In the thirties and forties, GM pioneered and brought to market some of the most innovative, successful and lasting new technologies: Diesel-electric locomotives; the modern diesel bus; automatic transmissions; refrigeration and air conditioning systems; high-compression engines; independent front suspension; and many more. But GM’s technological prowess was just one facet of its constantly-at-war multiple personalities. Planned obsolescence, chrome, fins and financial rationalization were the real moneymakers, especially during the technologically conservative fifties. Nonetheless, from 1960 to 1966 GM built three production cars that attempted to upend the traditional format: The rear-engined 1960 Corvair, the front-wheel drive 1966 Toronado and the 1961 Tempest. Although the Corvair and the Toronado tend to get the lion’s share of attention, the Tempest’s format was by far the most enduring; essentially, the Tempest was a BMW before BMW built one of their own. If only Pontiac had stuck with it.
Consider its high-performance, four-cylinder engine with four-venturi carburetion; four-wheel independent suspension; four-speed stick shift; perfect 50-50 weight distribution; a light, compact, yet fairly roomy body; decent manual steering; and neutral- to over-steering handling: Those specs parallel those of the all-new 1962 BMW 1500/1800–or perhaps even a Mercedes or Rover 2000? But there was one thing none of those cars had: A rear transaxle and a totally revolutionary flexible drive shaft. When GM gave its engineering talent the freedom to innovate, the results were often extraordinary. But in true GM fashion, penny-pinching resulted in a 1961 Tempest that, like the Corvair, was flawed from the day of its introduction. Sadly, and unlike the Corvair, the Tempest was never given a chance to sort out its easily fixable blemishes; if it had been, the result could have been even more remarkable than the ’65 Corvair.
John DeLorean’s tenure at Pontiac may be more remembered for the ’59 Wide-Tracks, the GTO, the Pontiac OHC six, and the ’69 Grand Prix, but in my opinion the 1961-1963 Tempest stands as his most ambitious and creative engineering effort. He was as aware as anyone of the limitations of Detroit’s big-car formula: What it produced was invariably too big, too thirsty, front-heavy and dull-handling. Now, with the 1960 Corvair waiting in the wings, DeLorean’s longstanding plans to build a truly advanced and practical car would finally come to (not quite ripe) fruition.
DeLorean was particularly interested in the benefits of independent rear suspension, which so many European cars, including VW, Porsche and Mercedes, had been using since the thirties. In the mid-fifties, his engineering team had developed an even more radical evolution of Mercedes’ approach for the 1959 full-sized Pontiacs: A rear transaxle (to balance weight distribution) connected to the engine by a flexible-shaft drive inside a rigid torque tube. That innovation was DeLorean’s alone, and he received a patent on it. And please, don’t call it “rope drive”– if you try to send power through anything resembling a rope, good luck. This was a single flexible piece of steel, more akin to a torsion bar or speedometer drive shaft.
The big 1959 Pontiacs arrived with their ad-friendly wide tracks, but otherwise were utterly conventional. Actually, GM wanted to foist the new rear-engine Corvair on Pontiac in order to spread around its high development and production costs. The prototype Pontiac Polaris (above) was classic badge-engineering, with a ’59 Pontiac-ish front end grafted onto an otherwise unaltered Corvair. But the Pontiac brass, Bill Knudsen, Pete Estes and DeLorean, weren’t buying it, partly because DeLorean was aware of the Corvair’s tricky handling and nasty habit of spinning, or even flipping, when pushed too far.
Initially, DeLorean’a plans envisioned a front-engined car that used the Corvair body and kept the entire Corvair rear suspension and its transaxle as originally placed, not even turning it around to face the motor. Utilizing a hollow shaft, the Corvair transmission would actually be “driven” from the rear of the car; as a result, the torque converter would hang from the back of the differential, where normally it would have mated up to the Corvair’s rear engine.
