For those who may recall, I wrote about this exact 1978 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham back in 2016. I first came across it late one night (or 3 AM one morning to be exact) in the underground parking garage of the Prudential Center in Boston. My friend whom I was with that night told me he’d never seen it move from that very spot, and my several visits to that garage since confirm that. Come 2018 and it’s still there in its usual spot, looking much the same as it did two years ago.
I did notice one very obvious change since last time I photographed it though; it now carries a valid inspection sticker good through the last day of September 2018, its last one having expired over a year prior to when I photographed it back in 2016. This of course means it was driven outside at least once since then, back in September.
It also means that from mechanical, emissions, and safety standpoints, it checks out acceptably, which is something increasingly difficult for older vehicles to do with Massachusetts far more stringent inspection process implemented in mid-2017. Indeed “older” is a very appropriate word to describe this Bonneville Brougham, now having hit the big 4-0 mark.
Also, something I’ve noticed before, but not at the original time of photographing just the driver’s side is that it’s passenger-side rear fender skirt is still there and somewhat intact, unlike the missing or removed driver-side. There’s also some moderate damage to the front quarter panel, likely from side-swiping something, that looks like it’s been there for quite some time. On that note, anyone care to take a guess to how many times this Pontiac has seen a car wash in the last 15 years?
From a personal standpoint, these relatively uncommon B-body Pontiacs always seemed old to me, as during my entire lifetime their very nature of being traditionally-sized, rear-wheel drive, and “Sheer Look” styled Detroit boxes was something of the past. Yet I’m still somewhat astounded by the fact that these downsized B-bodies are now 40 years old. Maybe its my own minor freak out about turning 25 in less than two months talking.
Photographed: The Prudential Center, Back Bay, Boston, MA – February, 2018
Related Reading:
CC Outtake: 1978 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham – High Life Underground
Fantastic photos and update on this old soldier! Every dent, nick, and scrape seems to beg for a story…
I like the contrast on that last picture with the two bimmers. it shows how far we have come in the looks dept…………….unfortunately back in it’s day the Pontiac stood out much more than a BMW does today. i think the Bonnie has far more personality than the two bimmers. as for washing?………probably 2 to 3 years since its last visit to a car wash.
“…I think the Bonnie has far more personality than the two bimmers…”
…more than the two Bimmers COMBINED.
Careful…I think one of those is Brendan’s car…
The BMW parked next to it is indeed my own car.
To each and their own. But I find it highly difficult to see less personality in a modern BMW than this Pontiac. After all, it was little more than a badge-engineered Oldsmobile 88/Buick LeSabre with different front and rear clips.
And at that, it was a product of GM’s “Sheer Look” styling that made everything from subcompacts to full-size look alike each other, and most Fords ad Chryslers for that matter. The whole “all cars today look alike” could really be said about any era, because well, similar products from the same era will always share similarities.
No my friend, look alike syndrome is happening now. back then i could tell a bonnie from a lesabre from a caprice from a delta from an impala etc etc etc!! your car is indeed an amazing ride. but that does’nt mean that from a distance it is as unique looking as bimmers of old. i have mistaken accords for bimmers. i have a 2001 330xi and owned a 09 325, i sold the 09 and went back to a 330xi BMW is now the ultimate tech machine.
Yes and they had their own look. back then i could tell a bonnie from a lesabre from an impala from a caprice etc etc etc. everyone and their mom is trying to look like a bimmer now a days. Your car is indeed an amazing ride which few cars can compare to. but i have mistaken honda accords for BMW’S. I myself drive a 2001 330xi and love it. truth is latter day bimmers are better known as the ultimate tech machine.
my appologies for the double post. it said service unavailable so i re did it.
I have to agree with Brendan. If you can’t tell today’s cars apart it is because you don’t pay attention or don’t care about new cars any more.
I agree with you both, i just am not interested in todays cars as they are pretty much all look alikes(don’t get me started on cuv’s)there are some that stand out today like Cadillac some Chryslers the Corvette is a corvette, camaros and a couple of Fords. Performance wise todays cars are off the charts, really great stuff. but they just don’t excite me at all.
The are so many brands now that knowing all of them is difficult and I certainly do not know them all. However I can see differences.
