posted at the Cohort by Dean Edwards
Finding a ’65 Catalina 2-door sedan is rare, but a Star Strato Chief! No such thing, but then as soon as I looked at this car I realized that we’re looking at a Cheviac: meaning a Canadian-built Pontiac sitting on a 119″ Chevrolet frame and with Chevy drive train and other chassis bits. 283/Powerglide, if I had to bet. Or was the six cylinder still available in 1965? Now that would be cool, with a three on the tree (Update: it does have the 230 six).
The shorter body (at the rear) as well as mighty small tires make this look a wee bit emasculated from the proud big Ponchos on this side of the border. It’s the ultimate anti 2+2. And makes a nice contrast to the genuine Executive we posted earlier.
…
1965 Bonneville Limousine COAL
…
This would be a Strato-Chief (not Star Chief), the base trim Canadian Pontiac through 1970. There’s a better than 50/50 chance that this is a six-cylinder car. V8 cars had a small square “V-8” emblem on the fender just behind the headlights.
If this ’65 Strato-Chief is a six cylinder, would it be the 261 ci engine?
I assume the newer generation Chevy six (230/250). Maybe a 292? 🙂
The 230 was the only available six.
Love the names for the engines . Where they used in Canada only?
Yes, these were Canada-only names. When the Chevy big block engines were introduced, the 396 was named the “Astro-Jet” and the 427 the “Jet-Flame”.
Ah, of course! I couldn’t quite make out the lettering as the resolution of these images is quite low. But I’m remembering the Canadian Strato Chief now. I’ve edited the title and text.
We had a 1965 2 door Strato Chief 283. I loved the smell of it when it was new! It was a company car that we had for 2 years. Good memories!
Yeah, that looks pretty normal to me. It’s the wide tracks that look odd 😉
That’s in Windsor, Ontario. EW Metal Works is still there.
I remember a man with a 1963, His Cheviac two-door sedan was a six-cylinder power glide and no wide track for the Canadian Pontiac.
The pictures look like they were taken back in the ‘80’s. The Strato Chief would have been the base full size Canadian Pontiac during the ‘60’s, with the Laurentian, Parisienne, Bonneville and Grand Prix rounding out the range. I used to work with someone who owned (and daily drove) a maroon ‘66 Strato Chief 4-door sedan in the early ‘90’s. It was in great shape – I’m sure he got a good buck for it when he sold it. They weren’t anything special back in the day, but it’s always cool to see one now.
Don’t think there was a Bonneville or Grand Prix in Canada. Parisienne was the Bonneville equivalent and the Custom Sport was like the Grand Prix.
I remember seeing both the Bonneville and Grand Prix as a boy in the late ‘60’s.
That would have been after the 1965 Auto Pact between the U.S. and Canada that removed the barriers and tariffs on auto trade between the two countries. The Auto Pact allowed previously U.S. only auto models to be sold in Canada without the high tariffs that had been in existence.
And…. drum roll please…. we also had the Grande Parisienne! Almost as much chrome as a Buick but with nicer seats I thought.
Strato Chief – what an odd name that didn’t really seem to fit with the other names of the Canadian Pontiac line. But then I always thought Star Chief was an odd name too.
As a “south of the border” guy, this looks really odd to me. I can’t say I ever remember these 2 door sedans at the time, they had to be really rare in the states.
My Uncle Bob bought a 1965 Catalina 4 door sedan as a used car probably around 1969 or so. It was a really nice car and seemed so much more modern than the 64 Ford Galaxie 500 4 door hardtop that was their “old” car. American Pontiacs put stainless or anodized cladding over the upper window surrounds on sedan models.
That 1964 Galaxie was the last year of a body from 1960, based on a frame/suspension from 1957. Like 1965 Fords, the 1965 Pontiac was the first year of a from the ground up all new design including curved not flat glass.
But everyone here probably already knew that.
Not only that, but everything about that Ford felt heavy and thick and old fashioned, like the solid black rubber pedals, the painted bakelite steering wheel with the paint wearing off, and the thick doors. Frankly, a 1960 Pontiac might have felt about as modern.
