(first posted 11/16/2012) Perhaps the single biggest factor in the death of the golden era of muscle cars was the explosive rise of insurance rates for anything deemed to fall into that evil category. That helps to explain cars like this hood-scooped Le Mans Sport: Someone got cold feet when they found out what it would take to insure that GTO apple of their eye.
The bright orange color and styled road wheels (what did Pontiac call theirs?) all scream GTO, but under the hood there’s probably a 350 two-barrel, or even a Chevy 250 cu in six. Unless one was well-heeled, the heady days were indeed drawing to a close as insurance premiums for certain models sometimes exceeded the monthly car payment.
BigOldChryslers shot this one in Toronto, so excuse my ignorance: Since the big Pontiacs used Chevy engines, why didn’t the Le Mans and GTO (except six-cylinder versions)? Were they imported from the U.S., unlike the big cars?
How the mighty have fallen.
Wheels are called Rally II’s
You could go 400 and 455 too. Sneaky way to get a hot car without alerting the insurance nazi’s.
I wonder how much worse the actual accident rates/costs were for muscle cars back then. Was there really that much difference?
Dad was all set to get us a new ’68 GTO. Red, first year of that Endura bumper, man it was slick and hot. I was so excited! Suddenly one day we weren’t getting the GTO. Ended up with a ’68 Ford XL instead. I never knew for sure, haven’t had the heart to ask when I got older, but I’ve always thought it was insurance.
I was curious so I did a search. Amazingly I found something
“In 1970, most muscle cars retailed for $3,500 to $4,000, but the insurance cost an additional $1,000 to $1,500 a year, says Phil Skinner, a collector car editor at Kelley Blue Book”
http://www.carinsurancequotes.com/articles/insurance-for-muscle-cars
So about a third the price of your new car. Ouch!
It cost me $265/yr to insure a ’67 VW, a $1500 car, in Los Angeles back then. And that was for an 18 year old male. That puts it in perspective.
It looks like the only monster engine, non muscle car branded intermediate for 1970 in the GM stable was the Olds Cutlass. 455ci premium gas with dual exhausts was available, oddly with a two barrel carb. Tire-smoking 500 lb-ft of torque was on tap, same as the 4-4-2 engines, but peak hp down to 320.
The Tempest/LeMans was the main name for the mid sized Pontiac line from 1964-72. Can’t say ‘how mighty have fallen’ when there was always a base 6 cyl or 2 barrel carbed V8 2 door T/LM for sale. Not all of them were GTO’s at first.
The 1970-71 GT-37 was actaully the ‘junior muscle car’ for lower insurance and sticker price. The ‘Sport’ was a fancy trim level of LeMans, replacing Custom S and even available in 4 door! This is no more a ‘muscle car’ than a Cutlass S, Chevelle Malibu, or Skylark Sun Coupe.
Wow, I’d heard of the T-37, but not the GT-37. An interesting story…
http://www.hemmings.com/users/225927/story/678.html
You’re forgetting the even cheaper “T-37”. I never saw a T-37 on the street. The only ones I’ve seen were at the dragstrip with 455 H/O for motor-vation. And IIRC the GT-37 was just a T-37 with the Sport LeMans trim. If history is written correctly the T-37 was the cheapest A-Body available for a couple of weeks until Chevrolet created a cheaper base Chevelle.
And up until 1969 the Pontiac Sprint6 OHC was the base motor for USA A-Bodies. I don’t recall ever seeing a 69 Sprint LeMans but I almost bought a 68 Sprint Firebird my senior year in HS. When I was a kid I got a Monogram Red Baron model kit for Christmas. I was hooked on the looks of the Sprint6 ever since. My first and only Pontiac was a 76 T/A I bought in 1978. One of the weird 200HP 455/4speed cars. My only other Pontiac experience was a 78 LeSabre powered by the wimpy 301/2V.
I never knew they put the Pontiac 301 in Buicks. But then again, I was also unaware (until today) that Pontiac put about 500 or so SBC 305s in the T/A in 1980 or 81, right there alongside the turbo 301. One is for sale on eBay right now, even with a “5.0” sticker adorning the shaker hood scoop.
