(first posted 19/18/2015) If there’s anything that is going to stand out among the plethora of modern cars, trucks and SUVs that fill the parking lots of shopping centres such as Cowichan Commons just north of Duncan, British Columbia, it’s going to be an olive-green-with-white-vinyl-top ’79 Parisienne. I spotted this one from quite a distance given it’s striking, vintage color scheme and pulled in for a closer look.
It’s hard to mistake the crisp lines of the early B-bodies, especially those of us in Canada who were offered the Parisienne, downsized for 1977, continuing on as Pontiac’s clone of the Chevrolet Caprice and a common sight on the streets of cities and towns across the country. I recall several of these in my hometown of Smithers, some of this particular era and others of later model years. It was during the early model years that US customers would scoop up the Catalina as Pontiac’s full sized offering, with that name plate disappearing after 1981. The Parisienne became available in the US market in 1983 and continued on until it’s production ended in 1986.
The fresh license plates hint that this particular car has likely traded hands once more and while it’s difficult to determine just how many owners it has had in it’s 36 years on the road, I would guess that it’s only switched owners a couple of times. It is in original form, weathered and worn, but still looking remarkably solid. This would indicate that it spent some (or much) time with a loving owner, surely keeping it in a garage or carport away from direct sunlight while ensuring it was cleaned and serviced regularly.
I would guess that today’s owner has picked up this classic late 70s sedan for a paltry sum and that it has entered regular service, though it is hard to say how long it has been doing just that. One can imagine a lighter duty in it’s prime, though it is adorned with a heavy duty receiver, reflecting back to a time where one could tow a sizable trailer with a sedan such as this, though it is hard to imagine that it has engaged in trailer towing duties as of late.
Cushy green seats are the obvious compliment to the exterior finishing, pointing back to the days where one could pick and choose from a healthy list of paint & upholstery colors when ordering a new car. The interior is well preserved and the seats all look like they would be a great place to kick back and enjoy the ride, if there’s anything I can remember about my times in a Caprice or Parisienne of this type is that it was a comfortable & spacious ride.
It turns out that the rustiest part of this car was it’s metal VIN tag in the left hand corner of the dash, visible through the windshield, making it difficult to decipher all of the digits, but yielding enough that I can confirm the 1979 model year and note it is equipped with the standard issue, 130 hp, 2 bbl Chevrolet 305 V8. It can be said that what this car will lack in terms of fuel economy and get-up-and-go, it will make up for in nostalgic character and charm.
I wish it well!
Duncan BC is the town where I spent my teen years! Great to see it mentioned here on CC! There are loads of low km old cars on Vancouver Island, since the climate is mild, the people tend to be older, and there is nowhere to go.
I believe the Chevy 305 was rated at 145 hp in 1979.
I love it out here, I moved from Alberta to the Island 5 years ago and like you mentioned there’s lots of classic rides on the roads!
On the 305, I recall that ’79s were woefully weak, worse than the 140 hp 302s that were powering Ford products of the same model year, and I am pretty sure it was a 130 hp rating.
This would have been a Canadian spec car, so it was 145 for sure. They actually seem pretty peppy due to the low end torque of the V-8.
Correct Carey, in 1979, the 305 used a smaller 2BL carb.
Fender skirts and crank windows…good old GM oddball equipment packages. Make mine navy blue with navy top and blue velour, red pinstripe on the side and Michelins with pencil thin white sidewalls.
Badge marketing, eh? Calling a car like this a Parisienne was a stretch. Friends of mine had a blue one, and it was a nice enough car, but somehow never invoked the feeling of being in Paris. Maybe it had a Gershwin horn?
Last time I seen a Parisienne was last June at the parking garage of The Orleans in Vegas–I thought it might belong to a CDN retiree that moved there but I didn’t realise they were sold in the US. I remember a lot of them being around the GTA growing up-did those hubcap centres function as reflectors?
The Parisienne name was used in the U.S. for its last four model years (1983 through 1986), after Pontiac had moved the Bonneville name from the B-body to the G-body. Before that the Parisienne was a Canadian exclusive, generally more-or-less the equivalent of the U.S. B-body Bonneville.