Very creative indeed, and it’s rather bizarre to see the torque converter out there in the open, like an appendage (as pictured above). The drive shaft had three inches of deflection (curvature), and that curvature was strictly induced by applying the appropriate stresses on each end; it needed no intermediate bearings to locate it within the torque tube.
The benefits of the rigid torque tube went well beyond producing a nearly flat floor. For instance, it was a key adaptation to the four cylinder engine that helped reduce inherent vibration. In theory, a four-cylinder has perfect primary balance, but with only two power impulses per crankshaft rotation, second order and torsional vibrations can be quite significant, especially as displacement increases. Traditionally, the Europeans kept their fours at or below two liters for just that reason. In 1975, Mitsubishi reintroduced the balance shaft in its 2.6-liter four; it proved highly effective, and is now very commonly used to smooth out large fours.
That’s why Detroit shunned fours like the plague: In order to provide American-style torque and power, American fours had almost always been large. At low engine speeds, as in Ford’s Models T and A, they were not too bothersome. A suitable six might have been perfect, but Pontiac had little choice but to create a compact, low-cost four the quick and dirty way: By eliminating one bank of its 389 CID V8. It was a very cost-effective solution because it not only used a high percentage of the V8′s parts, but could also be machined on the same lines as the V8.
Rigidly mounting the four to the front end of the torque tube eliminated the need for the engine mounts to control its front-to-back movements, so it was possible to isolate it and its vibrations from the body to a much greater degree than if had been mounted in the usual fashion. The mounts on the four only had to control its vertical movements, so they could be very soft. That does result in an impressive display of vertical “jumping” when the throttle is opened from idle.
That’s not to say that the 195 cubic inch (3.2 L) four’s noise, vibration and harshness issues were all miraculously solved by DeLorean’s innovative mounting solutions. It’s a very big four, for better or for worse. It does have a fatter torque curve than a comparable six or eight for its displacement, and therefore is very responsive. And thanks to Pontiac’s high performance experience, it could be quite powerful; output started at 110 hp, and went up to 165 hp with the optional four barrel carburetor. That overshadows the 1961 Corvair’s 98 hp optional engine.
As it turned out, Pontiac didn’t have to use the actual 108″ wheelbase Corvair body after all; GM relented and let them share the Corvair-based but slightly larger 112″ wheelbase Y Body that Buick and Oldsmobile were preparing for their 1961 compacts. But Pontiac was given a very tiny budget to adapt it, so the 1961 Tempest (above) used most of the Olds F85 sheetmetal with a ’59 Pontiac-derived front end and a new rear end grafted on. But the four cylinder, flex-drive and Corvair transaxle and its rear suspension were retained, for better or for worse.
The worst was that it was a simple swing axle: rigid half-axles jointed only at each side of the rigidly mounted differential. This was the hot new thing in Europe back in the thirties, but its tendency to jack up in fast corners and create snap oversteer and flipping had become all-too well known.
That’s why Mercedes developed its innovative single low-pivot rear axle (above) with an anti-jacking compensating spring in the early fifties, a temporary step before it adopted a double-jointed irs in 1968. BMW’s “Neue Klasse” 1500/1800/2000 sedans first arrived in 1962 with a double-jointed rear suspension. As did the Jaguar S sedan. Europe was moving on, and GM would quickly learn this painful lesson in penny-pinching. The 1963 Corvette Sting Ray had a new double-jointed rear axle, which the 1965 Corvair also adopted to great effect.
I showed you the odd Tempest automatic transaxle earlier, but here’s the (leaky) four speed in the featured convertible. That round bolted cover on the end is where the Corvair bellhousing would have attached.
And here’s the front of the same unit, showing the shift linkage which the Tempest conveniently shared with Corvair too. It wasn’t a model of precision and quickness, but Porsche had to have something left to improve when it adopted a highly similar torque tube rear transaxle for their 928 and 924/944/968. The 968′s three liter four was only slightly smaller than the Tempest 3.2, and its ferocious torque showed to best advantage the benefits of a large displacement four with balance shafts. If John Z. had remembered about the 1904 Lanchester’s patented balance shafts and adapted them, the Tempest would really have been a milestone car.
