Let’s travel back to 1982 or so, and see what the Pontiac studio is up to, preparing a new generation of Bonneville to sit on the FWD H-Body platform. Here’s a rather light and airy design, with a familiar/familial front end.
And this one has a familiar front end too; straight off a late version Fiero. It’s a rather dynamic design.
Too bad the final product ended up looking like a LeSabre with a new nose.
Well, yeah a baby blue LE with wire wheels and chrome accents looks like a Lesabre.
Still, you could get one with some flair:
I wonder why they didn’t do an H-body Bonneville coupe? That would have looked hot. Also, I’ve always wondered why Chevrolet never got the H platform. Or did it? I think not. The Lumina’s a W, and the Caprice stayed a B all the way until ’96.
I’m not certain, but didn’t the full-size Caprice Classic Brougham LS Gucci Edition (or whatever it was called) sell so well through the eighties that they just kept spitting them out? Like the Cadillac (Fleetwood) Brougham.
Chevrolet was going to get an H-body, the Lumina was originally penned way back in 1982 as the FWD Caprice, my guess as to why they didn’t do a Bonneville coupe was because there really hadn’t been one since 1981, the Bonneville G was sedan only, with the Grand Prix as its coupe counterpart, by this time the large coupes were on life support anyway, within a couple of years the LeSabre and Delta 88 coupe were DOA too.
Grand Prix was Pontiac’s full size coupe. Chevrolet never got H because the Caprice kept going and Celebrity sales were strong. Pontiac wasn’t supposed to get the Parisienne but sales in Canada were strong and people wanted the full size Pontiac so it came back. Bonneville H bigger than G almost as big inside as B so it fulfilled the niche.
The SSE Bonneville for 1988-on was hot and popular. Sort of like a bigger STE.
For 1987-88 Bonneville had wire wheel option. They look factory black center cap with silver Pontiac crest outline. STE started the red dash lighting for Pontiac in 1983 made a trademark until the end.
Oldsmobile was too far gone but I think Pontiac could have been saved.
Red dash lights started with the 1979 10th Anniversary Trans Am first
“Grand Prix was Pontiac’s full size coupe”
But Olds and Buick had coupes built off of the same design as the Grand Prix, and they still got H-body coupes.
I think the reasons were as stated in the above posts: Neither of the vehicles the H-body Bonneville was more-or-less replacing (G-body Bonneville and B-body Parisienne) had come as coupes, and it must have been clear by this point that the H-body Olds and Buick coupes were slow sellers and weren’t long for the world. The B-body Caprice coupe was also on its last legs; full-size coupes were on their way out in general. So why bother with a H-body Bonneville coupe?
The reason Chevy never got an H-body coupe is obviously because they kept building the B-body Caprice. But there must have been a plan for an H-body Chevy (or some similar-sized FWD counterpart, along the lines of what Carmine wrote) at one point, before falling gas prices led GM to decide to keep the B-body Caprice around. In 1981, people believed that the B-bodies and other traditional fullsize RWD cars would be extinct by the middle of the decade, with the RWD A-/G-body possibly to take over the fullsize role temporarily for a couple of years until the H-bodies were ready. Pontiac was the only GM division to actually take that plunge, only to reverse course after a year. Chrysler went in that direction and never looked back, junking the R-bodies and promoting the M-bodies to fullsize status.
Pontiac never expected to build a “full size” car anymore, with the 1984 reorganization Chevrolet Pontiac would build smaller cars and Buick Olds Cadillac larger ones. Back in the early 80s, as we were led to believe at Olds, that Pontiac was slated to build performance models only which negated the need for a traditional full size car. The Bonneville G lingered both due to popularity and the need to continue the name while the H cars debuted. The Parisienne was brought back to the US from Canada by demand and lingered sort of how like the Brougham Cadillac did. When the divisions were folded into the corporate planning for 1984 the marketing and sales units were combined and planned centrally rather than from down below. Cadillac retained separate sales and marketing and eventually engineering again in 1987. As early as 1985, we were told that Oldsmobile would focus on European flavored cars, Pontiac strictly performance models, Cadillac was Cadillac, Buick be the most traditional “American” flavored car, Chevrolet the volume value line. Some stuff didn’t make sense like the H Bonneville having wire wheel covers but since almost 60% of 86 models had them, it was offered to placate the lovers. Same reason why a bench/column shift Toronado was offered. Bonneville H also came out one year later than the others. Pontiac was always pushing hard to attract younger buyers with the performance models like the did in the 1960s, but still had a small but significant base of traditionalists that always made things a compromise. My grandmother’s last car was 1984 Bonneville, she had purchased 2 Pontiacs prior to that and fell into that camp. She did not care for the 87 Bonneville and her last car purchased new at 84 years old was an 87 Caprice.
The Lumina was expected to be the largest Chevrolet, but continued popularity of the Celebrity and continued popularity of the Caprice (especially for fleets) kept those models alive.
