The 1963 Pontiac rocked the world (well, North America mainly) with its new stacked headlight front end and other madly cool new stylistic touches, like the gently bulging hips. But when I ran across these shots of a Bonneville coupe posted by robadr, it was this one of its interior that really sucked me in, into its Morrokide-upholstered interior. Click on this image to get a better sense of that majestic dashboard, with genuine walnut veneer inserts.
When I was a kid at the time, it was sitting inside of these GM cars of this vintage that really sealed the deal and made me an acolyte of the church of St. Mark of Excellence. And I had a lot of seat time to ponder this altar, as the neighbors across the street got a new ’63 Bonneville four door hardtop that year. Iowa City was a very informal town, and yes, I used to just walk over there and go sit in it while their high school sons were working on their hot rods. It was the dad’s car, and I remember once when he came out and gave me a rather quizzical look when he started to get in and saw me there in veneration to the high priest Bill Mitchell. I think he felt bad about disturbing me.
This is what rocked the world in 1963, along with the Sting ray and the Riviera. But in the case of the Pontiac, it was across the whole line, from the cheapest Catalina 2-door sedan to the sexy big Grand Prix. These ’63s cemented Pontiacs rise to the solid #3 sales position, and made them the hottest big cars in the land. It took the Mustang to get folks’ eyeballs to finally turn away. And of course both Ford and Plymouth sported stacked headlights in 1965, as well as other ways to pay homage to the most influential big car in a long time.
The rear end of the ’63s was still a bit of a work in progress, an evolutionary step from the ’62s. Nice, but not nearly as brilliant or influential as the other end.
The hood on this one is a bit less than fully closed on the big Trophy V8 underneath it. 389 standard; higher output 389s and a couple of 421’s were optional. The 421s sported either a single big four barrel carb or the Tri-Power setup good for 370 hp. Or so. And the Bonnevilles’ automatic was the husky 4-speed Hydramatic, not the more fragile 3-speed Roto HM “Slim Jim”.
Coincidentally, it’s parked next to a BMW 3 Series from its golden era. I’ve often referred to Pontiac as the American BMW, in terms of its image as the cool trend-setter in the early-mid 60s, not the Wal Mart BMW of the late 80s and 90s.
Related reading:
Curbside Classic: 1963 Pontiac Catalina – The Sexiest Big Sedan Of Its Time
GM had some great dash treatments, but the dashes introduced in ’61-’64 era cars were exceptional. I can see some of the character and materials in this Bonneville in the 1965 Riviera I had (dash introduced 1963).
If only GM had the needles and numbers dashboard gauges (and not the “too late!” idiot lights) that Mopar still had on their instrument panels of this era.
Other than this dearth, a most attractive dashboard.
I believe Pontiacs of this era had an ammeter in addition to the gas gauge.
Pontiac definitely put up a few extra gauges as standard on their cars.
Below is a 1965 Bonneville (top) and Catalina 2+2 (bottom) dash. The Bonneville threw in a standard ammeter in the round gauges, and the Catalina shows an optional temp gauge squeezed in with the speedo.
The Bonneville dash remained rich for ’65 and ’66, real wood and copious chrome. Nicer than most Cadillac dashes of the time.
The 1963 Bonneville without A/C featured the three round chrome pods in the middle of the dash containing clock, fuel gauge and ammeter. If factory AC was ordered (as in the featured car) a vent and small clock replaced the pods, with the fuel and battery gauges relegated to the instrument cluster. Quite interesting to have two different design tooled up for A/C and non-A/C cars.
I wonder why Pontiac chose an ammeter over a water temperature gauge?
It’s not like the Pontiac V8 engine never over-heated; esp with the air conditioning running.
Agree. Having grown up in the church of St. Mark of Excellence, I was still very used to a speedo and fuel gage when I had my Riviera. It may have been my 2002 Dodge Durango that finally introduced me to the benefits of a full set of gauges.
GM was definitely the have it your way company, typically offering more options, and getting better take rates than any competitor. They offered many cars with rarely specced gauge packages.
Too bad, really. The gauge cluster dashes were sometimes quite engaging variants on the standard dashes.
