(first posted 1/11/2014) The streets of Los Angeles just keep delivering lovely Curbside Classics! Heading out to lunch on a Saturday, I spotted this pristine 1963 Bonneville Convertible sitting in the parking lot of Paddy O’s, a local bar and grille. You may recall that the ’63 Pontiac has received positive press here in the past – Paul wrote a loving ode to a 1963 big Pontiac four door (in Catalina guise) back in July of last year.
In his article, Paul called the Pontiac four door “The Sexiest Big Sedan of Its Time,” and I’d be hard-pressed to disagree with him. Mind you, if the four door sedan is sexy, it goes without saying that the convertible is off the charts. I suppose if Buick offered a Riviera convertible in 1964, the Catalina might have had some competition, but GM never made one. Of course, given the reach of the internet, perhaps we can find one for comparison…
Yep, someone out there did build one, and we’ve got a picture. It’s quite sexy, but as this Buick is a home built “phantom” one-off, our Bonneville remains the champ by default.
Even at rest, the body’s form produces an impression of motion, a characteristic shared by all these big Pontiacs. The forward thrust of the headlight bucket, the rearward flow of the side spear, and the angled cut of the bumper all combine to create the effect. The car’s owner need not waste any money on gas, he only has to drop the top at the local drive-in burger joint, slide into the front seat, and lean back. No need to turn the wheels, the car takes flight standing still.
In this picture, we see a glow from above. Perhaps angels have come from heaven for a viewing, offering their voices in a rapturous hymn as they gaze upon its perfect flanks. The light use of chrome accents the sculptured sheet metal, staying well clear of that overdone, cheap look so common a few years earlier. Without a doubt, this is the best angle from which to admire the car, top down.
And while the top is down, let’s step up and admire that magnificent dashboard. A child of the seventies, I missed out on yearly model changes. Manufacturers changed front and rear clips in my day, but left much of their cars’ bones intact. Hoods were used for multiple model years, and door skins almost never changed. I remember the same dashboard being used in the Pinto from 1971 to 1980. But when researching this car, I found that in addition to yearly sheet metal changes, dashboards also saw major revisions from year to year!
That’s part of the magic of what sets these cars apart from those made of today. While Pontiac was building this car, legislators in DC and Sacramento were drafting laws that would divert designers’ and engineers’ attention from making yearly changes. In addition, the manufacturers themselves were adding compacts and intermediates to their lines, further diluting resources. Following VW’s and Studebaker’s lead, the days of yearly model changes were numbered and that number was coming up fast.
But enough nostalgia, let’s talk more Bonneville. I’m not sure which engine this Poncho is packing, but I know all Bonnevilles arrived with at least 389 cubic inches of V-8 power, enough to make this the most common view for other motorists. In addition to engines which offered “adequate” power, this top line Pontiac also came a four-speed Hydramatic. This transmission provided stout service and superior fuel economy (according to my father), which is a win-win in my book.
Earlier this week I railed against stacked rectangular headlights, but I’m perfectly satisfied with these stacked round units. Perhaps it’s because a round shape makes more sense for a parabolic reflector, or maybe it’s just their outboard location, but they perfectly frame the classic Pontiac split grille. It seems to me that most cars of this era strive for an imposing presence as they pull up to the office, church, or neighbor’s house, and this Bonneville delivers by the boatload.
Finally, let’s take a look at these 8-lug wheels. Although you may see them mounted on other cars of this era, they were an exclusive Pontiac option from 1960 to ’68. It’s hard to say, but it’s likely they are original to the car. Commonly thought to be aluminum wheels, they are actually made of steel and bolted to finned aluminum brake drums. This design provided improved cooling and reduced brake fade. The drums had an iron liner, with eight lugs around the outside which then bolted to the steel wheel.
Here’s a picture of the front and rear drums off the car, with the wheels in place (and trim rings removed). While they look quite different from the standard wheels, you can see that the hubs of the front brake drums mounted to spindles, while the rear drums bolted to axle flanges like a normal wheel. Once these brake drums were mounted, the 8-lug wheels could just bolt on to the eight lugs, front or rear.