Yeah, I dont think the turbo 301 was 50 state compliant. So threre were 5.0 litre Trans Ams, there were also 5.0 litre Corvettes in the in Peoples Republic of California in 80-81 too. The 301 could have been found in a few different cars.
The OHC six was standard through ’69, but not all “cammers” were Sprints: The Sprint was the hotter four-barrel version. I wasn’t able to find any production statistics for the Sprint, but it was relatively rare — most people paid a few bucks extra for 350-2V, which was a little more powerful and had a lot more torque.
The OHC engine wasn’t used in any of the other production A-bodies. Chevrolet used the OHV 230/250 (to which the cammer was related). Buick used the 90-degree V6 through 1967, also used on base 1964-65 Olds F-85s. Both Buick and Olds eventually switched to the Chevy 250, as well, Olds in ’66, Buick in ’68.
Custom S was a 1969-only designation, replacing the Tempest Custom, which had been the middle level between the base Tempest and the LeMans since 1964. In 1970 the middle level was the plain LeMans, with the LeMans Sport above and the Tempest below. So the LeMans Sport didn’t “replace” the Custom S as such.
What I meant is how a once proud nameplate (LeMans) got degraded, derided, and devalued and “fell” when GM decided to badge crappy Korean city cars under the LeMans nameplate and sell them as Pontiac (another once proud name that was devalued, derided, and degraded by years of corporate decisions into a relic of it’s former self, and therefore “falling” by my standards). Indeed, how the mighty have fallen because of years of bad decisions for the safety of one brand’s sake (Chevrolet, of course) and the habit of saving money by cutting corners.
O’ mighty GM, what have you done to yourself? Why did you get yourself into this mess? Why did you lead yourself into a self-destructive lifestyle?
GM has demoted several nameplates throughout the 1980s either as rebadged and/or gussied up Chevrolets (the Cimarron did irreparable damage 2 the Cadillac brand image and Chevrolet tackin the Nova nameplate 2 a local production Toyota Sprinter made it the butt of many jokes where it was known as a Toilet, Toy-let, Toyolet, Chevota, CorNova – the LeMans was a Korean market Opel Kadett (again a global platform but when Pontiac did this it was if they demoted a dead president 2 a lower denomination of currency); GM continued 2 do this by rebadging the GMX130 Chevrolet Malibu (again recycling legacy nameplates 4 brand equity) as a Cutlass due 2 its past heritage from the A body era – the Cutlass (97-99) was a poor seller and the hi-mid Impala (replacing the Lumina) – as of 2017 2 revived nameplates r still around but on a FWD mass market automobile (Chevrolet did the same when its products starting with a “C” in their nameplate where the upscale trim level is bumped e.g. Nova replacing Chevy II after 1968, Malibu replacing the Chevelle since 1978, and the S10 Blazer losing its prefix code after 1995)
Still, I wouldn’t mind a T/LM “Sprint” coupe with a 4-speed stick in either red or green.
I remember the T-37 well…along with the GT-37, the Heavy Chevy and Rally Nova. There was a recession in 1971-72 on top of insurance woes, these cars were lower-priced versions designed to drive showroom traffic.
My grandmother had the 4-door Lemans with a 350-2bbl in it (same vintage, think 1970). It was a really nice, quiet-riding car. I remember going to church in it as a kid, and the loudest thing inside the car was that pot-metal glove box door knob rattling incessantly!
I wanted that car when I was in high school, but my grandparents sold it to one of their neighbors.
This reminds me of a photo layout that I saw in a musclecar magazine a few years back. The featured car was a 1970 LeMans Sport, but it was a white convertible optioned-out to be exactly like a GTO without the GTO badge. It even had the Endura bumper. The story goes that the original owner was a Mormon businessman who wanted to maintain a conservative reputation. I imagine it helped with the insurance as well.
