Sometimes, individual cars tell a story by representing profound corporate triumph or failure. Other times, cars seem to speak to the conditions they lived their life in. Occasionally, they can reveal the personality that customized them. Today’s junked rarity with a bad toupee represents all three.
It would take some time to make sense behind the idea to bestow Pontiac’s supposedly rakish –yet slow-selling– late ’70s X-body coupe with a vision-blocking slab of fake convertible top. All to transform it into, presumably, a mobile brothel. This is a car that has some stories to tell; not just from its ill-fated conception but its probably hard-partying life as well.
Yes, you are seeing this correctly. The entirety of the rear side glass has been intentionally obscured with and ambitious faux convertible top. The sheer size of this project has brought with it one of the largest cases of vinyl top cancer I’ve ever seen. Check out the length of that rust-through!
The fake snap rings call to mind the Landau-fied Mustang we saw here a while ago, where the fake snap rings went over the hatchback. And it’s difficult to notice, since the fabric has pulled away, but the material was attached under the additional chrome trim on the trunk lid. This means the faux convertible top moved with the trunk lid, requiring that convenient slit to relieve the tension.
That’s not where this car’s builder ended his crimes against good taste; the side glass naturally still exists under the added bling. A layer of gross old foam and designed-in rust lay beneath it.
But they didn’t cover up the inside! You just had to sit there in the shadow of this monstrosity looking at that scabby old glue! C’mon now. A simple strip of fabric would have made the execution vastly more cohesive.
Given the only reason I presume for creating such a massive blind spot would be to protect potential intimacy, this shoddy workmanship might put a damper on the mood.
Fortunately, we know who was to blame for rendering the back seat of this budget Pontiac conveniently opaque. Since Grady was kind enough to sign his car.
This particular example of the Pontiac Phoenix is so thoroughly used up that it’s difficult to see its formerly upscale intentions. Pontiac’s rather lackluster effort at dressing up the Chevy Nova with a gigantic schnoz deserves more attention than I can write here (links below), but it was not met with great enthusiasm from the market.
As someone born long after Phoenixes vanished from the streets, it took me poring over full model line brochures and discovering a familiar face lurking in the background to notice the Phoenix existed at all.
Other divisions did well initially with the early RWD X Body, but the first generation Phoenix has been mostly forgotten thanks to its short ’77-’79 production run. Its similar Grand Am and LeMans in-house competitors were more popular.
The Phoenix was already one of the more cynical products of GM’s family of downsized compacts. The deeply questionable modifications done to this particular doomed Pontiac only enhance the malaisey mood. It’s hard not to see this car as the culmination of a series of poor decisions for both Pontiac and Grady alike.
Related CC reading:
Cohort Classic: 1975-79 Pontiac Ventura & Phoenix – Seeking Greater Fortune
This is both literally and metaphorically a shady car. It says Grady’s Pontiac on the side but I can’t help but think Grady’s Shady Lady. Of course we don’t know what Grady’s line of work was…
The front facia looks much more Oldsmobile than Pontiac. What a crime.
That singular large body-coloured ‘bumper guard’ centrally located on the front bumper, never appeared well-integrated. It looked tacked on, but did help easily identify these Pontiacs, from long distances on the highway.
Grady used to cruise his Phoenix, back in the ’90s.
Seeing this brought back memories of living in the Fort Lauderdale area. The older people were convinced that adding a top like this was well worth the dealer mark up!
My FIL and I were at a LM dealer looking at a Mercury Sable wagon. On the sales floor was a new Town Car where this style of top was installed, plus they had added the Mark series trunk lid design with the spare tire look. The dealer was asking something like $4-5000 extra for those “upgrades”!
Wow! Doesn’t that just top everything?
The original headliner has dropped and been removed; that’s what it looks like when that happens.
This may be the least convincing fake convertible top I’ve ever seen. Pontiac offered a decent-looking vinyl landau style roof with reduced-size opera windows on the Phoenix coupe if you wanted a similar appearance, and it didn’t look bad.
There certainly were lots of “personal luxury coupes” in the ’70s with thick C pillars, sometimes with tiny opera windows. Was this really for, uh, privacy?
The other X bodies got a new dash for 1977, but the Phoenix kept on with the 1968 Chevy II dashboard for whatever reason.
It doesn’t have to exclusively be for that certain kind of privacy but that’s the line I went with. It makes it easier to lambast. My main criticism is that the windows were totally covered up and they were pretty large windows to begin with.
(I wasn’t questioning you specifically, I just never gave much thought to why the landau-roof look was popular and assumed it was just about aesthetics; it didn’t occur to me it could also be about making it hard for other people to see inside)
How common was this sort of fake top thing on American streets back in the day? I realize it might well depend where you were; was it a regional affectation? Now it’s an object of derision; it’s hard to imagine someone ordering a new car and doing this to it; is that just my non-US culture showing? I know we’re enthusiasts here, but did the general non-enthusiast actually think this was cool back then – or was Grady an aberration?
