Pontiacs Were On Hand In Newport

 

From it's inception, General Motors attempted to have a car brand slotted for everyone's budget. They had purchased the Oakland Motor Car Company in early 1909 and slotted it in the middle of their line up, just below Buick. In 1926 they decided to start up a companion company to Oakland. It was Pontiac. Within a year Pontiac was outselling Oakland and by 1931 Oakland was discontinued. Pontiac thrived as an affordable family car in between Chevrolet and Oldsmobile. By the mid 1950s Bucky Knudsen became the brand's general manager and began to re-work the image. With the help of young renegade engineers E.M. Estes and John DeLorean (yes, that guy), Knudsen began turning Pontiac into more of a performance line. By the 1960s, Pontiac introduced what would become the muscle car by dropping a high performance engine into a mid-sized car. While many can trace the muscle car back to the 1950s with the Oldsmobile Rocket 88 (actually released for the 1949 model year), this was a full sized car. It was when the top of the line trim for the Pontiac Tempest, the LeMans, got a 389 cubic inch V8 in the car's second generation, that the muscle car was truly born. There were plenty of muscle cars and lots of Pontacs on hand for this past year's Wheels Back On Monmouth show in Newport. Among them were a few beautiful Firebirds (that the odds are good that my uncle had a hand in building), a Trans Am, and a later GTA Firebird.