Not the convertible in question but I saw a picture of a LeMans Sport with her front grille painted to look like a GTO http://www.gatewayclassiccars.com/saint-louis/1970/pontiac/lemans-S3442.html
Here another kind of LeMans called “The Jury” with some pictures at http://canadianponcho.activeboard.com/t49542792/1970-pontiac-lemans-the-jury/
The history behind that car, Stampede Pontiac-Buick, a Canadian Pontiac dealer in Calgary got the idea to create a “poor’s man GTO Judge” with “The Jury”. That guy wasn’t alone to create a “poor’s man muscle-car”, Knafel Pontiac go a step further by using a 2-door Tempest to create the Magnum 400 going head-to-head against the Plymouth Road Runner http://ultimategto.com/cgi-bin/showcar.cgi?type=lot&pic=/1970/70_00306_2
That is one nasty repaint. It was beautiful when it was new though!
I have a 1971 Sport Coupe that was optioned with the GTO nose…
Not really a whole lot of difference between the two, just basically insurance, you could get the LeMans with the 455 (starting in 71′), and even if you didn’t, you could easily swap one in, which was done to mine ages ago.
That yellow (orbit orange?) really screams GTO.
The wheels are Rally II’s, and from what I understand, the GTO’s and LeMan’s did get Chevrolet motors in Canada.
GTOs didn’t, but the LeMans did. Prior to 1970 the LeMans was not generally available in Canada. We did have the Beaumont, basically a Chevelle with a LeMans dash and a unique grill. Apparently you could order a GTO in the ’60s if you really wanted one and could afford the very stiff duty charged. Pre-1968 GTOs were always a very rare beast in Canada. For some reason there were lots of ’68s around, at least in BC.
Every 70-72 LeMans I remember had a 350 Chevy, but for some reason the ’73 and later cars were equipped with Pontiac engines.
I don’t think so. I checked this Canada 1970 Tempest/LeMans/GTO brochure, and all the V8 engines are undoubtedly all Pontiacs, based on their bore and stroke:
http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/Canada/1970%20Pontiac%20LeMans-Tempest-French/1970%20Pontiac%20LeMans%20_amp_%20Tempest%20_Fr_-12.html
That’s why I asked the question: how come these A-Body Pontiacs are “real” Pontiacs, but not the big cars?
Well, all I know is what I saw back in the day. In the late ’70s/early ’80s I moonlighted at a Rent-A-Wreck franchise and we had a few of these, all Chevy powered as I remember. Doesn’t mean you couldn’t get a real Pontiac engine, but I don’t remember ever seeing one.
I had a ’72 base model LeMans with a 350 Chevy.
I believe that 1970 was the year that Pontiac began selling the same intermediate lineup in Canada as in the U.S. This apparently included the engines. For several years through 1969, as tiredoldmechanic noted, the intermediate models sold in the U.S. were not widely available in Canada, where Pontiac dealers instead sold a badge-engineered Chevelle called the Beaumont.
Somewhere around this time, the fullsize Pontiacs sold in Canada also came to be much more closely related to their U.S. counterparts than in the past. Canada still had some of its own model names, but the body and chassis were now the same. I think the transition point was the 1971 restyle of GM’s fullsize cars.
In 1969, GM Canada sold through Pontiac dealers both the full-lineup of the Chevelle-based Beaumont complete with Chevy engines … and the GTO coupe and convertible with Pontiac engines. Surprisingly, the SD 396 Beaumont continued to be offered for 1969 in Canada with the Chevy 396 V8 alongside the Goat – and on the same showroom floor one could have found the Buick GS 400 (GM Canada’s dealership setup was Pontiac-Buick-GMC and Chevrolet-Oldsmobile-Cadillac). For 1970, the Beaumont line was completely phased out and Canadians now got the same Pontiac A-body lineup as the U.S. including Tempest, LeMans, LeMans Sport and GTO – complete with the full-line of Pontiac V8s, 350 and 400 in Tempest/LeMans and 400 and 455 in GTO and Judge. Only Chevy engine offered was the 250 cid six which was standard in all A-body cars except GTOs. Only Pontiacs to offer the PMD overhead cam six-cylinder in Canada were the 67-69 Firebirds.
