What has nifticus found and posted to the Cohort? Another ratty old Nova sedan?
Why no; it’s an early Pontiac Ventura, a grill-engineered version of the Nova that arrived mid-year 1971. Small car sales were booming (think Duster, Vega and Pinto, among others), and Pontiac was missing out, big time. So they cajoled the 14th floor into letting them get their hands on the Nova, using the existing front end already being used for their Canadian Ventura. How convenient.
But for the front end, bigger tail lights and a few badges, it was 100% Chevy, engines and all. Well, in 1972, the Pontiac 350 V8 did join the engine lineup, for what it’s worth.
And of course this was just the beginning: in 1973 the Olds Omega and the Buick Apollo joined the club, and in 1975, the Cadillac Seville. Uh-oh; I shouldn’t have said that.
Related reading:
CC 1971 Pontiac Ventura: GM’s Deadly Sin #3 – Badge Engineering Begins In Earnest
Afterthought it may have been but the four-door Nova of this generation is really good-looking. I never understood why they went to the expense of retooling the C-pillar for the ’73 facelift only to have the result look blobbier and more awkward in contrast to both this that came before and the ’75-79 with its Hofmeister kink which was in many ways the most handsome body style of that generation.
I have no information to back this up, but my thinking is that the “blobbier and more awkward” c-pillar had something to to with the introduction of the hatchback body style – like the c-pillar had to be stiffer and stronger to make up for the loss of structural integrity from removing the rear bulkhead.
That hipline in the rear door so cool in 1968 was looking dreadfully dated by then. Agreed the result looked dreadful though. Blobbier indeed!
I’d have thought the type of owner who paints mismatched fenders would find a handy tree stump and reverse gear to smack that bent back bumper straight.
Given its a Canadian car, maybe it’s an Acadian, and not a Ventura?… ( Canadian cultural badge engineering….. )
The Acadian brand was used on Pontiac’s version of the Nova until mid ’71, then when the Ventura came along it took over the Acadian’s place in the Canadian Pontiac lineup. The Acadian name went dormant but resurfaced in 1976 as a Pontiac version of the Chevette.
Did they have a sport trim before the (2 door) “GTO” in ’74? Those wheels and tires look pretty large.
Rally wheels were a freestanding option, if they were on a 4 door from new it would almost certainly have been a special order. That being said, wheels are an easy swap and this car’s had 50 years to have had its’ wheels swapped.
In my 20’s I ended up with a ‘72 Pontiac Ventura Sprint. As far as I have ever known, and someone can correct me, the Sprint was the sport package consisting of a stripe, buckets and consul with floor shift. I do believe mine was an original 307 cu in automatic car but by the time I got it a 327 2 barrel had been installed with headers. Aside from that the car was quite original. The reason I got it was the former owner came in for a wheel alignment and all the bushings, ball joints etc were way beyond spec. So he unloaded it to me for $500.00. I replaced the worn parts, made an additional $500.00 with which I bought a yard tractor for the acreage we had bought. I used to do a lot of that sort of thing.
Collonade Grand Am wheels?
GM once had so many divisions selling the same basic cars. It was the dealers that demanded those models, they needed to cover all the market segments. For a time it worked out well, and the different marques were differentiated enough to preserve some individual identity. Later on they just got too similar, and they became obviously redundant. I was just thinking about this last night as I drove past a rural Ford dealership. There were just two logos presented; Ford and Lincoln. That’s it, they sell everything that Ford makes. It taking a long time but GM is probably headed in a similar direction.
This was one of the main factors in the demise of GM; the hubris that their overall market share would never diminish was a huge factor in the expansion of downmarket models within upper-tier divisions. GM corporate never thought their piece of the auto pie would shrink.
When it did, there was little choice but to pare down divisions, and it was the death knell for Oldsmobile, then Pontiac.
Buick is next. They already overlapped Chevy’s high end and Cadillac’s low end, but now they just sell three crossovers that overlap the GMCs in the same showroom.
Buick’s demise would have already occurred if not for one thing: China. For whatever reason, the Chinese seem to love Buicks and that, alone, has kept the division afloat.
