It’s a bit hard to believe, but we’ve never featured a ’58 Pontiac on the pages of CC. How to explain that? Well, 1958 was a lousy year for Pontiac, the worst since WW2 with only 217k sold. And obviously, there’s not a lot of those that survived to be sitting curbside these days, but we’ve never had a car show post on one either, or any other kind. The forgotten Pontiac.
SoCalMetro has come to the rescue with this low-end Chieftain two-door sedan he found in Las Vegas. Time to show it a bit of CC love.
SoCalMetro only posted that one shot, so I’m taking a lifeline from the brochure. The Chieftain was Pontiac’s basic line; it had a 122″ wheelbase, meaning it shared its body shell from the cowl back with the ’58 Chevy but had the usual Pontiac front end extension. This series morphed into the Catalina series in ’59; in ’58, the Catalina was a specially-trimmed hardtop coupe and sedan only.
I cannot refrain from expressing my personal opinion on 1950s Pontiacs: they were an unfortunate heavy handed make-over of the Chevy, with unnecessary added weight, length and gobs of chrome and other stylistic gimmicks. I’m not exactly a fan of the ’58 Chevy to start with, and even less so of the Pontiac. I guess I wasn’t the only one to feel that way in ’58, but then that was a bad year for all the bigger cars. Things really started to pick up for Pontiac in 1959.
The Super Chief and Star Chief got an additional 2″ wheelbase extension at the rear (124″ total), very visible in the space behind the rear door of the yellow sedan above. All wagons used the 122″ wheelbase.
And then there was Pontiac’s hot Bonneville, which had been a very limited production (630 unit) convertible in 1957. For 1958 it was expanded to a coupe and convertible, sitting on the shorter 122″ wheelbase.
The 1958 Bonneville did have one claim to fame that made it to CC: it was the first American regular production post-war car to feature bucket seats as an option. That was the beginning of a trend that has of course completely taken over the industry. Good luck finding a bench seat anymore.
Here’s a closer look at them: they were rather oddly narrow and look like they might have come out of a truck or van. And there was no console yet. That dash certainly had plenty of visual…interest. It was dashes like this that finally got the government to mandate no bright work on dashes that could create blinding glare. Keep your polarized sunglasses on when driving this!
All ’58 Pontiacs were powered by an enlarged 370 cubic inch version of their V8, which had just been enlarged to 347 cubic inches in 1957 from 316 in 1956 and 287 in 1955. Talk about rapid inflation!
In typical Pontiac fashion that would be common all through the sixties, there were six version of the 370 V8 available: a 240hp two barrel low compression job for the Chieftain and Super Chief with manual transmission; 255hp for the Star Chief and Bonneville with manual transmission; 270hp for Chieftain and Super Chief with automatic (Hydramatic), 2985 hp for the Star Chief and Bonneville with automatic; and a 300hp hi-po unit with Tri-power and a 310hp unit with Rochester fuel injection. Only some 200 of the FI units were ever sold.
Smokey Yunick built a hot ’58 Pontiac that Paul Goldsmith took to a victory in the last race at the Daytona Beach & Road Course. I’m pretty fure FI had been banned by then, so it was most likely a tri-power engine under the hood.
This will have to do until someone finds another ’58 Pontiac and shoots it more thoroughly. I’m not holding my breath.
Related reading:
Automotive History: The Bucket Seat Era Started Modestly In 1958 And Now Bench Seats Are History
CC: 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne Three Door Sedan – The Chevy Cherry Gets Popped
Interesting how the brochure makes it look much longer that it actually is .
I’m not a fan of the ’58 Chevies either they were lot poison forever it seems .
-Nate
The ’58 Bonneville dash is a beautiful work of art.
I love this day-night time-lapse gif of the instrument panel.
http://www.kingoftheroad.net/pontiac_html/58pontiac_dash.html
The owner has some other great pics of his restored ‘58. It almost makes me want one.
Car and Driver ran a feature about the ’58 Bonneville sometime in the late ’70s or early ’80s when I subscribed to it, one of my first in-depth exposures to 1950s cars, and the thing just blew me away with its over-the-topness, the glittery dashboard, the reverse A pillars, the rocket ships in the rear fenders complete with diamond stardust in its exhaust wake. It made modern cars seem so boring. Now those ’70s/80s cars look exciting compared to new ones of today.
I think all the ’58 GM cars were a bit heavy handed in styling and showed that it was time for Mr. Earl to retire.
In the ’80’s my uncle found a very well preserved ’58 Chieftain with only 6000 miles on it. Upon his death the car was sold through Hemmings to settle his estate. By then (early 2000’s) it had 11,000 miles on it. The chalk marks were still on the frame and firewall from the factory. It did suffer damage on 1 of the rear quarter panels from a careless golf cart driver at a car show. Repaired soon after.
I think it was sold to someone in the Portland Oregon area. It is a black 2 door sedan with white trim on the sides and a continental kit. Wide whites and factory wheel covers. I’m sorry I have no pictures of it to share.