While the styling of the American brands have always seemed to have a similar look dating back a long time, one of the differences now is everyone seems to have a similar look. Just today I noticed a recent Ford Escape and a Toyota RAV4 parked next to each other, and the side profiles of the two cars are almost identical. Same green house, same windows, same rise in the belt line, same uptick before the D pillar, same chrome strip along the bottom, same placement of the door handles, and so on. I almost wouldn’t be surprised if the doors and glass would interchange between the two cars.
Meanwhile, in 1978 you could be forgiven for mistaking a Ford with a Pontiac, but there’s no way you’d mistake the Ford with a Toyota.
Beauty is in the beholder. Some fans dislike GM’s downsized full size cars after ’76, claiming they “all look alike”.
I don’t think a car wash will help much. GM’s silver lacquer paint was never particularly durable stuff and aged much poorly than other colors with more pigment.
These cars make me feel like an outlier. (Oh, be quiet. 🙂 ) Everyone raves about the beautiful 77-79 Chevrolet version of the B body, yet I never found it very satisfying. There is something about these Pontiacs that I find better. They are heavier, yes, but in this segment heavy and substantial was not really a bad thing. I also always liked the skirts on these cars that Pontiac alone provided. A traditional look, yes. I guess that’s why I like it.
If these cars being 40 is cause for a freak-out, do you mind if I join you?
I’m just old enough that these cars were relatively common during my childhood (born in 1980). So for me it’s cause for a freak-out because if these cars are 40 then that means I almost am, too.
I always kind of liked cars with fender skirts when I was a kid. I have no idea why. I think I just thought it looked kind of neat how the wheel appeared to go up inside the body. I imagine most of the cars I would have seen with them back then would have been these Pontiacs. I’m not sure off the top of my head what other cars with fender skirts would have been on the road back then.
There is something undeniably satisfying about these Pontiac’s styling versus their corporate siblings. To me, they are almost so tacky they’re tasteful.
And by all means join me ?
Those rear wheel skirts are interesting; don’t recall if those were factory equipment or aftermarket (Foxcraft) on those cars.
They were factory and mostly optional, though they may have been standard on the upper level bonnevilles. Pontiac was the Fender Skirt Division of GM even after Cadillac stopped using them.
They were standard on the Bonneville, but my Edmunds price guide does not show them as optional for the Catalina. If they were optional for the Catalina then probably as part of some package?
Skirts were standard equipment on all Bonnevilles, including non-Broughams, for the entire 1977-81 run. Same for 1965-70 and 1975-76 Bonnevilles.
….and not available on the Catalina even as an option. Some (all?) Catalinas had chrome trim around the full rear wheel opening, which would make adding a Bonneville skirt not look good unless the chrome trim was first removed. Also, the chrome strip on the bottom of the Bonneville wheel skirts was designed to line up with the Bonneville-exclusive extra-wide chrome rocker panel trim, which would also make Bonneville wheel covers look out of place on a Catalina.
My fathers 1953 Chieftain Deluxe also had fender skirts. Also had the light -up Indian hood ornament. Now that would have been a cool option on this Poncho.
Never really cared for skirts. Thought they made cars look heavy and ponderous. The worst were Nashes, that even skirted the front wheels with the actual fender.
At least here in Canada, the bottom-line Laurentians and Catalinas did not have fender skirts and they were not even an option; only the top-line Parisiennes (aka Bonnevilles) got them.
Not a fan of silver cars but straighten the bodywork and shoot it black with a red pinstripe and I’d drive that thing.
Funny, my son and I were just discussing some of our old family cars and while digging in the attic I came upon a file with the original paperwork for most, but not all of the 12 new cars I bought in my lifetime. One of them was my 78 Bonneville I bought new on 4/10/78 for the sum of $6250, plus tax. Black 4 door, full power(which did NOT apply to the 301 V8!), whitewalls, wire wheel discs and yes, it came with the fender skirts. I panicked two years later during the gas crisis and foolishly sold it and bought a new 1980 Datsun 510 wagon. Which by the way, I paid $6258 for!