Back in the days when you could more or less order whatever you wanted off the options sheet you could creatively option cars as you like. Rising insurance just gave an excuse to be creative.
Base model 1967 Mustang Convertible with the only ordered options being AM radio, 289V8, 4brl carb, and cruise-o-matic? My dad has one. Was it as fast as a K-code 289? No. Was it less conspicuous and as rates rose cheaper to insure? YES.
When a Mustang was appearing in our family’s future, Dad kept saying he’d get a six. “It looks just as fast, who will know?” “I would, that’s who!” He got the 289. Now I think he was just pulling my chain.
Do parents discuss their car purchases with their kids nowadays? I remember taking ours to the dealer when we looked at the Diamante, and my daughter going “Yuck – slimy seats!” at the leather-equipped top model – we got the lesser model with cloth. At 30 she still thinks of leather as “slimy seats”! Ben was all over the Evo VI Tommi Makinen Edition on the floor, and really wanted us to get that. So I showed him the trunk, and asked him what he was going to leave behind when we went away for holidays. He wound up getting an ’01 Lancer non-Evo as his first car – still has it.
The 225-horsepower 289 4-barrel wasn’t quite the performer that the 271 was, but it was also a lot less expensive on the order form (about $150 vs. $500 for hotter engine) and had hydraulic lifters rather than the 289/271’s solid lifters that constantly needed adjustment. Also, the 271 wasn’t available with comfort options such as power steering or air conditioning. And probably cost a lot to insure compared to a Mustang with a six or the 289/200 and 289/225 V8s. The intro of the 390 on the ’67 Mustang did in the popularity of the 271 option, which was dropped after that year. The 390 offered 50 more horsepower for far less money and could be had with comfort options.
When I was a kid, muscle cars were all the rage with the mill-worker boomer types since they made big paycheques and gas was cheap. I remember twenty year olds driving Firebirds with big block power and even superchargers. These things were crashing all over the place, especially on the way home from the bar on weekends, when the boys would get beered up and go drag race them.
Many people were killed, including a friend’s brother acting as a flag man a race of these things. So many people were getting killed that practically any “sporty” car got nailed on insurance. It’s still expensive to insure fact cars here in British Columbia; too many foreign kids cracking their BMWs up has really pushed up rates. Insurance is half the price outside the Lower Mainland.
These things were crashing all over the place
Big reason for the end of the Muscle Car era, and not discussed enough. So many blame car makers or Gov’t, but not the bad/drunk drivers of the day.
How true. In the early ’70&s I had two friends and a cousin that had GTO’s, a friend that had a Mustang Mach I and another that had a Duster 340. ALL wound up being totaled, with my friend dying in his 3 month old Duster 340. I love muscle cars, but these were often a handful in the hands of young, male, testosterone fueled drivers. The insurance industry, being the business it is, put the kibosh on these as soon as the gruesome stats started rolling in.
This is very true. I was in high school in the late 60’s and at least five kids from my small high school died in muscle car crashes. I call them muscle car crashes because they were all single car accidents at very high speeds trying to take turns the cars could have never handled.
The ‘weapon’ of preference was the 383 Road Runner – cheap, super fast, lousy handling above 100 miles per hour. Three of the five died in them. The fourth was a girl who was my next door neighbor. She and her boyfriend died when his Corvette flipped on our local “Deadman’s Curve” – a decreasing radius turn at the end of a mile-long straight stretch on ‘The Low Road’.
As much as I loved the Muscle Cars, it was time for them to be throttled back.
Having owned Road Runners I can also point out that the lack of power steering or decent brakes did not make them any safer, the brake fade when you really needed them at any speed over 60mph could be terrifying most certainly if you were trying to negotiate a corner. Fast they were, safe they most certainly were not.
Wasn’t there also a LeMans GT for a year or two? Did that replace the GT-37 or the LeMans Sport? God, could Pontiac’s naming strategy be more convoluted?
The LeMans GT and Sport options lived through the end of the colonade LeMans’. The GT-37 was a Road Runner like low priced muscle car without the GTO nameplate, it was Tempest based, below the LeMans.
