs in 1960. For model designations, the Strato-Chief, Laurentian and Parisienne counterparts in the U.S. were the Catalina, Star-Chief and Bonneville.
When car companies started building smaller cars in the early 1960s, Pontiac countered with its Tempest, but this car was not available in Canada. By 1963 Pontiac was the top-selling car in Canada, and two years later the one-millionth Pontiac was produced in Canada.
In 1968, Pontiacs in Canada were built with their own version of the “Wide Track,” using the one-inch wider wheel track of the Chevy station wagon. The Grand Parisienne was introduced, a regular Parisienne gussied up with trim items of its U.S. Grand Prix and Bonneville cousins.
By 1971, as the Canada-U.S. Autopact of 1965 settled in, Pontiacs built between the two countries were virtually identical. The Laurentian, Catalina and Parisienne Brougham models were built with both Chevy V8 engines, and most cars produced in Canada with the Pontiac 400 and 455 engines went to the States.
In 1982, full-size Pontiacs were dropped from production in the U.S. The only model now available was the Parisienne, which was Chevy Caprice-based. The Laurentian name, used for 28 years in Canada, was dropped.
In 1973, Pontiac sold its Canadian-only version of the Chevy subcompact car, the Vega, and when the Chevy Chevette was introduced a couple of years later, Pontiac had its own version, the Acadian.
The Acadian name first appeared in 1962 on the Chevy II-based Pontiac in Canada. This compact featured different upholstery, grille and trim work from the Chevy II, and was available in the Invader, Canso and Beaumont series.
In 1964 the Beaumont name was given to Pontiac’s version of the new Chevelle, which was built in Canada in all body styles with Chevy engines throughout the 1960s until Oshawa started building Tempests in 1970.
The names given to the Canadian Pontiacs were very nationalistic, and in most cases, the model names were French in origin. The name Laurentian pertains to the St. Lawrence River. Parisienne is feminine in nature, meaning a girl or woman of Paris. Early French settlers in the Maritimes were known as Acadians, and the cape and waterway between Cape Breton and the Nova Scotia mainland is called Canso. There is a town in Quebec called Beaumont, while the name Invader means to intrude upon or enter forcefully.
Aside from Pontiac, the rest of the GM family received little special attention in Canada over its U.S. counterparts. Although the Canadian-built McLaughlin-Buick name was dropped in 1942, GM Canada did build a unique Custom model starting in 1951 that matched the entry-level U.S. Buick Special. Outside the cars were the same, but inside a mixture of Buick and Oldsmobile trim was used. By 1966, the only Buick built in Canada was the Skylark model, and then the Ste.-Threse plant in Quebec built Skyhawks until 1977, with most of these heading to the U.S.
GM Canada built Oldsmobiles in Canada from 1920 on, but always low-end cars with engines imported from Michigan. The Starfire was built alongside the Buick Skyhawk at Ste.-Threse starting in the late 1970s.
The Ste.-Threse plant, which has since been levelled, was the final production home of the Chevy Camaro and Pontiac Firebird.
GM’s bread-and-butter car, the Chevrolet, has been built in Canada since 1915, with only minor trim variations over the decades. Most of the higher-priced models such as the 1955-’57 Nomad wagons and 1958 Impala hardtops were imported from the U.S. Corvairs were produced in Canada from 1960 until 1966. All Chevy Malibus, Chevelles and full-size Chevy models were the same for both countries in the 1960s and 1970s, although the Biscayne model was retired in the U.S. in 1975 but kept on in Canada for a couple more years until 1977.
A Canada-only Chevy-based truck was produced in the 1930s and 1940s, with the most patriotic of names, Maple Leaf. You can’t fly the flag any higher than that.
Does that help?
Keep in mind that in the US, Pontiac was the most “Chevy-ized” of the brands too. The very first Pontiac was nothing more than a Chevy with a longer nose and bigger engine. That was where GM’s body-sharing program started. And for much of their lives, big Pontiacs shared the B-Body with Chevy.
