1950 Pontiac

            I had an email exchange with a friend not too long ago about Pontiacs. I had posted a few pictures here in the blog from a summer car show and my friend, a lifelong car guy who is a retired master mechanic with over 50 years in the business, wrote to comment on them. Suffice it to say he knows a hell of a lot more about cars than I do.

            Still, in this exchange we were talking about Pontiacs and how they seem to have been the line that GM never really knew how to brand. It is as if GM couldn’t really find a niche for the marque.

            In the beginning GM knew exactly what to do with Pontiac. It was a brand created in 1929 to be a companion to its Oakland division, which it had purchased in 1909. The idea behind this companion branding was that consumers would “buy up” a product line if it hit certain price points. So in GM’s mind, the base brand was Chevy then stepped up to Oakland, Olds, Buick and finally to Cadillac.

            What happened in Pontiac’s case is that it soon overtook Oakland at its price point ladder and then sort of spread out beyond.

            Perhaps Pontiac was best exemplified by the muscle cars it churned out, especially the GTO with its raucous power plant, great machines that came to life under the leadership of John DeLorean. The forerunner to that lovely machine can be seen in this piece of art pictured here: the Pontiac Straight Eight, often referred to as the Silver-Streak.

            The Straight Eight engine was rolled out for the 1933 models and continued to through the 1954 model season. This beautiful 1950 model exemplified Pontiacs of the era.