1959 Pontiac Catalina Convertible on 2040-cars

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World's only 1964 Pontiac XP-833 Banshee coupe for sale by Kia dealer

It seems like there has been a spate of especially odd car sales in the first part of this especially odd year, from the numerous barn finds and homebrew specials to the time capsule cars — like the BMW wrapped in a protective bubble for 23 years. Napoli Kia in Milford, Connecticut, brings us another, via Motor1. Len Napoli is the dealership principal and die-hard Pontiac maven; his father opened Napoli Pontiac in 1958, and Len held onto the franchise until the early 2000s, just before GM shuttered the brand that built excitement. Napoli got hold of the 1964 Pontiac Banshee XP-833 coupe concept, and put the car up for sale through his Kia dealership for $750,000. The exceptional price comes from the fact that Pontiac built two Banshee concepts in 1964, one this silver coupe with a red interior, the other a white roadster, making each concept a one-of-one collector car.      Motor Trend wrote a detailed piece on this one in 2013, the editorial tour hosted by Bill Collins, the Banshee's lead engineer. The short story is that GM exec John Z. DeLorean — yes, him —  gave approval to a small crew at Pontiac to create a two-seater sports car to compete with the Mustang, because GM had nothing to fend off the four-seat coupe that would sell one million units in just 18 months on the market. Collins and his team took inspiration from the 1963 Corvair Monza GT concept, working up a fiberglass body over a steel frame, with a 230-cubic-inch overhead-cam straight-six producing 165 horsepower and 216 pound-feet of torque, a four-speed manual transmission, and 9.5-inch drum brakes at all corners. The idea was that the XP-833 would be "an affordable and fun two-seat sports car," the concept demonstrating the base-model price leader offering a lengthy list of options for those who wanted more. The white roadster, in fact, fitted a 326 cubic-inch V8 under the hood. Rumor says that Chevrolet execs didn't like having another two-seater sports car in the GM fold, especially one with a fiberglass body that held weight down to 2,200 pounds. GM execs took one look at the two concepts in 1965 and shut the project down. The two XP-833s lived in a garage for years, Collins and his colleague Bill Killen getting permission to buy the cars from GM in 1973 before Collins left to help engineer the DeLorean DMC-12. It wasn't until just before Collins departed that the XP-333 got the name Banshee.

Junkyard Gem: 1968 Pontiac Catalina sedan

During the late 1960s, General Motors ruled the American car landscape, growing so dominant that the federal government considered antitrust action to break up the company. The General offered sporty Corvettes and muscular GTOs and rugged pickups and opulent Fleetwoods, sure, but the fat part of the sales numbers came from the bread-and-butter full-sized sedans and coupes, which boasted superior engineering and modern-looking styling; in 1967 alone, the Chevrolet Division moved 972,600 full-sized cars, and that's not even counting the 155,100 full-sized Chevy station wagons that year. Pontiac, Buick and Oldsmobile sold the same big cars with division-specific engines and bodywork, and they flew off the showroom floors. For 1968, the entry-level full-sized car from Pontiac was the Catalina, and I've found an example of the most affordable version of the most affordable big Pontiac for 1968, discarded in a northeastern Colorado wrecking yard about 50 miles south of Cheyenne, Wyoming. A '68 GM full-sized coupe, convertible, or even a four-door hardtop might be worth the cost and effort of a restoration, but a no-options base-trim-level post sedan with rust and plenty of body filler just won't get many takers these days. Like so many vehicles that sit outside for decades on the High Plains, this one is full of rodent nests. I wouldn't want to work on the interior of this car without a respirator and a lot of work with a shop-vac, because hantavirus is a significant danger in these parts. Alfred Sloan's plan to offer a stepladder of prestige for GM buyers, in which your first new car was a Chevrolet and you moved up through Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick until you became sufficiently prosperous for Cadillac ownership, worked brilliantly for decades. In 1968, the Catalina was a notch above its Impala sibling on the Snob-O-Meter, with the sedan starting at $3,004 (about $22,600 in 2019 dollars). In fact, the V8-equipped 1968 Chevrolet Impala sedan listed at $3,033, and the Oldsmobile Delmont 88 went for $3,146, so the lines were beginning to blur between the relative positions of the lower-end GM divisions by this time. The base engine in the 1968 Catalina was a 400-cubic-inch (6.5 liter) V8 rated at 265 horsepower and enough torque to tow an aircraft carrier.

Junkyard Gem: 2001 Pontiac Bonneville SSEi

The General's Pontiac Division sold Bonnevilles from 1958 through 2005, which turned out to be well over half of the marque's existence. Named after the Bonneville Salt Flats, some Bonnevilles were huge but pretty quick, others were slow-motion land yachts, and some were nearly indistinguishable from their Buick and Oldsmobile brethren. The final generation, sold for the 2000 through 2005 model years, were among the quickest and most distinctive-looking Bonnevilles ever built, but they arrived in showrooms at a time when the clock was ticking for the division's very survival. Today's Junkyard Gem is one of those cars, an '01 with the hot-rod SSEi package. The Bonneville SSEi first appeared in the 1992 model year, just a year after the Buick Park Avenue Ultra was the first of many GM cars to get the 3.8-liter Buick V6 with an Eaton supercharger bolted on top. Production of the Bonneville SSEi continued through the 2003 model year, after which the GXP version and its Cadillac Northstar V8 took over. The 2001 version of this engine made 240 horsepower, good for plenty of torque-steery fun. Could you get this car with a manual transmission? What do you think? Some cursory research indicates that 1970 was the last model year for a three-pedal Bonneville, and even those cars must be incredibly rare. This one looks to have been in nice shape when it arrived here, with the original manuals still in the glovebox. By 2006, the Bonneville was gone; four years later, Pontiac was gone. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Stop all black Bonnevilles!