Love this vintage of Parisiennes. One guy in town has a mid-80s, sort of a dark burgundy color. It’s still in mint shape, beautifully maintained, bit envious. Would love to get my hands on one.
The Chevy 305 was derated from 145 hp in 1978 to 130 in 1979…..switch in carburetors was primarily responsible for the decrease. I owned a 79 Caprice from 1985 to 1990 and it had a hard time pulling away from Ford Escorts at stoplights. The 2.56 axle ratio did not help matters either.
yep, they switched the carb from the 2-jet with 1 1/2″ barrels, to the half-a-quadrajet DualJet with its tiny primary barrels (like 1″ or smaller)
With the big 1950s design 2-jet it could breath well up to about 4,000 rpm, it doesn’t provide the big carb soundtrack when opened up, but gives decent performance on the 305. the Dualjet could mop the floor with economy and emissions, but the performance is not there.
The Canada spec cars were much different and could not be sold in the USA. The hood specification decal of all GM Canada spec cars of the era would say, “Canadian Certification” in big letters. It was mostly stuff built in Oshawa. The Canadian spec cars were basically at USA EPA 1975 standards right until the 1990’s when air pollution in areas like the GTA and Vancouver made adopting California emissions necessary. The RCMP vehicles right up to 1990 had a catalyst delete. The only reason they kept the EGR was to reduce ping. The Canadian spec cars ran much better than the US spec cars of the era.
Great find and a fun writeup. GM and (an others) naming has always mystified me. What is the world does this car have to do with Paris? What the the celebrity Eurosport have to do with Europe? In both cases I contend nothing at all.
Parisienne? Perhaps outside of Quebec one forgets that Canada was once French. Many feel that it still is. For a long time, Montreal was considered Canada’s big, sophisticated city and Quebec (the city) its grand old ‘ville.’ The French had the “culture.” Toronto was the beginning of The West.
The name gies back to the mid-1950s, denoting the most deluxe (French again…for “of luxury”) Canadian Pontiacs, in Pontiac’s glorious 1960s generally trimmed like the USA Bonneville.
A a native of Quebec, I can assure you that Quebec has absolutely nothing to do with France, nor looks in its direction for remotely anything. It’s like saying Americans pine for Jolly Olde Englande in their collective psyche.
As for Montreal, well, Quebec’s idiotic language laws ran the corporate offices from there to Toronto. When the Sun Life Building was opened in 1914, it was the largest building in the British Empire.
Well, most of the Eastern US has “Old English” names for states, towns, cities. And many new suburban sub-divisions have similar ‘-Shire’ type names.
Well in that same vein, what does the city of Tacoma, Washington have to do with a Toyota, or Santa Fe and Tucson have to do with Hyundai? Yet these are model names they use. To my way of thinking, Parisienne is fitting, as Canada has a rich French history, and it sounds very upscale, befitting the top model in the Canadian Pontiac lineup for this particular year. For a Japanese and a Korean manufacturer to use names of north and southwest United States cities makes no sense.
Valid point. Perhaps the manufacturers figured that prospective owners would think that Santa Fe, Tucson and Tacoma would be good places to which they could drive their new Hyundai or Toyota.
By that same reasoning, they would never consider naming a car the “North Philadelphia” or “South Chicago.”
Well, it looks like fall has definitely arrived! Nice to see a green car again, it goes very well with its surroundings. Looks like the perfect car for a cruise to the shops on a blustery day.
I would get 19 mpg tops highway on my 79 Caprice……When they went to lockup torque converter and overdrive in the early 80’s, ot probably added a couple mpg to the 305 in the B body Chevies.
Very nice! Is it me, or is this car wearing really puny tires?
They look like the standard 215 or 225R 15’s to me. Today’s skinny bicycle tires they put on way oversize rims on today’s cars look puny. Maybe my old age is showing.
It could be the black wall tires. These almost certainly would have had a healthy white wall tire back in the day.
Needs a 301 swapped into it.