That’s all I have to say about this big American beast, only two years younger than I am. It’s up to all of you to weigh in with memories that may be more personal, or even derived from direct experience. Have at it!
Nice article, stacked light Pontiacs were the bomb.
GM did make a prototype of a Riviera convertible, it’s featured in Collectible Automobile Feb 2007. Ragtop with an electric body-flush tonneau lid gave very clean lines. The photos were taken November 1962, so I don’t know if it was road going or just a rolling body. Functioning top would suggest a powerplant. Hopefully it wasn’t crushed.
I’ve seen the pictures, I think it was a fiberglass bodies mock up from what I recall.
It’s a really good solution, almost makes the coupe look like an afterthought. Still, I’d rather have a 65 Pontiac than a Riviera.
Definitely General Motors at its height. This year was pretty much Pontiac’s best, and proof that there was a lot more to the marque than GTO and Firebird. Unfortunately, within two years it started to get fat, bloated, and eventually . . . . . brougham.
Take the Bonneville, put the Grand Prix along side, and you were talking automotive heaven, full size version.
I said the same thing with Paul’s 63 sedan write up, but I consider the 65-66 to be as desirable as the 63-64. 1965 may have been the beginning of the end, but what a glorious beginning! I believe Pontiac was running at full strength through at least 67 (I also do like the 67 full size). The 68 Lemans/GTO was well done, but the full size was starting to get a bit stodgier. Of course, the 69 Grand Prix was a tour de force.
In DeLorean’s book, one of the things he talked about was a plan to downsize all of the ’69 model standard Pontiacs to the “G” (extended “A”) platform. The reason he wanted to do this is described in the above post. He felt that the cars were becoming to big and fat, and had lost the youthful appeal of just a few years before. While the 14th floor boys approved of the styling clays, he never got full approval, being allowed to do only specialty product based on this concept. This came to fruition as the 1969 Grand Prix.
First car I owned was a triple aqua 63 Bonneville convertible. Such a sweet ride!! Spoiled me for life!!!
I know that time marches on for just about everything, but seeing this car makes me even more angry that GM managed to run Pontiac (and Oldsmobile) on the rocks, just like Hazelwood did to the Exxon Valdez.
Absolutely agree about Pontiac and Oldsmobile Divisions. grrr
In my opinion, GM led the way in styling back then, and the ’63 Pontiacs were the best. If I ever own a car from the year of my birth, one of these (or a Grand Prix) would fit the bill nicely. Make mine red or black.
GM at its best. How the mighty has fallen…
I know, everything just sucks today right…..and I know everything else in the US has just gone swimmingly since 1963 right?…..its just GM that has gone off the rails……
It is a pretty car though, probably one of Pontiacs best from the era.
Pontiac did the stacked headlight look better than anybody, and here’s a prime example. That Poncho looks beautiful from any angle.
This started my day on a positive note! AC, console, wheels – awesome! Did it have power windows?
While I love any ’60s vert, GM probably should have done a convertible Riviera and later a Toronado, dropping the Electra and 98 that didn’t sell in very big numbers.
My ’65 Riv had the factory wire wheel covers and proper ’60s narrow whites. A better look IMHO.
Not to mention that it has the combination of the both the vacuum gauge on the console and the tachometer on the left side of the dash.
What someone did to that Riviera is nothing short of sacrilege, it was designed and built to be a coupe, not a convertible. The Pontiac is gorgeous
Stunning,as is the Riviera convertible.Hard to believe that Pontiac made cars like this and now they’re no more.Where did it go wrong?
Gorgeous car, Dave, and a lucky find. It really is the perfect car for cruising around the 1960s Southwest. I can easily imagine sitting in the back seat as the sun sets and being pushed back as the rear end of the car squats down and shoots out spent hydrocarbons.
Beautiful. I saw a similar ’64 in Blue a while back, and those old cars really make an impression in person that no photograph can really capture. The styling is trim, without the breeder hips of the subsequent ’65 model (which to my eyes is still a good-looking car), but the cars are just massive by today’s standards.