See this car all the time lately on my bike rides. The big American Pontiacs were always so much more substantial looking than our Canadian non-Wide Trackers! Unless you went down across the line you seldom saw one. The 63 and 64 Grand Prix were like factory mild custom cars at the time…less chrome, modified rear lights, driving light turn signals in the grill, etc. I still remember when I was 9 years old in 64 seeing a brand new dark blue GP. Parked up in Edgemont Village right here in North Vancouver! I was blown away!
That dashboard looks like a standard setter of the day.
The placement of the side view mirror part way down the fender is curious. It is as if it is there to help you see the car right beside you that’s already in your peripheral vision.
The lines on the front clip on this Pontiac, viewed from the rear, look a lot like a 1965 or so Mercury. A lot of similarity with the style line down the center, and the wrap-under of the front quarter.
Look at the difference of the angle of the car versus the Accord next to it – the Pontiac is nice and flat on the ground, whereas the Accord has the forward angled look that just about everything sports today. That lead photo really highlights that.
Nice car!
For some reason early sixties Pontiacs, Buicks and Olds put the optional remote controlled outside mirror way down on the fender, where it was basically useless. The manual mirror was placed on the door near the vent window, a far more desirable location. Also, the joystick that controlled the remote controlled mirror was on the dash, not the door.
It was a dashboard that indeed was venerated only in North America and left-hand drive export markets. Flickr user and GM Oshawa retiree Reid Brand has a number of pictures of RHD export Canadian Pontiacs, and they used the ’61 Pontiac dash through 1964 on right-hand-drive Pontiacs *and* Chevys (earlier and later ones used first-year Chevy dashboards).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/45904802@N08/6799084963/
Thats mostly what we saw Canadian Cheviacs but thanks to operation deepfreeze a lot of used American cars got sold here by servicemen once the discovered the local demand plus car dealers bringing in used imports from the US, keeping them as personal cars for the required time or fudging the length of ownership stateside and flogging them off for vast profits. Nice car paint it a better colour and I’ll take it.
It is safe to commend this dashboard, understanding that such a layout was banned a few years later in the quest for safety. Thus the plastic dashboards that came later can be spit at on domestics, while not at all noticed on the imports that power your lust. A clever rhetorical trick, I must admit. The agenda is clear if you think.
You are flat-out obsessed over this and you really need to pull back.
John, I understand why you’re back here since J.B. is now charging a monthly fee to read his brilliant insights and apparently you’re not willing to pony up, but frankly, your return here is not welcome when you spew such nonsense, repeatedly.
Your agenda is clear, even if you don’t think.
Yes, beautiful and deadly .
You had to be there, I remember the first time ever seeing one of these boats .
Let’s kill all the bean counters .
-Nate
That would be deadlier, right?
The ’63 Pontiac is high on my list of Best Facelifts Ever, as it was just a refresh of the 1961 body. But what an improvement over the ’62s, which weren’t bad to begin with but the ’63 is a much cleaner design. Interesting how it looked more like a Riviera than the Chevy it was more closely related to.
I love that dashboard too, and it got even better in years to come; 1967 is my favorite. Interesting touches include the ventilation controls that match the look of the radio, and the red Chief Pontiac high-beam indicator light (even though Pontiac ditched that logo everywhere else on the car since 1959). The 1968 dash toned down the chrome and wood in favor of plastic, and the 1969 dash became a generic big American car dashboard that wasn’t distinctly Pontiac. The dash on the 1977-81 downsized big Pontiacs was a return to form, but the Parisienne from 1982 onward had a less attractive Caprice dash.
It’s been suggested that 1963 was Peak GM. Considering the split-window Corvette, the Riviera, and the stacked-headlight Pontiac, its hard to argue with that. At least those three divisions offered up cars of a classic design that look good to this day. Yeah, Oldsmobile wasn’t too terrific that year, but Cadillac had toned down the fins enough to make them okay (if not stellar).
If there was a year that proved beyond doubt that GM was the undisputed leader among domestic manufacturers, 1963 was it.
My first thought upon seeing the lead pic was of my Father’s 63 Bonneville, bought new ion Spring of 63, same warm gold and interior, but a a creamy white painted roof. It shared garage and driveway with my mothers Dark Blue 63 GP, bought the previous autumn. Though both share a lot of design, the Bonneville was much longer, a trunk so deep you had to nearly crawl in it to reach the spare. While Moms GP went away in 65, traded for a new 65 GP, Dad kept his 63 Bonneville until 68, when a new Bonneville Brougham replaced it, in another gold color with a little green in it, called Aztec Gold. I loved growing up with Pontiacs.