Speaking of Porsche, here’s their false claim about their “pioneering”:
The ’61 and ’62 Tempests did also offer a version of the aluminum Buick 215 CID V8 optionally, but only 1-2% of them were built with it, and only a tiny handful with a stick. Theoretically, the combination of the light and smooth V8 with a four speed and the Tempest’s independent suspension and perfect weight balance would have potentially made a very appealing package. But the V8 was troublesome from the beginning, and Pontiac had to “buy” it from Buick, so the four was pushed heavily. And the hi-po four did make almost as much horsepower as the V8.
The Tempest was widely (and rightfully) hailed when it arrived. It won Motor Trend’s COTY, and accolades from the press: “a breakthrough for Detroit”…”a wonderfully refreshing automobile”…”a significant coup of major import”…”may be the forerunner of a new generation”…”unquestionably a prototype American car for the sixties”.
Testers praised its 50-50 front-rear balance, which resulted in lighter steering, less understeer, better traction and braking, and a good ride. But its ability to create the dreaded snap oversteer in the wet or on quickly driven curves was not totally left behind with the Corvair’s rear engine. The Tempest’s handling could also be tricky at the limit, and its agricultural sounding four could not be fully tamed, even if some of its shaking was mitigated. Consumer Reports was not so enthralled.
The Tempest met its sales expectations, selling 100k in 1961, 140k in ’62, and 130k in ’63. That helped Pontiac clinch third place in the sales stats. But it suffered the same problem as the Corvair: profitability was not up to snuff. The extra costs in converting the Olds body and the drive shaft and rear transaxle bit into the already slim margins on compact cars. The whole ambitious Corvair/Tempest/Olds F85/Buick Special Y-body experiments left GM with a bad aftertaste, especially since Ford was doing so well with its utterly conventional Falcon and Comet. The dull 1962 Chevy II was the effective replacement for the Corvair, and the B-O-P compacts became highly conventional mid-sized cars in 1964.
Our next door neighbor in Iowa City, a Russian professor, drove a white ’62 LeMans convertible like the one above. I vividly remember the throb of the big four as I rode with her to Sears to get her lawnmower fixed. But the open top was even more effective than DeLorean’s other efforts to drown out its agricultural sounds, at least above thirty or so. And I once briefly drove a co-worker’s base ’61 sedan in LA: despite being elderly, its intrinsic balance (which could be all-too easily upset for amusing purposes) and decent steering for an American car was downright un-American. If only its engine ran sweetly like my Peugeot 404′s. But the trade-off was the torque: very American indeed.
Our featured car is a 1963 LeMans, which was the sporty/upscale variant analogous to the Corvair’s Monza with the same bucket seats and higher trim. The ’63s were restyled to make them appear bigger, wider and longer, but the inside was no larger. This convertible has all the right options, at least for those that have a soft spot for the four. I found it in front of this shop where it had just been converted to the factory 165 hp four barrel setup. And it also has the four-speed stick. Not surprisingly, its owner turns out to be a ’63 Tempest junkie; it was the car he always wanted in high school.
Norman has over half a dozen ’63s in and a round his shop and back yard, including this sedan still on the trailer that he just picked up. And he has another convertible (below) with the optional 326 V8 that replaced the aluminum V8 for 1963. This was a prescient move by DeLorean, and foreshadowed the 1964 GTO.
The 326 is a 389 with smaller bores (and actually displaced 336 cubic inches), and although no lightweight, it still results in a quite decent 54/46 weight distribution because of the rear transaxle. With a two barrel carb, the 326 made a fairly modest 260 hp, but the Tempest was light (2800-3000lbs) so with the V8 it scoots right along. Because of limited funds, the four speed was not upgraded to handle the V8′s torque, so as far as is known, all the 326s came with the three speed stick or the two-speed Powerglide/aka: TempesTorque automatic. Norman says his fours get 18 – 20 mpg, and the 326 around 16 – 18 mpg.