In the US, volume was high enough to justify unique underpinnings for Pontiac; in Canada they weren’t. So Canada was really just a foreshadowing of what was to come in the US when volumes dropped and costs needed to be cut.
Thanks for this great article. As a car nut since grade school, I’ve recently become interested in Cheviacs and Plodges, not just from an industrial, economic and manufacturing standpoint, but from the point of view of Canada trying to retain a domestic manufacturing base and not become our 51st state.
The wheels.ca summary is reasonably accurate, but there are a couple of important points not mentioned. As already mentioned, GM of Canada had much more limited resources to build cars for Canadians. Since it was a much smaller population, roughly 10% of the US, it was far more cost effective to use Chevrolet chassis and drivetrains in Pontiacs. It obviously used Pontiac styling and interiors though on these smaller chassis. Not yet mentioned is that in Canada, Pontiac was marketed as a low priced car. It was almost a direct competitor to Chevrolet, with some slight upgrades (like the larger 261 base six) at a slightly higher price. This was similar to the Ford-Meteor relationship or maybe like the early 60s full-size Dodge Dart. This was why Pontiac actually was the top selling brand in Canada for a brief period. Having Pontiac as a low priced car also helped improve dealer coverage, for areas that may not have had a Chevrolet dealership to sell a low priced GM car. Generally, Pontiacs during this era more closely resembled or directly mirrored the Chevrolet models/engine line-up than the US market Pontiacs.
FWIW, after 1970 Canadian Pontiacs did continue, but it was kind of a mixed bag from 1971 to 1976, with some cars virtually identical to American models (with Pontiac V8s), but they still offered Chevrolet powered Canadian only models like the Laurentian and Parisienne. From 1977-81, Canada had the Laurentian, Catalina, and Parisienne, basically copying the Bel Air, Impala, Caprice. They also used Chevrolet engines (Pontiac V8s were gone up North), directly mirroring the full-size Chevrolet engine line-up.
I know Americans may think that Canadian Pontiacs are strange, but to many Canadians they hold a special place. They were a slightly nicer alternative to a Chevrolet and the Canadian model names instilled some national pride. Pontiacs had a good reputation in Canada. Personally, I am very fond of the 1962 Parisienne, mostly because as a kid I found a really nice one at a local junk yard that my brother and I would play with. I even eventually convinced dad to let me buy some parts off it.
Hey, when I was a kid the extra $65 for a Pontiac over a Chevrolet meant you had really moved up in the world.
Oshawa, Ontario is where GM Canada began. That’s an interesting story that I won’t try to relay.
Interestingly, since we are talking “Pontiacs”, Oshawa, Ontario, about 45 minutes east of downtown Toronto, is reminiscent of Pontiac, Michigan, which is about 45 minutes from downtown Detroit. Both were, to a considerable extent, company towns, both are past their prime. Pontiac is rougher.
At one point, GM has THREE assembly lines in Oshawa–the ‘smaller’ plant, which churned out over 300k pick-up trucks in the 90s and early 2000s, and a large plant with TWO assembly lines under one roof that churned out various cars during various eras, let’s say 400-600k units. So GM Oshawa cranked out close to a million units a year some years, and easily 600-700k. (The truck plant closed during the Financial Crisis, Oshawa Car volume dropped, one line closed around 2016, but was “reopened” from 2018 to Dec 2019 for pick-ups, a rather impressive feat, the other line closed earlier this year, and now Oshawa makes ZERO vehicles, which is sad. Oshawa was always at, or near, the top of GM’s, and the auto industry’s, cost/quality (Harbour/JD Power) metrics). Excellent workforce, can-do attitude.
It’s a hard, and demoralizing. lesson for North American workers: do a good job: build what we (the automakers) give you well and efficiently and….you can still lose your job.
GM also built G-vans in nearby Scarborough, which was just east of downtown Toronto, that closed back in the 80s or 90s.