Yes, Le Mans GT replaced the GT-37, when the base A body became simply Le Mans.
As gottacook described, the LeMans Sport was simply the new name given to what had been the LeMans, after the LeMans name was expanded downward to take over what had originally been the Tempest Custom (leaving only the base trim level still being sold under the Tempest name). It wasn’t necessarily a “sporty” model at all.
In 1971, IIRC, this trim level was split in two, with two two-door body styles continuing as the LeMans Sport, and a broader range of styles now being sold as the Luxury LeMans. The convertible was available only as a Sport; the coupe came either way. The Luxury LeMans later became the Grand LeMans. The A-body convertibles were dropped after 1972, but I think the LeMans Sport coupe managed to last through the end of the collonnade era.
The Tempest name, meanwhile, went away after 1970. The LeMans T-37 was its replacement for 1971, but it was dropped after just that one year. Other GM divisions were also dropping the lowest trim level of their intermediate lines around this time. The base Chevelle 300 was gone after 1969, for example, while the Olds F-85 was dropped after ’72.
The car pictured here reminds me of the gold Pontiac driven by Paul Newman in the movie Slap Shot. With the NHL lockout, I watch that movie to get my hockey fix these days. “Who own da Chiefs?”
Speaking of Chevy mills under Poncho bonnetts. I found this pic many years ago. I’m a GM expert but the story behind this pic has me baffled. http://www.gmphotostore.com/1970-Chevrolet-Chevelle-SS-Coupe/productinfo/53217423/
It’s a 70 SS with a 250 straight six under the hood. Looks like it was hot rodded by the Chevy skunkworks from the looks of the painted air cleaner.We all know the 350/2V was the base motor in the SS so who knows what this concept was trying to prove. I would post just the pic but that wouldn’t be kosher to the owner of the pic. Check out the rest of this site. Lots of neat things to look at.
Back in 1980, my ’70 LeMans Sport started out as a pristine numbers-matching one-owner cruiser. Then I crunched it, and revived it as a tire-smoking GTO clone complete with a built 1969 GTO 400 engine. Even before I “cloned it”, I’d get notes left on my windshield asking to buy it. It was more original than Chevelles and Skylarks.
For a brief moment, I was enamored of the Pontiac OHC Six. I almost wanted one, regardless of chassis.
Then I did a bit of research. I didn’t dig very deeply, but it appears that one simply CAN NOT BUY a timing belt for this engine. They just do not exist!
edit: I just looked again. Kanter has timing belts available now. For $125!!
Found this pretty quickly http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pontiac-OHC-6-Timing-Belt-/302245723237?hash=item465f3fbc65:g:-igAAOSw2gxYv7e7&vxp=mtr
Timing belt kit for my diesel Citroen including tensioner rollers $107 kiwi pesos delivered to my house, so thats not a bad price.
I’m surprised I didn’t answer this when first published. I was living in Canada during this time period.
Paul, if this is Canada, then what you’re seeing here is one of the very first Tempest/Le Mans in the Great White North. Before this, as you know, there were Beaumonts. 1969 was the last year for those Chevelle variants.
After verifying my memory with the brochures at Old Car Brochures.com, I learned the following:
1) GTO’s were available in Canada beginning in 1969.
2) The 1969 full-size brochure still shows a ’69 Grande Parisienne…which I honestly thought disappeared after 1968 and was replaced by the ’69 Grand Prix. or at least I thought. Maybe the changeover took place in 1970 with the other A-bodies. Again, I could swear Canada got the Grand Prix in ’69.
I remember reading here that certain provisions of the 1965 Auto Pact kicked in for 1970. That may account for the change. But no matter how you look at it, these were indeed the early years for Pontiac-engine Pontiacs in Canada.
Canada DID have the Grand Prix in ’69. It’s 428 engine caused a lot of schoolyard arguments among dummies, too. As in, dude!, the 428 is a Ford engine!.
Bear in mind Canadians rarely saw US Pontiac engines before this, mostly in Firebirds, of the 326, 350 and 400 variety.