To mitigate its handling rep, the 1963 Tempest’s rear suspension was revised with a modified control arm geometry and other tricks. But it was still a swing axle, and the Tempest’s end was already in sight, to be replaced by live-axle conformity.
But in my imagination, I see an update of DeLorean’s original Tempest idea: a 1965 Tempest coupe based on the stunningly beautiful ’65 Corvair body, with the 230 hp Sprint OHC six under a lengthened front end and sharing that Corvair’s new Corvette-based rear suspension.
What a genuine American BMW that would have been, right down to the dash (the BMW’s Tempest look-alike dash appeared on the ’66 1602). In my oft-repeated GM coulda-shoulda-woulda dreams.
I keep learning new things this week. I had never paid enough attention to these to realize that the 1963 Tempest and LeMans had two completely different rear end treatments. The LeMans was very predictive of the 64 car, while the Tempest was a one-year-only treatment with the twin over and under round taillights. This adds to the revelation from earlier this week that these were the only Pontiacs through most or all of the 60s to use 15 inch wheels. Nor did I recall how massive the Trophy 4 was in the world of 4 cylinder engines.
Our next door neighbors, the Bordners, had a series of Ponchos. The first one I remember that had any flair to it was a baby blue 63 Tempest convertible. I now know that it was not a LeMans, because it had the round taillights. I cannot recall what replaced it, it was either a beige VW with a sunroof (1965 or so) or the 66 GTO with the 4 speed that Mrs. Bordner drove. Through the 60s, that driveway was an odd combination of hot Pontiacs and VWs.
Those big wheels and tires really transform the look of this car. In reading DeLorean’s book, I recall that he was for years (at both Pontiac and Chevrolet) at war with beancounters who kept insisting on dinky tires. Delorean always thought that big tires made the car look better, even forgetting the safety and performance aspects. I wonder if this was the car that lit that fuse?
Those 15″ wheels on these are a bit of a mystery, because they weren’t used on any other Pontiacs, even the big performance cars like the 2+2, GP, and GTO.
I very strongly suspect that it was done to try to mitigate some aspect of the swing axle rear suspension. I can’t think of any other reason…I know DeLorean had a thing about undersized tires, but this goes a bit overboard. Maybe there was a clearance issue under the transaxle/driveshaft.
Frankly, they looked a bit odd at the time, and really stuck out. I was aware of them as a kid, before I knew about the Tempest’s irs, and couldn’t figure out why they jammed those tall 15s under the fender cutouts obviously designed for the F85′s 13″ wheels.
As a kid, I loved seeing all the different late 50′s to 70′s tail designs and can still name them on sight. I knew the Tempest vs. LeMans looks since I was 5.
I kind of like the Tempest’s round lights more, but the LeMans’ rear previews the ’64 GTO. I’m glad to see resurgence of 1st generation Tempests, there is a cult following [like the owner in pics] on the Performance Years Pontiac website. Also, more are featured in magazine articles.
It’s too bad that GM couldn’t keep the Buick/Olds/Pontiac Y body going through the 60′s along [as done with Corvairs] with the BOF A bodies. Could have Tempest companion model to the LeMans series. But V8′s ruled and we know the rest of the story.
Paul, you echoed my thoughts exactly: What if the OHC 6 had been mated to the rear transaxle platform, with the updated IRS of the second-generation Corvair?
And even better, what would the automotive landscape look like today if this combination had sold like hotcakes?
Unfortunately, I’m afraid that the inexpensive gasoline of the time – and the popularity of V8s – means that these will remain unanswered questions…
Knowing the American buyer, the plain-jane, mechanically boring Ford would have outsold it and been more profitable per unit. As much as I hate the way GM left the technologically rich 59-63 period, there is a reason. Profit. Profit, profit, profit.
All the parts were there to make something really outstanding but GM knew its customers and a great handling car wasnt wanted it took un til BMW copied a Triumph 2000 for decent driving sedans to gain a foothold on the US market.