The St. Therese plant was built in the 1960s, AFTER the US-Canadian auto pact of the mid 1960s. It built GM mid-size cars until the 90s, when it got the F-car (Camaro/Firebird*), which was the last vehicle they made before closing around 2002 or so.
GM still builds Equinoxes near London ON (which started as a joint venture with Suzuki…remember the Tracker?), which is the last remaining GM assy plant in Canada (but five years ago, London/Oshawa built all Equinox and Terrain–now they are made in Mexico also) and GM has a huge manufacturing presence with engines in St. Catherines–close to Niagara, which is close to GM’s large engine presence in Tonowanda, near Buffalo.
Before the trade pact, not many cars flowed between the US and Canada because of tariffs before the mid-1960s trade deal.
After, the volume skyrocketed, since now the Big Three could sell any of their cars in Canada, increasing Canadians’ choices. The companies benefitted in that they could also more efficiently allocate production. So everyone came out ahead.
My admittedly cursory glance at some figures showed that EVERY year, more Canadian-made vehicles were exported to the US, than US-made vehicle to Canada. So the deal was very good for the Canadian economy as a whole, which benefitted more than the US, it seems to me. And now Mexico is benefitting the same way, just much more so, as the export of US-Canadian products south is a trickle, compared to the flood coming up north. The US-Canada numbers I’ve seen are much less uneven.
So, IMO St. Therese, was ‘enabled’ by the trade deal.
Of course, during this era, GM also had assembly plants in MA (Framingham), NY (Tarrytown), NJ (Linden), MD (Baltimore). The American plants were older than St Therese. Linden, Baltimore, and St Therese all closed around the same time, early 2000s, the others, 10 years earlier.
*which GM used to have TWO plants in the US to meet demand of 300-450k in the 1970s, Van Nuys CA (LA), and Norwood OH (Cincinnati). Demand had been declining, and the new 1994 Camaro/Firebird did not reverse the decline.
I assume that the high tariffs already were in place way back in the early 20th century. Otherwise, it seems crazy to have created this parallel universe just over the border from Detroit.
As I understand the 1965 Auto Pact, it prohibited a Canadian automotive trade deficit but had no limit on a trade surplus (didn’t sound like a good deal for the US).
FWIW, in my (US) household we have three vehicles with a VIN starting with “2”: a Chevy, a Ford and a Honda.
Another thing to add is that at least until the 80’s the division responsible for cars carrying the Pontiac badge north of the border was C-P-C, or Chevrolet Pontiac Canada. They even included that in their TV ads of the early 80’s.
C-P-C wasn’t formed until 1984 as part of Roger Smith’s reorganization that ended each division (and Fisher Body, etc.) having their own engineering and design staff. Widely considered a failure, GM was reorganized again 9 years later ending the C-P-C and B-O-C groups.
“US” imports to the UK really came from Canada to avoid the high import duties.since the 1920s as they were built in the British Empire. A Thunderbird was more expensive than a Jag XKE. Import duties made imports expensive until the UK joining the Common Market aka EU in 73. Brexit looking to bring those duties back.
The import tax was approximately 50%. In 1963, while hitchhiking across western Canada, I was picked up outside Medicine Hat by a man driving a new Thunderbird. In between periodic nips from a bottle he told me that he paid $7600 Canadian for it. The currencies were close to parity at that time.
Confusion is the New Zealand market back in the day new cars from US manufacturers were sourced from Canada and either fully or partially assembled locally, but used cars would turn up from the US as people brought them in privately for either use or resale.
The used import has been a thing to supplement demand here since local assembly first failed to keep up in the 20s but went mad when all the tariffs were removed and the ex JDM tsunami started in the 80s,
The full range of Pontiacs was around in varying numbers from all sources but knowing what you were looking at took some doing.
The last year for Canadian Pontiacs was 1970. As Paul correctly stated, the Auto Pact of 1967 made Canada only models redundant.