Strato Chief may have been chosen as a slightly more bilingual version of Star Chief.
They’re both odd names, but perhaps they were a lingering marketing reference to the vanished ‘Indian Chief’ logo.
Strato is awfully close to stratosphere; you go from there on up to the reach the “Stars”, so to speak. Seems logical to my haphazard thought process…
The lack of bright trim on the window frames which the US Catalina had on the two door sedan is what looks cheap on this Palmetto Green example. I’m surprised it has full wheel covers and not dog dishes.
> we’re looking at a Cheviac: meaning a Canadian-built Pontiac sitting on a 119″ Chevrolet frame
I’m unclear about what constitutes a Chevy vs. Pontiac (or other B body) frame starting in 1965 – didn’t GM move to shared frames that year? But I do see that Pontiacs still had an extra 2 inches in the wheelbase, and the track seems a few inches wider too.
Some interesting CCs in the background too – an ’81 Olds Omega Brougham, and is that a Firenza wagon by the loading dock?
GM adopted a standard perimeter frame design for all of the ’65s, but their length and certain chassis details (like track) were still set by the divisions.
I am estimating this car was registered to the owner with the license plate it is wearing (141 RXM) in about the early 1990s). How it came to be sitting in a yard in this condition, apparently still wearing its original paint, with some major rocker panel wear, is a complete mystery. It does bear a CAA sticker, so the one time owner(s) thought well enough to retain some protection against roadside failures of some kind. I can’t read the date of the last renewal sticker, but I do believe she has ridden her last kilometer. Maybe a catastrophic water pump failure, a thrown rod, or just overcome with underbody rust. The front plate is gone, perhaps a lasting souvenir of the last ride in this Poncho. I speculate the last owner was a student at the University of Windsor who used it as a cheap driver, bought it for a few hundred bucks, and has sold it for discard value.
Very good spotting on the year of the photograph! I took this shot on my way back from work, as it was almost the twin of my Dad’s car. His was the “loaded” one with 283, PS, AM radio, automatic, whereas this one had the 230 six. It could have been mine for $200, and had been sidelined by frame rot by the original owner. When I took the shot, it was the rarity. Now, all the peripheral cars around it are long gone too.
I am uploading some of my old shots to the cohort, and have to apologize for the quality and occasional transposition
The absolute oldest this shot could have been is 1991, as there is a Cavalier hiding in one of the shots with the new-that-year reverse canted flush headlights.
Does anyone else notice a lack of a side rear view mirror, or even a provision for one? Was that an option on low-trim cars, even on the driver’s side?
Very interesting observation. I checked out Old Car Brochures, which has both U.S. and Canadian Pontiac brochures for ‘65, and NONE of the featured cars, even the Bonnevilles and Parisiennes, had side view mirrors. I think left side outside mirrors didn’t become mandatory in the U.S until 1966.
I happened to check some oldcarbrochures a while back and noticed that mirrors were often omitted, but back then the pictured cars were pre-photoshop photoshopped, and often actually paintings, and often distorted to make the cars look longer, lower, and wider.
The missing mirror is interesting. My family’s stripper 1958 Chevy had nothing, but it did have that mirror. Maybe required by law in the states but not Canada?
I had a 1988 Horizon with everything but no right side mirror. I think the convex mirror over there was a newish idea (that seems obvious and necessary to us now). The left door had a depression stamped in it for the mirror base, but the right door did not. I got one from Chrysler parts.
My 1962 Lincoln (owned in the 90’s) had everything but no right side mirror.
Nothing became mandatory in the U.S. until 1968—there was no mechanism for such a mandate until then, so various workarounds were used to goad the automakers into providing at least minimal, basic safety equipment; see here.
A driver side (left in the US) mirror was optional in 1965. It was standard in ’66. I don’t know when the right side mirror was required. I do remember many luxury cars in the early ’70’s with a remote left side and manual right side mirror.
Bob
Great photos Dean!
Multiple blasts from the past. Including the relatively rare short wheelbase third gen Econoline. I most popularly remember Sears using these for appliance repair.