Very interesting article. I knew exactly none of this before, yet it is fascinating: a Pontiac with a modifed Corvair base under an Olds skin with an optional Buick/Land Rover power plant.
The rear suspension I was already aware of, courtesy of Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei’s detailed description in My Cousin Vinny.
Can you say Positraction?
Very interesting article that brings back some memories! Our neighbors were Pontiac people, and, in the late 1960s, they owned a 1965 Pontiac Catalina four-door sedan and a 1963 Pontiac Tempest sedan. I remember being fascinated by the four round taillights on the Tempest. Their Tempest was beige with a light brown top, while their Catalina was the same color as the 1963 sedan on the trailer.
Unfortunately, the first-generation Tempest/LeMans are comparatively rare sights at car shows. Everyone wants to show GTOs.
Looking at the 1963 Tempest sedan and convertible, I’d say that they are the perfect size for a modern-day family car.
Terrific article Paul! When I was about 6 years old our next door neighbor bought one of these used for their 20-something daughter. I would watch her start it up and back out of the driveway. The car made a very unusual howling sound that seemed to be coming from the rear. I wonder if it was the torque converter.
Fascinating article, you learn something new here every day.
My best friend’s mother bought this very car (although the hardtop version) new as we were entering high school, so a year later we were screaming around L.A. in it as newly minted drivers. It was all black, with the 4-banger and the 4-speed on the floor, and I remember it sounding like a jet engine winding up as he would thrash it through the gears. He would really flog it, being so testosterone driven as only 16-year olds can be, and I would hang on for dear life as we tore around. He would never miss a chance to coerce his mother to let him have the car. It was truly the BMW sports coupe of its day.
This car set the stage for my own first car, a ’64 LeMans, which I have chronicled here before, all red, 326 V-8 with the two-speed automatic. Although it grew to mid-size that year, it was the perfect size for me, being a six-footer-plus, and was arguably one of the best cars I ever had. Didn’t realize the 326 was a derivative of the big 389, it was a very competent engine for the LeMans, and I remember it being powerful enough for my tastes. And relatively economical, too, it would regularly deliver around 14 mpg, not bad in the days of 29-cent per gallon gasoline. I drove it for seven years all through college, and was happy to see it find new life in the hands of yet another younger college guy when I moved on to my second car, a ’70 Cougar XR-7. But that’s another story.
New neighbors moved in down the street from us around 1962 with a new Tempest wagon. Even at the age of 6 I knew it was unlike most other American cars with it’s 4 cylinder engine. I don’t know if it was troublesome or they just didn’t like it, but I think it was replaced with a Fairlane wagon. New buyers moved in about 1973 with a Honda 600Z coupe, and despite a few more changes of ownership there have been only Japanese cars in that driveway for almost 40 years.
It looks like it’s going 111mph even when standing still …
Love these cars. The 215 V8 was highly sought after for Vega engine swaps, but I was unable to locate one and ended up with a Buick 3.8l instead. My Tempest connection (besides having once owned a 1966 Sprint 6 four door) was that I used the radiator out of a Tempest that had once had the 215 (long gone when I got to it) to cool my Vega.
OK, there’s the converter; where is the clutch?
The stick version has the clutch in the more usual location behind the engine. I’m not exactly sure why the automatic has the TQ back there; probably because of the way the Corvair transaxle was laid out.
What I don’t understand is how the torque converter is retained. On conventional set ups it’s bolted to the flex plate and just engages splines or tangs in the transmission but on this I just don’t know how they keep it in there.
Could be bolted to the inner coaxial shaft from the engine
Nope the shaft ends at the front of the transmission. I stripped one of these for a customer once.
Wouldn’t there be a shaft that runs through the gearbox input shaft to drive the torque converter or clutch though? That would have to have a bearing that could take an axial load before it went inside the input shaft, the other end is a bit harder to visualise, but I expect the output side of the clutch/converter was the main locating support.