The same thing was going on at Ford, too, with the Meteor, which was a Mercury body and a Ford interior.
At Mopar, the Canadian Dodge was a cleverly designed Plymouth, with Plymouth interior, and was called the Mayfair.
We even had Mercury trucks. The dealer network, especially in small town places like Saskatchewan and Alberta, could not support more than one store for each brand. Ergo, Mercury trucks and Meteor cars.
We also had the Beaumont, which was probably the most popular of all the Canadian models. It was a Chevelle with a slightly nicer interior, replacing the Tempest in our market. Even as a kid, I heard it called the “Pontiac Beaumont” but the name was always just “Beaumont.”
It was all to do with tariffs and market sizes. Canada could not sustain factories for reach brand’s models: ie Dodge, Plymouth, Pontiac, Chevorlet, etc. This is why all the Big 3 consolidated their production to one assembly plant and used what was on hand to make Canadian only models. A USA built Pontiac was available but very expensive. They were very rare.
The Meteor was a Ford body and was the “low priced” brand at your Mercury-Meteor dealer. The Monarch was the Mercury body sold at Ford-Monarch dealers as a “mid priced” brand.
Due to a health crisis – I hadn’t had a chance to revisit this posting of mine! And WOW – what a response!
You guys are so full of it! I can’t thank you enough for the outpouring of incredible information from my “wonder” comment!
Vanilla
Little oddities: the Parisienne was the Canadian equivalent of the Bonneville, right? Yet the Parisienne had Catalina tail lights, and while the upholstery and door panels look equivalent to the Bonneville, the dash is plainer. And the buyer of a Bonneville could still get the Super Hydra-Matic rather than the Roto Hydra-Matic–a strong argument for the Bonneville!
Kind of , but not really. It was just the top trim version, but all the Canadian Pontiacs sat on the shorter 119″ Chevy wheelbase, so they all used the shorter Catalina body. Only certain aspects of the interior and exterior trim were analogous to the US Bonneville.
I’ve read online that they actually weren’t Catalina bodies but rather were distinct Canadian Pontiac bodies that looked like the American versions but were not interchangable, because American Catalina bodies wouldn’t fit on the Chevy frames. True?
This is a very good question that I’ve long pondered, written about here, but have never seen a definitive answer to.
Undoubtedly the bodies were somewhat different, inasmuch as the whole floor and sill underbodies had to be quite different due to using the Chevy X frame, whereas US Pontiacs used perimeter frames. But those would just have been Chevy pieces.
But the big question is in some of the external panels, like the fenders. I assume they used the same as the US units, and just centered the wheels 1″ off in both the front and rear, to compensate for the 2″ shorter wheelbase. But I might be wrong.
The center section of the bodies (roof, doors, cowl, etc.) would have been essentially the same, as they were in the US. The question is how exactly they compensated for the 2″ shorter wheelbase.
I’d love to know for sure.
Simply conjecture, but during development, GM Canada would specify the Chevy chassis frame and A-Body shells shared with Catalina in the U.S. Since the front-axle-to-dash dimension is the same for both makes, hang the Pontiac doors and make whatever adjustment necessary in the quarter panels. The Standard Catalogue list the 1962 Catalina at a 120″ wb other than the Safari wagons at 119′ wb. After all, only the outside sheet metal identifies it as a Pontiac.
During 1955-’57, when U.S. Pontiacs were 122″ & 124″ wb, to build the Canadian 115″ wb version required a front fenders and hood be tooled with the Pontiac grille etc. The first time I came across one, it looked like a pug-nosed Pontiac, very strange.
Prior to 1955, Canadian Pontiacs were basically Chevrolet bodys that were fitted with Pontiac grilles, dashes and trim (postwar). Starting in 1955, used Pontiac exclusive body stampings, however, they were significantly smaller than the American counterparts. By 1959, the 119″ wheelbase from Chevrolet closed the gap, but there was still a size difference between the Catalina and the Parisienne.