It looks like it has two radios, but someone put some effort into making the A/C controls look like one. A/C on a Bonneville of this era just has to be an extreme rarity.
If any car were going to be ordered with AC in 1963, it’s this car. The only cars more likely are flat out luxury cars like New Yorker, TBird, Electra, 98, and Cadillac.
That’s a nicely optioned Pontiac! Factory air, power windows and seat belts are visible. Power steering and brakes are likely present and being a Bonneviille, the automatic transmission is the 4 speed Dual Coupling Hydramatic instead of the miserable 3 speed Roto Hydramatic. I’d prefer a different exterior color and Morrokide interior in tri-tone maroon or aqua, but I wouldn’t kick this specimen out of my driveway, either.
In high school, I had a ‘62 Bonneville 4 door hardtop in white with the red tri-tone interior. It was a $250 beater with a bum transmission, but still a pretty nice car. Mail ordered a rebuild kit and purchased a transmission from a junkyard to scavenge the overrun clutch piston. A Chilton’s manual provided a surprisingly detailed tear down and rebuild procedure. When completed, the rebuilt transmission operated pretty much flawlessly. The 389 CID / 303 HP 4-BBL engine still had some get up and go, but I went easy on it out of respect for all of the work it took to get the car in driving condition.
Sadly, being low on funds, I left water in the cooling system too long that fall and cracked the block. Ah, youth!
PRNDL, “… being a Bonneviille, the automatic transmission is the 4 speed Dual Coupling Hydramatic instead of the miserable 3 speed Roto Hydramatic.
Yes, that was kind of odd seeing as all Oldsmobiles (from the 88s and Starfire to the 98) and SWB Pontiacs had the Roto Slim Jim, but the Pontiac LWBs (Star Chiefs and Bonnevilles) kept the smooth albeit costly-to-make 4 speed Hydramatic.
With Olds a bit higher on the Sloan ladder than Pontiac, one would have thought it would be the opposite.
As I have mentioned in past comments, my parents had a (bought new) 1961 Pontiac Ventura 4 door that got quite a work out over a ~10 year life with many full throttle runs (or so I’ve heard) and the transmission never gave us any trouble.
But the Roto’s 1st to 2nd shift at full throttle was not exactly a smooth experience.
The Ventura was still a DD when it was stolen (it did not have a column lock), used in an armed robbery, dragged to a NYPD compound next the the East River in Queens NY, and held for evidence. We never saw it again.
It sure was pretty.
(note: photo from the internet; ours had a 389, not a 421)
The 61 was a gorgeous car – as a kid I was thrilled when Pontiac returned to the split grille design of the 59. Some neighbors had this exact car in beige and it still looked fresh years later.
Roto Hydramatic was an Olds invention. Pontiac was forced to take some to make production volume. Buick and Chevy had their own transmissions, so did not use Hydramatics before ’65. Why Olds engineers thought this was a good idea, who knows?
As the song goes, “Money, money, money, money.” Controlled Coupling Hydra-Matic was complicated and expensive, and Roto Hydra-Matic was designed to be cheaper to build, and lighter and more compact as well.
I think it came out of the corporate Engineering Staff, rather than Oldsmobile — the patents for both Roto Hydra-Matic and the Controlled Coupling Hydra-Matic were in the name of Walter Herndon, who was part of the team that developed the original Hydra-Matic. It makes sense given that Roto Hydra-Matic is conceptually a Controlled Coupling Hydra-Matic with a bunch of pieces deleted; it’s not a transmission one would likely have invented when starting from a clean sheet of paper.
The long, slender, silver gear shift levers of many of the early ’60’s GM cars.
Compare that to the awful chunky upright levers of today.
100% agreement with you Dan F.
These slender silver shifters started with the 1957 Olds which I wrote up as a COAL (https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1957-oldsmobile-88-chrome-reflections-rockets-and-dog-leg-windshields/).
The slender-silver-shifter was primarily a Pontiac and Oldsmobile thing; other GMs brands were chunkier.
(note: photo below from the internet is a 1957 Olds interior.)
+1 ….. !
Wasn’t sure if Paul would bite on this one…turns out it was the dashboard that was the hook. 🙂
An extra ‘dash’ of Bonneville…
It’s like jewelry. Just gorgeous. I especially like these dashboards in turquoise. Extra points for the clear and translucent steering wheels.