So many forget that the original GTO’s were based on the existing mid size Tempest Le Mans coupe, and not a “unique bodyshell” as Mustang/Corvette/Camaro. Hence the backlash on the 2004, saying “looks like other Pontiacs” and “the old ones were style leaders”. But weren’t the Tempests also part of Pontiac family? And also “style leaders” in same vein?
Once saw a post on another forum claiming “Mustang was Ford’s answer to the GTO” Huh? GTO seems to be elevated to ‘untouchable’ status.
I’ve always heard plenty about the muscle car insurance hikes, phony horsepower ratings, and so on–and just spent a few moments with the newspapers online. This article is from Cali in early 1970—seems to be a bellwether state *and* year:
Iowa, 1966 (I forget there’s lots of *state* regulation of insurers):
Texas, 1970:
Ohio (1970 yet again):
This car has been modded.
No LeMans Sport ever came with a scooped hood, and never came in Orbit Orange.
This is just somebodies low-budget attempt to clone a Judge.
LeMans Sport replaced the Tempest Custom S in 1970, and was offered as 2-door coupe or hardtop and a 4-door hardtop. 2-door models were available with bucket and console, and there was a full range of engines, even the six.
Didn’t they have it coming?
“Just check the box here for the engine you want. And you really need a HiFi, right? Don’t worry about ‘suspension’ or ‘brakes’. If you option it up too high, they might not approve your financing.”
Also gotta love the mythos of that era:
GM Corporate Engineering said it couldn’t be done….
But PONTIAC broke the rules because they are the REBELS!!
(Until a huge number of young guys murdered themselves on Pontiac’s over-powered, under-engineered sleds, and the insurance industry came down on them like a shitton of bricks. Pontiac got their ass slapped so hard that two years later they were pretending to sell Duesenbergs.)
Hardly any of these Pontiacs here GMH in Australia cloned all the styling cues for their HQ Holden series but the actual cars didnt emigrate in any numbers.
60’s cars are nice to look at, but they were meant for straight line, not braking and handling. Hence, why there are so many ‘restified’ with modern braking, tires, and suspension parts.
Back in the day it was “go fast” and “bad luck” to even talk about car accidents.
For a TV show connection, the bad guy Tuco Salamanca of Breaking Bad fame showed up in Better Call Saul in a Pontiac that seemed quite similar. In fact, it played an integral part in that it was used by Mike Ermantrout to ‘bait’ Tuco when Mike slightly dinged Tuco’s car, easily outraging Tuco into a beat-down on Mike to get him arrested.
in 1970, there were 28,000,000 new drivers between the ages of 16-20. What is an insurance company to do – even if the collision rate stayed the same? Looking further ahead, they could see another 16,000,000 coming on board within the next seven years! There is simply no way you could do anything but increase the cost of auto insurance during these Boomer/Jones generations between 1950-1964.
Even without muscle cars, the rate would have needed to increase just to cover all the new drivers. No way could auto insurance companies cover the million new drivers in overpowered cars, plus the millions just starting out in family sedans too. So we see a crunch just due to the demographics of the situation.
I got my license on 12/18/69 so I am in that group of 28,000,000. Only, at that time, while I paid for the car and it’s upkeep my father paid for the insurance on the Cougar. I have no idea what that ran him back then.
These cars were so popular and ubiquitous on the streets of America back then. The GM A bodies from 1968 to 1972 were great cars.
This should take you to a MotorTrend Roadkill Garage episode on a T-37. I’m sure they did more, but a quick search just turned up the “Handling” show.
And it’s the GT-37 trim package that is the ‘junior performance car’, not the all T-37’s. Tempest changed to T-37 in mid year 1970 for appeal to budget mid size buyers. Kind of like Ford’s 1970.5 Falcon.
GT-37 came along as a cheap, sporty, trim packge, with 455 HO optional. Continued into 1971, but to add more confusion, the 1972 base A body Pontiac was simply LeMans. Similar to the base Ford mid size car being just Torino. Top trim name usually falls to base trim many times.