From what I have learned from those that have owned and restored these cars over the years, most body panels do not interchange with the US counterparts. Some parts will interchange, like front fenders, sometimes the doors, but it really depends on the year. A 1969 Parisienne has much more shared with a Catalina than the 1961s. By the late 60s it seems quarter panels would even interchange in some cases.
Based on this, I suspect that GM of Canada started with a Chevrolet body shell, and then modified the American Pontiac exterior body stampings to fit those Chevrolet shells. I suspect this would be the most cost effective solution. In the early sixties there was still a significant difference in body length, much in the quarter panels and I don’t think the panels would fit the Chevrolet shell and still look properly proportioned. The Canadian Pontiacs always looked proportioned correctly and I didn’t notice any off center wheels or anything like that due to the shorter wheelbase.
I’ve never noticed offset wheels either (that looked too far forward or back for the wheelwells), but the wheels on the ’59 and ’60 models such as this Parisienne looked way, way too tucked in compared to the Wide-Track US models.
I have wondered this same thing for years myself—and as Paul said, it appears there is no definitive answer available on the internet. So once again, I studied up on all the photos I could find just now to try to compare (in this case) a 1959 Canadian Pontiac with a 1959 (U.S.) Catalina. While it’s surprisingly hard to find straight-on side photos of these cars, I think if you compare these two pics it’s clear—I think!—that the Canadian car has all the same exterior sheet metal fore and aft as the U.S. one, but is just sitting on a shorter wheelbase chassis—with the position of the front wheel in particular being noticeably further back in the wheel well. Now, some of that can be attributed to the photograph—the Canadian car was shot up close with a wide angle lens, so the extreme side overhang resulting from the narrow track Chevy chassis plays a part in making the front wheel look like it’s set further back in the well. But I think that’s only part of it. Which I’ve always thought must be the case—seriously, can anyone imagine the General tooling up all new front fenders, hood, and whatever else was needed just to fudge a couple of inches of wheelbase, which no one would ever notice? But I’d be interested to know what everyone else thinks. Should be obvious at a glance but the 4-door car is a ’59 Strato-Chief, the 2-door is a ’59 Catalina.
And here’s the pic of the Catalina.
“Crash Book” (collision repair data) would give the definitive answers.
A collision shop’s “Bible,” includes OE datum points for measuring straightness as well as part numbers for most commonly damaged components. A bit of model comparison would tell all.
The steering wheel isn’t Pontiac (Catalina or Bonneville) or Chevy (Biscayne or Impala). It must be from something, and I bet someone here knows.
Actually, I think that wheel is from the lower-end 62 Chevy. My college roomie had a low-trim 62 Bel-Air 2 door sedan and that looks like the steering wheel I used to spin like I was playing Wheel Of Fortune.
I found this one online, identified as being in a 62 Bel Air wagon.
its obviously an aftermarket steering from a 94″ Nissan Skyline, someone here has to know. its my car hippie.
I’m embarrassed to be the one asking, but the brochure lists Powerglide and “New Powerglide.” What’s up with that? Cast iron case vs. aluminum case, perhaps?
Apparently. The brochure says that New Powerglide is lighter in weight and only on the 327. Lighter weight suggests Aluminum Powerglide.
This car must not be driven in the rain, it has no wipers.
looks like rain in the photos, the dude is obviously crazy.
Nelson British Columbia is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The free ferry across Kootenay Lake is a bucket list kind of thing. The mountain roads to get there are a total blast.
I took Wolfy on a Rocky Mountain Romp in June and it was fantastically fun. I had planned to get to Nelson via Hwy 3 for Thanksgiving weekend but there was early snow. It will be one next year’s road trip romps.
See if I can post a pic.
I agree, Nelson is a great small city to visit. Nice restaurant in that Hume Hotel across from the car too. We are in North Vancouver and have a 18 Golf Alltrack manual. We get up to the Rockies and Kootenays every chance we get.
Those glaciers appear to be almost gone.
It’s even worse on the Ice Fields Parkway.