Beautiful. My Grandma had a 64 Catalina for a couple of years, and I have a soft spot for those. The 64 is very rarely seen any more. At the time I liked this tail end better than the 63, but have changed my mind over the years.
Nothing wrong with breeder hips- on cars OR especially women 🙂 .
+1
Damn skippy!
I prefer the ’64 over the ’63.
My dad had a ’64 Bonnie as a company car, and when it was time for a new one, he bought the ’64 for my mom. It stayed in our family until 1969, when a guy rounding the corner smacked into the back of the poor Bonneville. Ended up selling it to the man who took care of our swimming pool, he fixed it up and kept it for many years beyond that.
Love the styling of the 1963-1968 full size Pontiacs. One of my favorite cars of all time.
This car is stunning, undeniably one of the most beautiful cars of the 60s (if not the second half of the 20th century). And thanks for the in-depth description of those 8 lug wheels – I never understood how those worked.
These Bonnevilles are really unique in another respect – The Bonnie was the only Pontiac that still used the old 4 speed Jetaway HydraMatic (and Cadillac was the only other GM car to use it). The benefit was that you avoided the troublesome 3 speed Roto HydraMatic that was in Catalina/GP and in all Oldsmobiles. I never understood the Buick trannys of this era to be really fabulous, either. I would have to say that the 63 Bonneville and the 63 Cadillac were the only cars coming out of GM that had really first-rate powertrains. The Chevy setup was certainly durable, but the 2 speed Powerglide was sub-optimal.
So, this makes one of the very rare cars to come out of GM in the first half of the 60s that had essentially zero compromises, either stylistically or mechanically. No wonder Dodge and Mercury had such trouble selling cars in 1963. I would very happily own one of these today.
The one downside to the 4-speed Hydramatic was that it didn’t shift as smoothly as some of the others, although I don’t have any firsthand experience with that. And I wonder how noticeable that actually was by this point since it was deemed suitable for Cadillac use right until it’s end. Personally, unless it felt completely broken, I’d gladly take the harsher shifts along with the rest of it’s virtues.
In my 63 Cadillac, the 1-2 shif was smooth but very soon. The 2-3 shift was the most noticeable (though not really rough) and the final shift onto 4 was quite smooth. That low first gear was something, I could burn rubber in a 5200 pound car from a stop. All in all, I liked the way it drove.
Yip, my ’63 Cad does the same. When it’s shifting from 2-3 you feel a slight jerk. Shifts from 1-2 and from 3-4 are unnoticeably smooth.
Won’t try burning rubber with a 57 year old car though…
The 3-4 shift in the four-speed Hydramatic was noticeable because it involved the release of one gearset, and engaging another. They had to be properly timed. Too slow and the shift was smooth but felt slippy, too fast and it was rough.
In those last four-speed Hydros, 3-4 was especially smooth because it involved no bands or clutches…only the filling of a fluid coupling with transmission fluid.
The Roto Hydra-Matic had a bit of a jerk – not bad, but noticeable too . . . remember folks; these had no torque converter but relied on fluid-coupling . . .
Concur. The lesser Pontiacs of the day had to make do with the 3-speed Roto Hydra Matic (sadly, that included the Grand Prix) . . . . Bonnies got to keep the far superior 4 speed unit through ’64 . . .
Oldsmobile 98’s used the four speed Hydra-Matic through 1964 . . .
I had understood that the 98 used the Roto as well, but I am open to being schooled on this point.
All full-size Oldsmobiles used the Roto-Hydramatic through 1964.
While not qualified to address the technical merits of the Hydramatic, experience has taught me that service and repair is a challenge. Anyone considering owning one should research available qualified repair professionals. I should have.
I have trouble understanding that the same folks who made this beauty also made the colonnades. Fashion is a strange beast.
I know, its like the same country that went to the moon has to hitch rides with the Russians to get out into space today?
Either way, fashion, she is a strange a cruel mistress, I always have contended that the Colonnades probably looked great as design concepts, but by the time bumpers and all the other “realities” were added to the design, the results were mixed.
“I know, its like the same country that went to the moon has to hitch rides with the Russians to get out into space today?”