It seems ludicrous. Surely everyone knew a four-five-six seater convertible this size would have side windows? Windows reduced in size would have worked, but been more work to puill off successfully. But then you’d still have that fake top spilling over onto the trunk. This shape really does not work as a faux-convertible. And to leave the windows uncovered inside would be like a permanent memorial to the visibilty you could have had.
I have this thing about being aware of my surroundings. Situational awareness. This would be like driving a panel van, constantly checking your mirrors. If you want to make your ride stand out, go ahead, there are plenty of things you can do without compromising its function.
Just my two cents, Peter. So many art cars, or autos with outlandish continental kits, etc., have appeared here at CC. Most of these difficult to rationalize alterations, are one offs. Perhaps, the owner meant it in humour? Or they did it, because of youthful enthusiasm. Boredom. Or they didn’t care much, for the fate of the car. You’re going to have strange things done, to the odd car. Seeming irrational, when done to a perfectly nice car. Especially, in a country as large as the US, with so many people, and cars. And a strong car culture. Its not indicative of a trend. People get tattoos, they later regret. Could be a myriad of reasons, someone choose to do this. AS you can relate, sheet metal can be a palette. Or a target. lol
With my comment above, I was referencing the once very popular character, ‘Grady Wilson’, from the US TV program Sanford and Son. Perhaps the best known ‘Grady’ in the US, for decades. I loved that show as a kid. And was very fond of the character, ‘Grady’, played by actor Whitman Mayo.
Many people don’t have the care or compassion for old cars, quite the way most of the fans here at CC do. I think we empathize with the sad fate of some of these cars, more than the general population. It is not a common thing, though.
I’ve seen ironic takes in vinyl roofs that used fake crocodile skin and even camo print (on an Elantra!) but the vast majority really don’t seem to be in on the joke. One particularly bad one that springs to mind was an Altima with a sunroof that appeared to be a “Florida Retirement Village Special.”
Is there a larger market on the planet, for consumer products people don’t need? And people willing to fork over the money, for such products.
Fake convertible tops like this were actually very popular in some parts of the US. I grew up in Philadelphia, and in the middle- to late 1980s, it was rare to see a Cadillac or Lincoln without one. And at the time, I often thought whether people coming here from other countries thought how dumb those things looked.
This 1978 example must be from the very beginning of the trend – can’t remember seeing many in the ’70s, and by 2000, the trend largely faded away.
For what it’s worth, I never understood the appeal.
The traditional landau roof wasn’t exactly trying to sell itself as a convertible. The biggest tell is if it’s a full length vinyl roof with snap rings. It’s the dishonest fake convertibles that I really mind. The standard land yacht padded roof isn’t the worst look on some of them.
As far as I can tell, the Fake Convertible Roof trend got a major boost from the optional “Carriage Roof” on late 1970s Lincoln Mark V’s. Other examples probably existed at the time, since our featured Pontiac was from the same era, but I assume it was this Lincoln option that raised the trend’s visibility.
These early Lincoln roofs were curious because they attempted to give a “convertible look” (covered the opera windows, and had a fake seam on the back), but they didn’t have snap rings or fake humps from make-believe convertible roof bars – all of which became common in the 1980s.
For the mainstream market, Ford started offering the carriage roof on the 1980 Mustang. Chrysler also offered a similar faux convertible roof treatment on the 1980 Dodge Mirada.
I have no idea. But I assumed this Pontiac, was given this treatment much more recently. And not in ‘professional’ hands.
Given the depreciation curve of X Bodies, I doubt it was converted more than two years after it rolled off the showroom floor.
A friend of my sister’s had a mid-’80s Cutlass Supreme with a fake convertible top that covered over the back windows. (The car had originally belonged to her friend’s grandmother.)
I sat in that rear seat many times, and hated it. Yes, you looked through a glass window at… nothing. Oddly enough, I came across two pictures of that car, and was just thinking of writing an article about it. Sometime this year, I will.
Yes, please do. I’m oddly fascinated by truly bad faux convertible roofs as I came along only after the trend had pretty fully died out. You’d see the occasional Camry with a full length toupee but it wasn’t common.
Oh my – Poor Grady! There have been cars I have been proud enough of to have my name emblazoned on the sides, but such treatment would have ruined the car for me.
And I agree that I don’t believe I have ever seen a fabric roof treatment that is so poorly conceived.
I was in my early 20’s during the fake convertible years, I used to snicker and cringe whenever I saw one!
My Mom had a 1979 Phoenix in that same color. It seems like there were so many brown cars in that era. Hers was the 2 adoor with the V6 engine. Many people have said that engine was a real dog. I am too young to remember much about how that car drove, but I remember it had a nice comfortable cloth interior and a good sounding radio with tape deck. Badge engineering at it’s finest as there were several of these x-body vehicles in our family and friends at that time. We lived close to a Pontiac/Buick dealership so there were a few Ventura’s and a couple of Skylarks – my Mom had the only Phoenix. My grandma of course had a 4 door Nova and our neighbors had a Omega hatchback. It seemed like everyone had these vehicles until around the mid eighties and they were all replaced by GM A or J bodies.