Ah, this is the car (2 years newer) featured in the song I posted about, here https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/music/cc-jukebox-two-car-songs-about-defunct-brands/
Canadian Pontiac’s seem like they are from another country…
I see what you did there.
Even in this base trim, such gorgeous styling! No wonder Pontiac was on a tear in the 60s.
After Paul’s excellent treatise on parallel vs. opposing wipers, I see this example has parallel wipers like the Chevys of the same timeframe.
Also have to credit CC for teaching me the proper pecking order of the Cheviacs. When I saw them as a teen in Canada in the 60s, I assumed Strato Chief was equivalent to the US midrange Star Chief, with Laurentian on the bottom rung like Catalina. Obviously, this is incorrect. (I did deduce at the time that Parisienne = Bonneville.)
Yeah, the Strato Cheif was the bottom of the Pontiac pecking order in Canada.
I bought a ’65 4 door sedan Strato Chief in 1979. Absolute base model, the 230 CID 6 with a 3 on the tree, no power anything, rubber floor and no radio. It was a great car, though. Never failed to start in the winter, with gobs of heat (which was needed for the rock hard vinyl seats in the winter!), got decent mileage, and we could cram a whole long-weekend’s camping gear and refreshments for 6 in the trunk and 6 passengers. I’ve always had a thing for true strippo versions of the full size Chevys, Ponchos, Oldsmobiles, and Buicks, starting with my ’46 Pontiac coupe, and another dozen or so 50’s-70’s ending with a strippo’ ’73 Le Sabre sedan in the late 80’s.
Thats what we got locally assembled or they arrived part assembled, Cheviacs out of Canada Parisiennes and Laurentians fourdoors mostly then to confuse the issue a lot of US models came in near new too, ordering parts was to say the least interesting.
Parts references in Canada sometimes differentiated the Chevy and Pontiac 350s and 400s as “orange engine” and “blue engine”.
So the PowerGlide was the only available automatic? How disappointing. I always assumed the Parisienne or Grande Parisienne could have come with a Turbo-Hydramatic. My father had a Laurentian 4-door sedan. It had the PowerGlide and a radio but no other options. He said later that he thought it was quite sluggish. Oddly complained about this more about town than on the highway. (And we once took a trailer on a longish vacation.) The 1969 Parisienne hardtop that followed seemed a VERY BIG step up. PS, PB, 350 v8, and Turbo-Hydromatic! Took him a bit of time to get used to the power brakes…
THM only available in 1966, and only on the 396 and 427 only. The cheapskates were made to suffer with the Powerglide.
Probably at that time the THM was just the THM400. Intended for big blocks. The THM350 for small blocks and sixes came out later.
Bob
I briefly owned a 1965 Parisienne wagon, 283 Powerglide, v8 callout on the grille. Options were AM radio, electric rear window and those cool stainless steel air-foil things at the rear corners.
The V-8 Pontiac introduced in 1955 was coined “Stratostreak V-8” and a plate on the right hand valve cover that said “Stratostreak.” So the “strato” name was part of Pontiac vocabulary for at least 10 years before the intro of this Canadian model name. Stratostreak probably came from combining the aerospace reference to the Stratosphere and the twin streaks that adorned the hood on the ‘55 Pontiac.
here is the Strato Streak plate on the engine described in post above
Seen in Munich recently…
Wow! Brings back fond memories of my late father’s 1965 Strato Chief he bought in Montreal that year; the first new car he ever bought, for just over $2K CDN at the time. It was made at GM’s now defunct assembly plant in Ste-Therese, QC. It was very, very basic with few options: no power steering, standard drum brakes, no A/C, and didn’t even have a radio, which might have been an upgrade option. It had a 2-speed automatic tranny, and vinyl and cloth seats. Definitely had a straight-six Chev engine (orange block). We had the car up until early 1977. It ran well, but was starting to rust. My dad sold it to a guy for $100, the buyer wanting just the engine and tranny and planned to use the shell as an ice fishing shack. If it wasn’t eventually crushed as scrap it could be at the bottom of a lake somewhere. A great car.