Huh? I was commenting on design trends, not hating on GM per se. This particular snotty Carmine reply seems to have been misaddressed. 😉
Top down, Tunes up, It does not get any better than a 63 Pontiac Convertible….nice wheel 🙂 ….GM at its height!
What more can I add? Automotive heaven. Of course, since lust was one of the seven deadly sins, maybe it’s automotive hell. Works for me.
That one shot of the front fender, lights and wheel is superb, and perfectly encapsulates this car. Great write-up, Dave. A heavy dose of sunshine on a gray and blustery morning.
Not so Gray & blustery here- I just got back from a cruise down PCH in the Miata.
Top down, & in the low seventies (Now I’m just bragging). D/S
What a great find, and with the eight-lug wheels, yet! Pontiac just couldn’t do anything wrong style-wise between 1959 and 1966. Of course, I have to trot out an obligatory Van & Fitz brochure shot. Here’s a ’63 Star Chief.
Knudsen, Estes, and Delorean were hitting all the right buttons, with 1963 being the zenith. Even the rope-drive Tempest was a valiant (albeit failed) effort. Although the next seven years were still pretty damn good, too, Pontiac from ’59-’66 truly was the place to be for a domestic manufacturer.
Gorgeous car Pontiac really had it right back then a far cry from nostrils glued to a Holden.
We had a 1966 Bonneville convertible in the exact same color combination. I was born in 1967 so I was really little when we had this car (and we had it until 1972 when my Mom got a new Toronado). I remember the dashboard with a lot of chrome on it and the steering wheel having a clear rim – I thought it was so cool!
One of my favorite Pontiacs. Large, but at the same time because of the overall design looks and feels light. Doesn’t come across as a barge like the 67 vintage.
Were there any bad looking cars from GM from this period? GM design at their peak!
1961-1970 was particularly good, it’s hard to find an ugly GM car from that era, there were a few that weren’t great….cough…Oldsmobiles, which for some reason got shafted with some of the odder looking 60’s GM cars from time to time, but even they weren’t “ugly”
When I was a kid, and these cars were new, I didn’t pay them the attention they deserved. Now I realize just what a huge step up Pontiacs were in their heyday from Chevrolets. I always thought of the Catalina as the “stripper” Pontiac, but it didn’t take much for them to be more plush than the Impala, and it only went up from there. This Bonneville is gorgeous.
Beautiful car. I personally think the 65-66 is the best of the 63-67 Bonneville body styles. But I wouldn’t kick that baby out of my driveway! Also I think the stacked headlights on these cars and the 67 Galaxie look just perfect, On a lot of other models, not so much.
It is a beautiful car. I do prefer the ’64 tail end style, but as other have said I would not think twice about a nice ’63. It probably has the 389, as the 421 had an emblem on the fender behind the wheel. Both engines were offered with Tri-Power, so he may have a little extra punch in his Poncho.
It looks like the owner had recently been at a class reunion. I can’t make out the lettering on the name tag hanging from the mirror, but it looks like an old school photo. Perhaps a class of ’63 fiftieth reunion?
Beautiful car, Pontiac was really at the top of its game during the 60s. I distinctly remember when these came out for ’63 — so stunning in their light airy style without gobs of chrome. My mother’s younger cousin married into a Pontiac family, so I got some seat time in cars like this.
If I could buy my classic dream car, it would come from this era, not from my birth year of 1952, when most American cars were stodgy at best (although I wouldn’t turn down a ’52 Caddy)!
Here’s a shot of a ’63 Catalina wagon photographed some years back in Bishop, CA. Obviously it’s not in as nice a condition as the featured Bonneville convertible. I just hope they weren’t really trying to repaint it with a brush!
I had to take a look at this car again to cancel out the horror of the Aeroback above. While I would prefer a 63 Grand Prix in midnight blue (heaven, indeed), this one is very nice.
With the exception of 1960 (some styling miscues, IMO), full-size Pontiacs from 1959 through 63 were very good looking cars.
YES! A 63 Midnite Blue GP……doesn’t get much better than that!
As far as I’m concerned, Pontiac did not release one bad looking car between 1959 and 1967. Any model, any body style – and this is one of their best!!