Note that the 1979 spec 301 with the same basic dualjet carb was rated for 140 horses and 150 with the 4 BBL. The funny thing was that for 1979 some of the G-body cars like Malibu/Monte Carlo and Cutlass got the Quadrajet 305 and that was rated at 160 HP so I think there was a little more than the Dualjet that brought the 1979 305 down to only 130 horses.
GM often fitted these with the power robbing spark delay valve that reduced and delayed total ignition timing advance to cut down on emissions and I would bet the cam use on this 305 2BBl for 1979 was setup for stricter emissions than it’s 76-78 counterparts.
My 1980 Grand Prix LJ with the 301 4BBL had this setup. After removing it, bumping the base timing up a few degrees, trading the restrictive bead converter for a free flowing unit and rebuilding the Quadrajet the difference in performance was staggering!
From 1977-82 the Pontiac Parisienne were known as the Bonneville which were considered an upmarket luxury version of the Catalina. During the same period from 1977-79 the Chevrolet Bel Air were known as the Impala here as they were like a stripped down version of the Caprice Classic here. Although its rather unusual once the Parisienne replaced the RWD B-Bodied Bonneville here in 1983 that the Station Wagon versions were really from the same mold as the lesser Chevrolet Impala/Caprice Classic Wagons instead of the Pontiac Catalina/Bonneville versions. The 1983-86 RWD G-Bodied Bonneville were really just the renaming of the 1978-82 RWD A/G-Bodied LeMans (like the 1977 1/2-79 RWD X-Body Pontiac Phoenix were to the 1975-77 Pontiac Ventura.) since the 1987 all NEW FWD H-Body Bonneville once again rejoined its other former RWD BOF B-Bodies Cousins aka the Oldsmobile Delta Eighty Eight and Buick LeSabre in the GM FWD Full-Size lineup. In this confusing scenario, the FWD A-Bodied Pontiac 6000 finally replaced the RWD G-Bodied Bonneville permanently while the Parisienne had no replacement since it was the end of large Full Sized cars for Pontiac while Chevrolet carried on to 1996.
I’ve always thought Pontiac’s version of the down-sized Caprice was very distinctive, especially ’77-’79. As a kid, I remember visiting auto row just a block or two away from my grandmother’s house to check out the new cars in the showroom (it was the one consolation for being stuck all afternoon at Sunday dinners). I lingered just a bit longer when visiting the Pontiac dealership to sit in a plush Bonneville like this one. Sadly, Larry Hopkins Pontiac is no more, but I’m sure someone in my family somewhere still has the complete Pontiac dealer catalog my older brother surreptitiously lifted from a salesman’s desk. Viewing it was almost as much of a feast as grandma’s roast beef dinner.
I hadn’t noticed it before, but it seems someone at Pontiac was sharp enough to design the fenders in such a way that they didn’t require the bumper-to-fender plastic fillers, notorious for eventually decaying and crumbling away, leaving a very unattractive gap.
It’s odd that the Frech-derived name of Bonneville was ditched in favor of Parisienne in Canada. Dud they think it was ” frenchier”?
The Pontiac Bonneville was named for the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, a place where land speed records are set. I doubt anyone at GM ever thought about the Frenchiness of the name Bonneville.
I had the same thought; if anything, GM Canada probably would have been disinclined to use the name Bonneville because it was “American” (a reference to a place in the U.S.). They may not have even thought about using in Canada, though, as prior to the 1970s Pontiac’s U.S. and Canadian fullsize lineups each used their own completely different sets of model names, with the Canadian lineup more closely following Chevrolet’s model structure than Pontiac’s U.S. lineup. So there was likely no expectation that a model name would be used in Canada just because it was used in the U.S.
“Parisienne” was a convenient name-lift for GM beginning in 1958 for the Canadian Pontiac cross-pollination of an equivalent Bonneville-Star Chief. Parisenne was the landau-like chopped/channeled 1953 Pontiac show car. It also does sound ‘French like’ which would make it somehow appropriate for marketing in Canada . . . . . .
French & Italian names just sound cool, I think that’s all there is to it. Franglais has a long history, and not just in England; Germans like J.S. Bach sometimes mixed in some French, for Bourbon France defined what was cool to many Europeans.
