Pontiac’s Tempest was packed with improbable engineering and ingenious bodgery from a young John DeLorean.Sam Gloverdrives an early survivor
THE PONTIAC TEMPEST was a product of General Motors’ post-war ‘anything goes’ period. These halcyon years of designer-led innovation and iconoclastic engineering brought us the plastic-bodied 1953 Chevrolet Corvette, the fuel-injected 1957 Pontiac Bonneville, the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham with Citroën DS-inspired pneumatic suspension, and the 1960 Chevrolet Corvair with its unitary construction and air-cooled rear-mounted flat-six engine. It gave birth to the world’s first two turbocharged production cars – the 1962 Oldsmobile Jetfire and Corvair Monza Spyder – and climaxed with the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado, which had a 7.0-litre V8 driving its front wheels via a Hy-Vo chain. The 1961 Pontiac Tempest was the dark horse of this bunch. Its unassuming Eisenhower-cool body cloaked what was possibly GM’s weirdest ever drivetrain: a 3.2-litre slant-four engine at the front, a transaxle at the rear, and a curved torsion bar ‘rope drive’ connecting the two.
Pontiac enjoyed a renaissance in the late 1950s. The marque occupied a narrow ledge in GM’s hierarchy, above Chevrolet but below Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac. It’d ticked over post-war by building competent but unstimulating cars for the elderly and unadventurous. A step-change came in 1956 when 43-year-old Semon ‘Bunkie’ Knudsen was appointed division manager. He recruited Oldsmobile’s 40-year-old Elliot ‘Pete’ Estes as chief engineer and Packard’s 31-year-old John Zachary DeLorean as head of a new department titled ‘Advanced Engineering’. Estes went on to become president of GM; DeLorean would make it as far as vice president before stomping off to establish the DeLorean Motor Company.
As DeLorean suggested in a 1979 biography, Knudsen’s turnaround was swift and effective. ‘The Pontiac was a solid, reliable and sturdy car that evoked no discernible emotion one way or the other. Knudsen told us that this was a good situation because we would not have to combat a negative image before building a new one. We could choose where we wanted to be in the market by being daring, innovative and by taking chances. The image he would build for Pontiac was that of a youthful, exciting and fast-moving car.’ Pontiac was soon dominating stock car racing and producing some of GM’s most dynamic and desirable models, epitomised by the dashing ‘wide track’ range