Empress Motors and Fort Street both hail from Victoria, British Columbia.
When my family was in the car shop business, we were directly across the street from Empress. We’d get all their angry clients whose THM200s had blown up just after warranty, and many other issues. Most thought it was not a good idea to sell a three year old car. They should have.
The car looks good but I’m really liking what I see in the background, Nelson may need to be a stopping point if I ever get up to BC again.
Jim this picture is at Roger’s Pass. This year’s Rocky Mountain Romp was one of the best ever. Very people were travelling so the traffic was free of campers. I went from Vancouver, up Hwy 5 to Jasper, then across the Ice Fields Parkway (bucket list stuff), down to Radium Hot Springs and then home.
I caned it most of the time. On the way up, I did 5.5 L/100 km. On the Ice Fields Parkway, high speeds aren’t going to happen and I did 4.7 L/100 km. The entire trip was 5 L/100km. I don’t need no stinking diesel!
And please don’t forget to mention Bagel the Wonderdog next time.
I meant the Parisienne and Nelson but your car looks nice too as do the mountains, we have similar down here 🙂 And Bagel looks good too but really should be named Bageldog.
We do call her Bagel the Wonderdog, so it’s close.
There was a time when I really liked the 62 – but today I am not wowed by it at all. We like to talk about how Bill Mitchell really cleaned up the highly decorated 61 models, but it’s not all that apparent on the Pontiac.
The Canadian dealer alignment was not like the US. In Canada Chevrolet dealers sold Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Cadillac and Chevrolet Truck. Pontiac dealers sold Pontiac, Buick and GMC truck. Small towns might only support one GM dealership, so if you were a GM customer and there was no Chev dealership, you bought a Pontiac instead. Either way, GM had you covered.
some have noted the Edsel prototype’s front was seemingly lifted from the 1959 Pontiac, as was the actual 1960 Edsel’s front
Living next door to Canada, I’ve long heard Pontiacs described as “Canada’s car”. Before children came along and when we lived further East, we liked to vacation in the Niagara Falls region from time to time. I saw lots of Pontiac muscle cars with Maple Leaf flags on them roaming the streets. That’s not to say other marques were not represented, but you could feel the Pontiac love.
Does anyone else remember this: During the Great Financial Crisis, when GM was being forced to shutter or sell divisions, Frank Stronach (of Magna International, the parts supplier giant) bid on the Pontiac intellectual properties and (I believe) one of the GM factories. His logic was something along the lines “why shouldn’t Canada have their own car?” GM denied the request as they didn’t want a potentially strong competitor just on their border. It wasn’t the first time that Stronach wanted a car company of his own and manufacturers would have been uncomfortable with a supplier who was also a manufacturer. But I think it was Canada’s loss.
Frank Stronach attempted to acquire Opel from GM, and as I recall had plans to acquire the Canadian Saturn dealer network to sell imported Opels and ultimately manufacture them in Canada.
I think perhaps it was GM Canada itself that expressed a desire to continue Pontiac as a Canada-only brand.
https://www.wheels.ca/news/stronach-frozen-out-as-gm-kills-opel-deal/
Starting in 1964, a really cool a version of the Parisienne, the Custom Sport appeared. It was basically a Canadian Impala SS, with standard bucket seats and console.
Great information from all of you. I spent my childhood summers in the Adirondack Mountains near to Lake George Village. Many Canadians came to Lake George for vacation. As one who has always loved automobiles, it was a thrill to check out the Canadian models. I even collected Canadian brochures. One thing that impressed me was the 1954 Ford Canada brochure which on every model except the lowest-priced Meteor, they were shown with tinted glass, optional of course. I, too, have studied the Canadian Pontiacs and I love them. Speaking of Meteor, how about those flashy front ends?
I had a 62 Parisienne, drove it for over a half million MILES.
Had a 283 V/8 ,powerglide.
Best car I ever owned.
Probably still be driving it but the rust finely got to me.