This is the same reason English is often used in Asian marketing, with sometimes ludicrous results.
No, the Bonneville was not “ditched” in Canada, was there since 1958.
“The Parisienne entered the production lineup as a sub-series within the Laurentian line in the 1958 model year. Parisienne became a separate model in 1959.”
True. You COULD buy U.S. Pontiacs in Canada before the auto-pact, however you’d pay a duty which would actually make let’s say, a Star Chief or Bonneville a luxury car when the duties were added.
Nice car, but looks likes the passenger side quarter panel might have been repaired due to the darker shade of Acacodo Green.
I’ve seen these several times over the years but this is the 1st time I realized that rear view strongly resembles a Buick design.
From looking at old brochures, you could have gotten a green interior with pretty much any color of car except blue and red.
It may have finally reached the owner who will sell dope out of the trunk at a Rush concert in Moncton.
So were there any other differences between the Canadian Parisienne and the U.S. Bonneville by this point other than the engines, or were there still differences in the frame and other major under the skin components that required different bodywork on Canadian cars that looked like the US models but didn’t interchange?
After the Auto Pact of 1967, the Canadian and American lines increasingly became the same. The only difference between a Canadian and American car at this point would be the engines. The Canadian cars all have Chevrolet engines. The US cars did get into Canada. We had a 1978 Catalina stippo as a taxi with an Olds V-8 and it had a reputation as a real hot rod. It was a scream to drive as it had HD everything. It ran as a cab for seven years and the engine, in LPG, never had any work whatsoever.
I believe that GM Canada began using the U.S. Pontiac body with the 1971 restyle. The differences that you referenced were present prior to that, when Canadian fullsize Pontiacs had bodywork that resembled their U.S. counterparts, but rode on a Chevrolet chassis and used Chevrolet engines.
The differences between U.S. and Canadian Pontiacs really started to not be so significant beginning in the 1970s. Early Auto-Pact U.S./Canadian Pontiacs would only vary slightly in interior trim and engines; by the 70’s, the interior hardware were similar.
The current owner couldn’t of had it that long as that sequence of plate letters/numbers has only be around since 2011 or so. I live on the north island, so many low km classics, Saw a Hyundai pony awhile back, first time I’d ever seen one
I believe the new letter/number combination only started last year, it’s a very recent change over. Of course, the BC government didn’t opt to redesign the plates, rather just keep going with the same ‘Beautiful British Columbia’ design that has been around since 1985.
I thought all of these with a 5-liter had the Pontiac 301 cid engine, not the Chevy 305 (which IMO was/is the better motor)
Not in Canada. The 301 did make it’s appearance in Canadian Buick Regals around ’79, though.
I worked at Koons Pontiac-GMC four a few months during 1979. My boss drove a blue Bonneville Brougham demonstrator then and I remember it as a quiet, comfortable, smoothing riding car.
Very nice! I love these, always have, since Dad had a brown ’79 Bonnie with beige top and interior. Looked just like this, but with the wheel covers of the featured Parisienne.
Parisienne…
I wonder…just how exactly did the average American Joe pronounce that model name?
When I was a kid, I thought it was “Paris-seen”. But I was about six years old at the time…
I think it was Pah REE she enn
that would sound like “Parisian”, Tom C ! 😉
Parisienne is the female form and would sound like “Pah ree see-annne”
So by this time, given that the B-body cars all basically shared a frame, this would be identical to a US Bonneville in all respects except for using Chevy engines and different emissions equipment?
Love the green paint on this one, and even if the owner is using it as daily transportation, hopefully he or she respects the car and isn’t going to allow it to get completely roached.