Chevrolet is doing okay as a lower-tier brand with reasonable quality that sells at a good price with calculated marketing discounts (although they’re not all that terrific when compared with other, similiarly-equipped competitors). Along with Dodge and Nissan, they’re part of that automotive triad that traditionally sells to the credit-challenged.
Cadillac is having their usual issues but at least they’re trying to move into the rarified luxury EV market, now so completely dominated by Tesla.
The blue paint on this “NOVA” reminds me of my ’72 Nova which was the same blue. Mine was a 2 door, 250 c.i. 6, but being a California car it had more bolted on smog equipment than the engine could handle. The end result was a poor running car that got a blazing 14-15 mpg on the freeway! I took a bath, but unloaded it as a trade for a new ’73 VW Super Bug. The VW performed as it was engineered to do!
The obvious badge engineering did not help my view towards GM.
This miserable mileage from a 6 cylinder “compact” car started my distrust of GM vehicles; altho it took several more bad GM products b4 I FINALLY learned my lesson and switched to (mostly) 4 wheeled Hondas!! 🙂 DFO
The problem was the dealers wanted to move you ‘upmarket’ into a bigger, more profitable car, so there was no incentive to make their smaller cars better. And then the Japanese came to market, and said “Here you go”……
Here in Australia this was the standard size car, and ‘our’ Big Three did their best to make the Holden, Falcon, and Valiant as good as they knew how, with equipment options way beyond what ‘your’ Big Three offered in this size. Having said that, Holden dropped the ball big time when it came to emission controls, and Ford eventually took the lead.
There was one of these parked in my neighborhood–it didn’t move for maybe 5 years. I don’t think it’s there anymore, but it’s visible in this Google street view:
A friend of mine had the Oldsmobile version, the Omega in high school. It had an Olds rocket 350 ci engine with 4 barrel carb which made it stand out among these X cars. I believe all others came with a Chevy engine and 2 barrel carb.
By ’73 all the divisions offered there proprietary 350 V8’s. The standard 6 was the Chevy engine in all of them. By the late ’70’s all the divisions shared each other’s engines. From there I lost track of what car got what engine. Also the Olds Cutlass Supreme coupe was a major seller. Olds made their Rocket 350’s priority for the Cutlass’.
And I never understood what happened to Olds Rockets V8’s. They were so highly regarded from the ’50’s to the 70’s. Then there was the whole diesel fiasco, followed by reliable but seriously unimpressive 260 and 307 V8’s.
That front end and hood was unique to the 1971-1/2 Ventura II right from the start. It was never ‘already being used on the Acadian’. The Acadian had a slightly modified grille as used on the Nova, and little changed from 1970. Many in Canada, including some dealers were stumped as to why GM of Canada would introduced the Ventura II midway through the 1971 model year while they already had the Acadian on the market and didn’t wait until 1972 to introduce the ‘Pocket Sized Pontiac’ to Canada. Ford didn’t introduce the Comet until the 1961 model year for Mercury dealers to sell in Canada, as they were already marketing the Frontenac in 1960; essentially a rebadged Falcon with maple leaf emblems all over it.
Had some neighbors in an apartment complex I lived in for a bit in the 80’s, who first had a Pontiac Ventura, which i referred to as a Pontiac Nova, who then bought a Chevy nameplated car which was really a Toyota Corolla which i referred to as a Chevy Corolla. Never spoke to them about it, I saw no reason to make any more enemies than I already had.
I hate this car because I spent endless hours in Google Image Search trying to figure out what it was back in 2009 or 2010 when I saw one (though a two-door) parked on a residential street in Toronto. As it was being repainted and was only wearing primer, all of its badges were missing. I Googled everything from the AMC AMX to the Ford Torino – nothing rang a bell until a picture of a Ventura came up.
Where can i buy one of those i need one for my dad any help will be appreciated thank you mleoc8876@yahoo.com
It was certainly a right time that Pontiac finally had their version of the “Nova” because remember too that the mechanically related Firebird was already there several years prior to. In other words, just as the Camaro complements the Nova line, the Firebird eventually does the same for the Ventura or to put in another way, the Grand Prix with the Lemans or the Monte Carlo with the Chevelle.