A question for all you guys here- does anyone else see a lot of Mustang in the general proportions and overall style of the soft top pictured here? Not saying the ‘Stang is a copy or anything, but there is a bit of an sense the Pontiac could almost be an imaginary 1963 Mustang!
With the tail of the LeMans chopped off a bit, yes. The Mustang wasn’t that radically different, by any means. It had its unique styling aspects, but its overall configuration was fairly conventional, except for the passenger cabin being pushed back a bit, and the tail being bobbed.
I agree that if you look at the soft top by itself it does look a lot like the Mustang’s.
The designers of the first Mustang said that they lifted the rear window and roof treatment directly from the 1963 Tempest/LeMans hardtop.
I am saddened yet again by the failure to espy a single curb feeler upon any of the pictured vehicles.
There has always been one mystery for me about the ’63. I’ve read elsewhere that the rear suspension was revised, even one instance where it said semi-trailing arms replaced the swing axles. I was not aware that the swing axles were retained even with the revisions.
I guess, then, the Corvette/Corvair rear end was GM’s first double-jointed IRS.
Also, all these posts and no mention of “My Cousin Vinny?”
Looks like trailing arms not swing axles to me
The Tempest irs did have trailing arms,as did the Corvair too. But they could only partly offset the reality that a swing axle is only jointed at the center (differential), and thus the camber changes were still very much there. It takes double-jointed rear drive shafts to get rid of that.
There were some minor revisions for 1963, but I’m not exactly certain of what exactly they were.
The 63 Corvette has double-jointed axles
I winder what one of these would be like with a 4-speed stick, and a Pontiac OHC 6 or Pontiac Sprint OHC 6 from the (then)-future
” I see an update of DeLorean’s original Tempest idea: a 1965 Tempest coupe based on the stunningly beautiful ’65 Corvair body, with the 230 hp Sprint OHC six under a lengthened front end and sharing that Corvair’s new Corvette-based rear suspension.”
If only that had come to fruition. An American 635CSi, 10 years before the real deal.
Pity that GM decided to pull a GM and stick with low-revving OHV boat anchors well into the 80′s.
Paul’s idea of a 1965 Corvair-based Tempest doesn’t sound to me like merely a gearhead’s wet dream — it also makes a certain amount of business sense. By creating a Pontiac variant, the considerable cost of restyling the Corvair’s body could have been better amortized.
Indeed, GM presumably could have come out with a direct competitor to the Mustang much more quickly if it had gone this route.
All of which leads to a question: Didn’t the 1967 Camaro pull from the Corvair parts bin, e.g., sharing windshields and such? If so, then the Camaro could be viewed as a decontented 1963 Tempest in key respects. If DeLorean hadn’t been captured by big block mania he might have pressed for the Firebird to incorporate higher-end technology such as the Corvair’s IRS and an improved version of the Tempest’s old transaxle.
A guy I served in the Army Reserve with bought a cute new 74 Plymouth Duster with the lizard grain half roof. The car was repossessed a few months after purchase, even though the guy was single and had a good paying job. Shortly after, he bought for $ 200 a 63 Pontiac coupe with over a 100K miles and definitely in very poor condition. He drove me for a ride in it while extolling its virtues.
I told the guy the car had a lot of miles on it, and had some kind of unusual drive train. I wished him luck. A couple months later he told me about the inevitable breakdown and the towing to the junkyard.
He ended up getting married to a girl who had a Mustang 2, about a 1974 or 1975. He always used her car after that.
The guy was a real derelect. Haven’t seen him since 1977, so I don’t know how he turned out.
I’m a bit late getting here, but just wanted to say thank you Paul, for yet another fascinating article. Your writing style flows so nicely.
Let me be the even later guy.
I had a ’79 Alfa Sprint Veloce coupe/fastback with a rear transaxle by DeDion.
The car handled like a dream. Escpecially well because the earlier ones like mine had a four and not the V-6, and beides the 928, it’s the only other RTA I can think of.
Super write up, I learned a lot!