2003 Pontiac Bonneville Ssei Sedan 4-door 3.8l on 2040-cars

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Burt Reynolds’ former 1978 ‘Smokey’ Pontiac Trans Am in big auction by feds

A 1978 Pontiac Trans Am once owned by Burt Reynolds as a memento of the car he drove in the film “Smokey and the Bandit” will be among nearly 150 muscle cars and luxury vehicles seized from the alleged perpetrators of an $800 million investment scheme that will hit the auction block this weekend in California. ItÂ’s said to be the largest single-owner car collection ever auctioned by the U.S. Marshals, seized late last year from Jeff and Paulette Carpoff, the founders of the now-defunct mobile solar generators company DC Solar. Two employees of the San Francisco Bay Area solar energy company, certified public accountant Ronald Roach, 53, and general contractor Joseph Bayliss, 44, both of the Bay Area. pleaded guilty Tuesday to participating in what federal prosecutors say was a massive scheme that defrauded investors of $1 billion. Both men agreed to cooperate in the ongoing investigation. While the Carpoffs, the company's owners, have not been charged, they agreed to let the government auction their collection of 150 classic, performance and luxury vehicles, including the 1978 Pontiac Trans Am once owned by Burt Reynolds. The replica of the car the late actor drove in "Smokey and the Bandit" and the other vehicles are to be auctioned Saturday, with online bidding already pushing the accumulated value past $5.5 million. Bidding on that Trans Am alone had topped $65,000 by late Tuesday. The auction company said it had been driven less than 3,400 miles. It's the largest single-owner car collection ever auctioned by the U.S. Marshals Service. Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Lasha Boyden of the Sacramento office called it "a stunning collection of vehicles" that also includes 1990s Humvees, 1960s-era Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Camaros from several decades, plus older cars including a 1939 Buick Roadmaster, a 1951 Chevy Thriftmaster 3100 pickup truck and a 1941 Plymouth Special Delux with wooden doors and trim. “It is rare for the U.S. Marshals to hold an auction of such a stunning collection of vehicles,” Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Lasha Boyden in Sacramento said in a statement. ReynoldsÂ’ former Trans Am is a hardtop memento of the version he drove in the 1977 action comedy. It bears Bandit Run logos in the rear window and upper windshield and appears to have modified suspension components and bucket seats. It comes with a Florida registration with ReynoldsÂ’ name on it, and an autograph on the glove box that reads, “Be Safe!

Junkyard Gem: 2010 Pontiac Vibe

Just over a month before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2009, General Motors announced that the 83-year-old Pontiac Division would be "phased out" by the end of 2010. Only three Pontiac vehicles were sold as 2010 models in the United States: the Solstice, Vibe and G6 (new G3s were sold here during 2010 but they were all 2009 models, while the G5 was available as a 2010 model only in Canada and Mexico). Today's bit of junkyard automotive history is one of the very last Vibes ever built, found in a yard near Denver, Colorado. This car is significant not just as one of the final vehicles to bear Pontiac badges but also as one of the last cars built by the New United Motor Manufacturing Incorporated GM-Toyota joint venture in California, better known as NUMMI. The NUMMI factory began life as GM's Fremont Assembly, which built its first vehicle (a C-Series pickup) in 1963 and closed in 1982 after building its final vehicle (an Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera). Rebooted as NUMMI, the first 1985 Chevrolet Nova (an Americanized AE82 Toyota Corolla Sprinter) rolled off the line in December of 1984. A quarter-century and better than eight million vehicles hence, NUMMI shut down production after its last Corolla was finished on April 1, 2010. While there was some noise about the Oakland Athletics building a new stadium on the site at the time, Tesla ended up buying most of the site soon after that. Tesla now builds more vehicles per year there than NUMMI ever did. The Vibe was co-developed with Toyota and based on the same platform as the ninth-generation Corolla. The Toyota Matrix was mechanically identical and was built in Canada, while the Japanese-market version (known as the Toyota Voltz) was built on the same NUMMI line as the Vibe and shipped across the Pacific. The Vibe/Matrix/Voltz got a redesign for the 2009 model year, but few noticed due to all the turmoil in the GM world at the time. The final Vibe was built in August 2009. This car was built in July of 2009, just before the end. It was living in West Texas just prior to coming to Colorado. El Paso is about a ten-hour drive from this car's current location. Once in the Centennial State, it got parked somewhere it shouldn't have been and ended up being auctioned to Pick Your Part. An occupant of this Vibe had time to sample some of the local agricultural products before that happened.

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.