I pretty much agree with you. I just hated to see them give up the split grille for 1960. As a kid, the excitement of seeing that gorgeous 1959 wide track with the split grille was just beyond description. The 1960 was pretty tame by comparison. I realize GM was taming down all of the 1959 full-size models in 1960 but in Pontiac’s case, I preferred the wilder version.
Dave,
Thanks for the explanation of the aluminum hub and drum option. I always liked the look but was puzzled about having a “demountable rim” on a modern passenger car. I would think replacement brake drums are extremely expensive, if available at all.
Overall, this ’63 is almost a tie with the Stingray as the most beautiful GM car of the year. Just like the Impala, however, the ’64 isnt quite as good. The taillights, for instance on the ’64 Poncho dont look good at all compared to the ’63, a bit like the ’71 Olds 88.
Another reason I prefer the ’63 GM’s is that the ’61-’62 “kink” in the A pillar just looks wrong to me. And while the “bubble top” coupes have appeal, the sedan roof looks strange.
Different strokes for different folks. I liked the ’64 Pontiac over the ’63 back in the day. Now, I think both have their good points, and I’d be hard-pressed to choose one over the other. (For just the GP however, the ’63 is the better one.)
Regarding the Impala, I have always thought the ’64 was an improvement over the ’63, even though the ’64’s rear end treatment harked back to the ’62’s look.
As for that kink in the ’61-’62 GM A-pillar, I have always loved it. It gives some flare to what otherwise is a ramrod straight A-pillar not unlike what is used to this very day. That little curve adds a bit of interest and retains just a hint of the older wraparound style windshields that were so in vogue from the mid 50s to early 60s. The first-generation Corvair used a variation of the kink, which I also like.
When you were talking dashboards, yes, there were minor changes made between 1963-1968, but the basic speedo design remained the same. It’s one of my favorite parts of the Ponchos.
My favorite 1960s vintage Pontiac style (although I really like them all!) has to be the 1967 Grand Prix. Familiar, but very different.
I am in 100% agreement with you. The ’67 Gp is just stunning, especially the convertible. The ‘Gp’ on the grille itself is so cool.
The 1968 GTO is my #2 favorite…
+2 There is a beautiful example in the Smithsonian’s American History Museum.
My Father switched from Dodge to Pontiac In 1962.He ordered a new Dodge 880 convertible, (Chyrsler with a Dodge nose), with blue paint interior and top. It came in with blue paint with a black interior and top. He refused it. His long time Dodge dealer offered a Chyrsler at the same price. When the dealer called his factory rep, he was told all blue convertibles come with black interior and tops, regardless of was the sales material said.
I took may father down the street to the Pontiac dealer where he ordered a 1962 Catalina convertible in bamboo cream with dark tan interior and top. Ir came in just as ordered.
It was followed bu a 1964 LeMans convertible in copper. Next was a 1966 Catalina convertible in light blue . Of the three, my favorite was the 1966.
He never bought another Dodge.
My parents first Pontiac was a ’66 four door Catalina, I know four door sedans are seen as much less desirable, but I really liked it. Especially since their previous ride had been a ’65 Impala with six and powerglide. Compared with the Chevy the Pontiac was a revelation; even as a four door it had more charisma than the Chevy could ever hope for.
The combination of the 290 hp 389 and turbo-hydramatic gave great performance. My today’s standards its performance was only middeling but back then I loved it. Sadly by 1969 the bloat was starting to affect Pontiac, the parents traded in the ’66 for a ’69 Catalina, it was larger, heavier and the performance did not match that of the ’66.
Yes, the 1969 Catalina 4-door sedan was almost 200 pounds heavier than the equivalent ’66, and almost a second slower from 0 to 60. But there were trade-offs that can be considered worthwhile: 15-inch wheels instead of 14, side guard door beams, head restraints, energy-absorbing steering column, etc. (Of course there were changes that saved weight too, such as the awful plastic dashboard and lack of vent windows.)
If you are Consumer Reports, those changes from 1966 to 1969 are all wonderful. But if you are looking for a sexy car…and isn’t that how this feature about this superb 1963 Pontiac starts off?