It is so cool that you have most of the old paperwork on your cars. That Bonneville would have been a sweet ride in 1978–but as you note, it is amazing how quickly buyer sentiments changed with the second Oil Embargo. Full-sized cars that had been the “hot” item suddenly became showroom poison, and that’s the reason why the biggies were dropped, downsized, or never updated and simply given a stay of execution–the Big Three saw that the full-sized market was significantly diminished and not likely to return in force, no matter how loyal the owner base was.
According to the Consumer Price Index calculator, $6250 in 1978 works out to roughly $23,888 as of December 2017 – roughly 1/2 of the 2107 median family income of $ 59,000.
The median family income in 1978 was roughly $13,300, so that $6250 Bonneville cost roughly 1/2 the median family income.
The average mid-size car transaction price in January 2017 according to Kelley Blue Book was $25,129.
So, while all these figures are approximate (and then some!) it’s kind of interesting -to me anyhow. The numbers change as the value of the dollars goes down, but the relationships remain pretty much the same.
Note the average transaction price for all vehicles in Jan 2017, was $34,968 ($9,602 in 1978). The average car price for 1978 was $4645 or $16914 in today’s dollars.
Why the difference? Well there weren’t many 60 month loans in 1978 and no 72 month loans. And there there’s the little matter of interest rates: in November 1978 the prime rate was 11.5%. Right now, it’s 4.5%.
So…. it’s easy to see why GM was shaving every penny they could out of costs. They had to get prices down to where people could afford to buy their cars.
I was going to respond, but you hit every point. Great post.
This car was sorta “fancy”, relatively, but it was certainly built to a budget. Used cars now last much longer, the person who bought the averaged priced car in 1978 is pretty much no longer in the new car market.
I’ve soft spot for a 78/79 Bonnies good looking cars especially with the finned hubcaps.
Ditch the 301 for a 326 or 389 and it’d be a good cruiser.
As someone who drives less and less each year, I am always fascinated by cars that sit for weeks or even months…much less years at a time. What kind of bond would make someone hang on to a car that sees almost no use, and which requires money to be expended to let it sit? Wouldn’t it make more sense (cents?) to rent a car?
And unlike a stove, a car can become somewhat unreliable if it is not “exercised” at regular intervals.
There is a Sentra a few blocks from my house that never seems to move, I imagine it to be owned by an older person who no longer drives it.
Maybe sentimental value? Quite a few stories of folks with a car that rarely moves, but they say “I’ll never sell it!”.
As near as I can tell, parking there is quite expensive, so whoever owns the car must use it enough to make it worthwhile. The car does not look dirty, so probably has been washed now and then. I wonder if the rate for long term parking includes a reserved space?
I love downsized GM B bodies from 77 onwards. I have 77 Bonneville Landau Coupe (base non brougham) brown exterior w cream landau top and beige cloth interior All original 8K miles 350 4B, tilt steering, power windows, factory AM/FM, factory AC.
“Maybe its my own minor freak out about turning 25 in less than two months talking.”
Unfortunately we seem to get old rather quickly. Sometimes cars seem to age slower by compare
My Dad had a ’77 Brougham. It was easily the quietest, best riding, most comfortable car he’d owned up to that time (a long string of full sized Pontiacs, broken by a ’74 Grand Prix). It was amazing to see how far cars had come with the 1977 GM’s, and equally so to see how far they’ve come since.
Take a drive up to the Cambridgeside Galleria and have a look around the lowest level of the garage. You’ll find an Edsel and a Model T.
Thanks for the tip! I’ll have to check it out very soon as I’d be very curious to find that Edsel!
My parents had a ’77 version of this car that was later passed down to my older brother. It was never officially mine but I do recall having exclusive use of it for about one college semester. Although a Brougham, the ’77 had rather restrained interior trim (except the wonderfully thick carpet that also covered the door bottoms, the area under the front seats where the bottom of your legs hit if you stretch out (nice touch), and even the trash bin mounted to the passenger-side kick panel.
The loose-cushion seats associated with Broughams started with this ’78 for the Bonne. Which reminds me of something I hope someone here can answer: exactly what did GM do to these overstuffed seats in later years to make the upholstery less wrinkly? For the Bonneville, the change occurred after only a year. The ’79 interior (shown below) carries over the sew pattern introduced on the ’78, yet the velour is now skin-tight rather than wrinkly, which gives it a much more restrained look. This happened again when the wrinkly ’81 Bonneville Brougham interior was revived for the Pariseinne Brougham a few years later, the same year they brought back the Bonneville rear sheetmetal, as well as to many Buicks.