IMO, the 1984 reorganization really messed things up and more or less caused most of the problems. Even with badge engineered cars, each division could have had more control over their car lines, sales, and marketing and have differentiated the cars better. I was not in advance planning so I did not see a lot of the effect of that but did on the back side.
Whats even stranger is that Pontiac continued to offer a bench seat Bonneville all they way into the 2000’s last gen Bonneville, it was like a sporty blackwall tired LeSabre, you could even still get a leather bench a few years.
There was actually a guy on the Bonneville forums that tried to make a ’87-’91 Bonneville coupe out of a Lesabre coupe.
Sadly, it was harder than you would expect (a lot of the Bonneville stuff doesn’t line up quite right) and the project was abandoned.
Was the Chevy Corsica built on the H?. I haven’t seen one in about a decade so can’t remember.
Exactly. Never saw that combo where I live! One baby blue, but none of those awful wheel covers! (Are they even factory?)
They were factory, as Craig noted earlier, in ’87 and ’88.
But they weren’t shown in the ’87 full-line brochure, so it’s almost like Pontiac was offering them only because they had to, for “traditional buyers” (or perhaps to placate dealers).
@ ajla – Nice! Road & Track had a very positive review of the ’87 Bonneville SE. I can’t vouch for the LG3-powered cars, but the LN3-powered examples in ’88-’91 were a nice combination of comfort, roominess, and performance at their price point. I’m not as big a fan of the SSE, which signaled the dawn of the Cladding Era at Pontiac.
Pontiac missed the boat in so many ways with their H-body when it debuted. Bland styling, lackluster interior appointments, only adequate motorvation. I guess those concept drawings were a bit too off the platform specs. Too bad. Any one of them would have been preferable to what they ended up with.
I love the H-body 2-doors, but the 4-door roofline always looked awkward to me. It’s kind of vertical and kind of slanty, and can’t decide what it wants to be. The C-body’s defiantly formal, big-greenhouse shape worked better, especially on the Electra and 98. The first concept shown here looks more like the 1978 LeMans than the H-body, but the beltline and greenhouse on that car worked better than the H.
Many of the early concepts for the C and H sedans had styling touches that finally made it to production in the 1991-1992 C and H major restyles. Note the semi-flush windshield and curvier beltline from the first clay mock up.
Carmine, that pic looks quite a bit like my dear old Dad’s. For what a good seller that generation of Bonnevilles seem to be pretty rare on the used market. Much rarer than the LeSabres of the era.
Maybe because the Bonnevilles were actually driven… 😛
I remember a friend of my old mans rented one of these when they first came out, I thought they were awesome, I remember the all red lit dash full of gauges.
I got to spend a lot of time behind the wheel of my uncle’s ’94 the summer I turned 16 and got my license. I loved that car. The seats were soft but supportive, vs. the Lesabre I later had that was soft and saggy. This era Bonneville would be the antidote to yesterday’s question about uncomfortable cars. And the 3800 sure could lay a patch!
That second picture looks like an ’82 Firebird sedan. I like it!
I was thinking the same thing, a 4 door firebirdish Bonneville could have been like an attainable(poor man’s ?) late 70’s/early 80’s Aston Martin Lagonda. I want to add also that I think designers should have to accurately model the day light opening as heavily and oppressive as possible from the start. They do these airy thin pillared frameless glass things that never see the light of day. Someone said the original Zephyr/MKZ was the 2002 Continental concept in the flesh at reduced scale, and I think they were right, but after compromising on the size and the heavy handed door frames you have lost any elegance the concept had- just like with this Bonneville.
Four door Firebird – my thoughts exactly. Neat to think about… but if there’d been as many of those in the world as there are actual production Bonnies, the coolness factor would have gone down in a hurry.
And yes, the color scheme/wire wheelcovers don’t do the ‘real life example’ above any favors.
Nailed it! Especially in black and gold.
I do like the 1st one, it just needs to be in a better color.
82 J2000 Sunbird nose meets 80 Pontiac Catalina on a FWD 82 A6000 chassis…What’s not to like? Lol
That first one look like an elongated Sunbird with a bigger greenhouse and GP booty
Meh.
I love looks back at these old concept mock-ups/drawings. So much of coulda-shoulda-woulda.
More please!
This is such a great site.
I would like to know if there was an H body Chevy planned. And, what were some of the reasons the W body Lumina was delayed, and pics of prototypes.
There was, but Chevrolet decided to keep the B-body in production instead, the Lumina was longer than all the first W’s and Chevrolet wanted it to launch with a sedan and a coupe, unlike the 1988 W’s which were all coupes. I imagine there was a combo of a few factors, the Celebrity still sold really well even in 87-88, the old Monte Carlo was still selling in decent numbers and Chevrolets first FWD mini-van, which was part of the Lumina line at first too, as the Lumina APV wasnt ready until 1990 either, Chevrolet wanted a full Lumina line up from the get go.
In the first two pictures, it looks as if there’s no pillar between the front and rear doors, so I wonder if they were intended to be hardtops.