And added bonus points for glitter in the clear plastic.
This is a 1960 Dodge. Chrysler could of course out Jetsons anyone. Also shows how Chrysler was always happy to put a warning light or a gauge or knob in any particular hole in the dash.
As I remember Pontiacs in this period were also ahead of some other GM cars like Chevrolet (or AMC) in shrinking steering wheels and maybe even reducing turns lock to lock with power steering. It’s amazing to me that once power steering was a thing every heavier car didn’t immediately make it standard. Now of course it’s a given in the smallest car.
Exactly this. My grandma’s 64 Catalina had a grand dash that was pure eye candy. The one in the 69 Catalina that replaced the 64 was grim indeed.
Pure automotive porn. My sister had a friend who had a 63 Bonneville convertible in navy blue with a white top. What a car! The front of the 63 was the best but I always thought that the rear was clever in that it kind of imitates the Lincoln Continental’s of the period but the big bold BONNEVILLE block letters immediately pull your mind back to Pontiac. Super nice find.
I love the front end of the 63-66 Bonneville and Catalina but hadn’t seen either of them in person for at least 30 years. That was until a new Hornet volunteer, who turns out to be a Pontiac fan with at least six, showed up last summer. I get to see this one almost every Saturday and he will use the car often. Took numerous shots of this car. His mother bought it in 1969 and this would be a great COAL if he were into writing. These cars are looong.
… and he backs it in, which is the right & proper way to do it.
The ’63 Pontiacs (especially the ’63 Grand Prix) were really nice looking vehicles. The instrument panel is great eye candy, the chrome surrounds look great except when the sun was behind you and low in the horizon the light really caused some serious problems with all the light reflecting in your face. And it could have used some gauges instead of all the idiot lights-typical GM instrumentation consisted of a speedometer, fuel gauge and a clock-nothing more.
I always thought the best instrument clusters were on the ’65-69 Tempests/LeMans/GTOs; round instrument betzels with easy to read instrumentation.
Love the Pontiac dashboards of the mid-60s!
I used to do the same as you Paul as a young boy, sitting inside the various cars that my aunt’s future husband brought to our house when he came to pick her up for dates. (She was about a half-generation older than me and lived with us before she got married.)
The most memorable car was the red ’56 Buick Special 2-door hardtop. Beautiful car inside and out, and the year, make and model was spelled out in the grille.
At 7:05 Adam Wadecki does a nice job of describing the interior of his recently acquired 65 Bonneville, including the real wood on the dash. His whole review of the car is worth watching.
Very interesting, accurate based on personal experiences with a similar earlier model (389 not 421), and the last few minutes at night in a voice-over note is a moving tribute to what I see as the fundamental values of the CC website.
1963 was a great year for American car dashboards.
I find this Chrysler dash just as/if not more attractive and appealing; with all the engine monitoring gauges that the competition lacked as standard equipment. Love the push button controls for HVAC and the Torqueflite automatic transmission.
»chef’s kiss« at that ’63 Chrysler dash and squircular steering wheel!
Say, that’s a really sharply-designed car. I usually prefer Chrysler’s ’60s designs quite strongly, but I think this an attractively-designed car in context of its day. About the only thing I’d squark about is that transverse crease running a bit ahead of the backglass from pillar to pillar. I’ve never liked that on the ’62ish3ish Chevrolets, and I don’t like it on this.
Now you mention it, wow, yeah, there’s an obvious, direct line between the ’63 Pontiac and the ’65 Plymouth. Hadn’t seen that before.
I’m 76. Do the math. That car is badass!
I had a sixty four grand prix. The dashboard was a thing of beauty So was the steering wheel.but the coolest feature was the center console economy meter.
This is my car, she was parked there awaiting the radiator being redone.
I’ll add a bit more info here for those that may be interested. This car is a low mile survivor that I rescued a few years ago. She was built in Kansas City and sold new in Great Bend Kansas before spending most of her life in Oklahoma in a warehouse on blocks. Aside from one small dent she’s a near perfect body and will most likely receive further cosmetic restoration. She’s equipped with remote mirror, full tinted glass (slight blue green tint) power windows, “wonder touch” power steering and brakes, remote trunk release, day night mirror, AC, front and rear speakers etc.