You raise a really intriguing topic and question that I unfortunately don’t have an answer to. Anyone else here have any info?
Back in ’92 I had a girlfriend who needed a car, and she found a ’78 Bonneville at an oceanfront condo in Daytona Beach for $300. Definitely worn, missing it’s skirts, hubcaps, and driver’s door glass, but otherwise straight with just moderate rust (it was parked just yards from the ocean for over a decade) in all white. It ran well, and the gray, velour, broughamtastic interior was nice, save for the faded fabric. She named it “Bonnie” (I never said she was creative). Turned out the driver’s door window regulator was rusted out, and that was beyond my abilities, so she just lived with it and a trash bag at night. Then one day it overheated on I-4 north of Orlando. Me and her pulled it back to Jacksonville with my ’86 Mazda B2000. The radiator was shot, so I bought a new one and installed it myself; the old one was so rusty it weighed half that of the replacement. While removing the transmission cooling lines, one was so rusty I damaged it during removal; so off to the u-pull-it junkyard I went. Fortunately I brought the old line with me. Now, I would of thought that all GM full-size cars of that era were generally identical under the skin, but they are not. After finding that Chevy and Oldsmobile were shaped/bent completely different, I finally found a Pontiac and an acceptable line. After getting it fixed, I took it and a trash bag (for the open window) to the automatic car wash, as she had never washed it nor had the previous owners for some time. She thought it was a waste of money, but the car did look slightly better.
My last view of the car, and her, was seeing that rusty rear bumper when we broke up and her heading home to Largo, near Tampa.
Brendan;
I can relate back to the big deal of turning 25. My line for years was that guys had six important birthdays in their life;
1) turning 5 and starting school
2) turning 13 and starting to date
3) turning 16 and driving
4) turning 19 and legal to drink (yeah Canada!)
5) turning 25 and now being considered a full fledged adult by others (if not yourself)
6) turning 40 and no longer caring about birthdays because you are OLD!!!
Now closing in on 55, I realize life has much more to offer as you get older if you keep your mind open to learning and new experiences. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t switch this achy 54 year old carcass for to be a fit and physical 25 year old like you if given the chance, but NOT if I had to give up the life experience I’ve had along the way.
Enjoy 25 Brendan. As the old Carpenters song says “you’ve only just begun”
( It really was 40 years ago these came out?? Wow I’m getting…?)
Thanks Bill for your kind words and I couldn’t agree more with you.
Even just in the past year or so I’ve come to truly find that regarding life, you get what you give.
The crushed velours looks……crushed.
I’m confused, is Prudential Centre a shopping mall? If so, I’m surprised they would lease long term parking. Is that common in the USA (it’s not in Canada)?
That confused me too. “Prudential Centre” sounds like an office building, but most office buildings don’t have department stores in them, and I can’t imagine the folks running that Lord & Taylor wouldn’t consider an old rusty dented car parked right outside their store anything but an eyesore they need to get rid of somehow, with the majesty of a ’77-’79 GM B body daily (well every-few-monthly) driver being completely lost on them.
There are apartments nearby. The rent for parking is on the order of $500 per month as near as I can tell, but perhaps there is some arrangement with the apartment building?
Prudential Center is what’s called a mixed use development – there is a shopping mall (retail), office building, and residential units. It’s next to a convention center and some hotels (such as the Sheraton Boston). So they would offer monthly parking to cover the office building workers and the residential owners.
One of these still pops up regularly on Craigslist or cars.com in my area. And there are a couple of really mint examples cruising the car shows with one particular example being a coupe with snowflake alloys a Buick 350, dark blue exterior and light blue interior. I think the mileage on that one was around 62K. I also remember seeing a low mileage black on black 1978 with the Pontiac 400 that was selling for an asking price of 14,995 but can’t remember where that was.
Of course the best way to order one of these would be a 1978 version with the optional rally or snowflake wheels in coupe body with the extra cost bucket seats and gauge cluster and rally suspension upgrade. The 1979/80 would be nice too with the top 350 V8 option.