I found this car’s US counterpart last year, even so far as catching it at a shopping center and noticing it by the color (though not as distinctive as this green). Missing the fender skirts but also a ’79 and rather a kindred spirit:
Love these cars. A high school friend had a red 1979 Bonneville sedan very similar but it had the vin code W 301 4BBL option. I always thought somebody swapped the 2 BBL for a 4 as the vast majority of the 70’s Bonnevilles and LeSabres always seemed to be so equipped. That is until I learned that Pontiac offered both engines for the 1979 model year. It wasn’t fast by no means but it seemed to handle just about everything we thew at it, was really quiet and smooth and highway trips to the mall saw low to mid 20’s mileage on the good old non ethanol gas from the late 80’s time frame. He drove that car into the ground but the engine or THM 350 transmission never failed with well over 130K miles on the clock before rust and several accidents did it in.
Whenever I see this color Pontiac I instantly think of the ’79 Catalina coupe that my neighbors had. I know they bought it used because a friend’s mom had looked at it as well but waited and it had sold. It was very rare – it had a factory sunroof and the Pontiac Rallye II wheels. Catalina coupes weren’t usually dressed up too much so seeing those Rallye II wheels made for an interesting sight. Then when I saw it had a power sunroof I knew it was special. Plus it was this same olive green color – I think Pontiac called it Piedmont Green Metallic. I love cars of the ’70s and seeing this Parisienne only confirms that!
Ive owned my 79 Green machine for a little over a year now. All original. Roll up windows, ac, tilt. The original owner is 92 yrs old and now in an old age home. I wasnt there when he parted with the car but i heard there were alot of tears. 59,000 kms to date and in pretty good shape right down to the factory tires. This girl is driving the streets of Winnipeg, Manitoba year round now. That 305 is not bad on fuel.
Nice! I like the lawn the ’70s lawn chair accessory. I had some until a couple of years ago when I let them go on Kijiji.
I bought a new 1978 Bonneville with a 301 2bbl. Nice car but what a dog. I special ordered it, so I don’t know what I was thinking!
Purtty cool..
I’ve never owned one but I still recall the most comfortable car I have ever driven was a rental Pontiac Bonneville I had for about a week.
This is a good article, and I love the American vs Canadian Pontiac minutiae in the comments.
As a spelling and grammar nerd, though, I found the misuse of “it’s” in several places distracting.
“It’s” is a contraction of “It is”.
“Its” is possessive.
Of course you’re correct, but this is an automotive comment column, not a grammar school English class.
Deal with it!
My mother had a ’79 Bonneville, white with a blue landau top and interior. Bought it brand new when I was 10 years old. Had the Pontiac 301 and 3-speed auto but with a console-mounted shifter, something I’ve never seen on any other ’79 Bonneville. I remember a small round blue decal on it with a maple leaf so I always assumed that meant it was built in Canada.
That car is a family legend…my brother and I ended up driving that car quite a bit in the late ’80s once we had our licenses and we beat the living hell out of it, but it never skipped a beat. That thing took more abuse than any car should…ya know it takes effort to get a car that big and heavy to catch air. 🙂
Eventually New York road salt did her in…she was totally rotted out by the mid 1990s. To this day my brother and I muse about buying another one…
I was curious about the dash, as it clearly is the early “Pontiac-specific” one that the US cars also had at that time. What confuses me about it was that Parisiennes weren’t initially available in the US till the mid-later 80’s and when here I think they had a Chevrolet dash (my Father had a ’78 Chevy Caprice, and the later 80’s Parisienne dash looked similar, certainly different than the Bonneville in the US which had those “square” instruments like the speedometer, etc.)
Probably a bit of an odd question for me to ask, when my Father owned the ’78 Chevy we were living in Northern Vermont, pretty close to the Quebec border (the nearest big city to us was Montreal, rather than Boston or New York)…so you would think I would have seen a Parisienne or two in passing (at least in Quebec) but of course unless you were riding in it or peering into the window you might not otherwise see the instrument panel. So…it begs the question…when did the Parisienne abandon the “Pontiac”; instrument panel and replace it with the “Chevy” (or what I’m calling Chevy) one?
Feel I’m asking a “generic instrument panel” question…early 70’s full sized Mercuries had Mercury (unique) dash panels but at some point they went away and there were just the Ford dashes even in a Mercury. Surely done for inventory reasons, but it did water down the brand proposition. Wonder if Parisienne owners were bummed when they started getting the Chevrolet dash?