From the ’80s to the mid-’90s, I drove past this scene on Route 10 on my way to County College of Morris. In the middle there is a 1958 Pontiac Star Chief 2-door HT in silvery-gray. I actually saw it driving on Rt. 10 a couple of times. That’s the last time I saw a ’58 Pontiac on the road.
That Pontiac and Buick look AI-generated for some dystopian scene. It’s hard to believe these were/are actually real. I know you love them, but they truly were the nadir of American car design.
Even the over-the-top ’59 GM cars were a drastic improvement.
Close-up of the Pontiac:
The Buick and Oldsmobile were the worst IMO, but all the ’58 GM cars were garish.
Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Cadillac. This picture demos quite well two of the failings in styling all the ’58 GM cars shared, including Chevrolet.
Their front ends all had the same time-worn design elements: four headlights at the upper corners; hoods abruptly dropping down to the top of a low, wide grille flanked by mis-mashes of highly decorative bumper ends.
The other thing that dated their designs was their tall, thick headed roofs. Maybe Harley Earl’s tall height had influenced things, but compared to the low, flat tops seen on Chrysler Corp’s cars and even at Ford, all of GM’s 58s were placeholders in the grand scheme of things.
Back view. The land has since been redeveloped, and nothing shown in this photo remains today.
A high school friend had a gray & white ’58 Chieftain 2door hardtop back when they were cheap 12 year old wheels a teenager could afford.
The ’58 370/Hydramatic was a bit of an odd duck performance wise. It could show taillights to Chev/Ford/Plymouths with base V8 in a quarter mile. But it couldn’t keep up with an intermediate equipped with a hotter V8. The competition as driven by fellow students was either distinctly faster or slower.
Having such clear cut competition kept my friend from both winning and losing high school wagers. We did have fun in that car though. The dashboard was amazing day or night. And while twin ashtrays could sprout from all that chrome, we usually just used the Wisconsin-rusty holes in the floorboards for butts.
The trunk was even worse. In summer, we’d have to shake the dust off our golf bags thanks to holes in the trunk that inhaled prodigious quantities of road dust. In fall, we learned to wrap our rifles in plastic whenever we took the car into a field during hunting season. In winter, everything in the trunk was covered with icy slush. In spring everything got soaked.
Despite it all, the car created many pleasant memories. Driving down backroads with no particular place to go. Doubling at a favorite parking spot in the comfy seats. Listening to the engine wind through the Hydramatic gears with the air cleaner removed. Watching the little red Indian head light up with the high beams at night. Paging through the owner manual which featured logos of little Indians performing various functions like cranking the engine. Pumping $2 in gas through the fuel filler hidden behind the reverse light.
An unremarkable car made memorable thanks to the time period it occupied during youth.
I’m not surprised about that Pontiac’s performance. The 4-speed Hydramatic gave these cars pretty brisk acceleration compared to low-end big cars and base V8s. That 370 had almost a hundred cubes over a 283 Chevy or such.
But yes, the lighter intermediate’s with hot engines were in another league.
I wonder if it took people a while to get used to 4 eyes bugging out at them, in addition to the recession. The ’58 Cadillac front still looks like a mutant to me.
Did Pontiac and Chevy both first get 4 door hardtops in ’58?
In 1956.
I’m not a big fan of any of the 58 GM cars, but I think I might like the Pontiac the most. Hard to say, easy to say is that the Buick is the worst
“The Forgotten Pontiac”. Yet it was advertised as THE BOLDEST ADVANCE IN 50 YEARS, going back to the 1908 Oakland! LOL
I saw a top of the line ’58 Bonneville with fuel injection at auction a few years back.
The most dazzling car I think I’ve ever seen. The dash and interior were breathtaking. Photos of these cars don’t do them justice. Somehow I see all the myriad fussy details and think “these people were crazy.” But live, up close, it all works together to just knock your eyeballs right out of the sockets.
Growing up, our second car was a 1958 Strato Chief. Poverty-specs of course: 3 on the tree and a 6-cylinder truck engine. I guess that made it a Cheviac. The drive-train apparently got a lot of attention from gas station attendants when my Dad drove the car to the US for a job interview.
After 1965 it became my mother’s car. I was embarrassed riding around in such a monstrosity and would hide on the floor behind the front seat. Though at least it wasn’t a dull Rambler.
What a beast.
So, who was the driver of the unfortunate #73?
The #73 car is the ’57 Ford of Bob Pronger, who retired on lap 16 with a broken wheel, finishing 31st and earning the princely sum of $25!
58 GMs have a very 58-59 Fordish aesthetic to my eye; boxy and boubous with a hodge podge of gimmicks that don’t really go well together. The Pontiac looks damn near indistinguishable from an Edsel from the side.
59s may have defined long low wide excess but they’re all so much more coherent and by comparison dare I say subdued.
There’s a Tri-Power Star Chief that makes occasional car show appearances near me. Despite the overwrought styling of the ‘58s, the car is gorgeously spellbinding.
Not my video, but this is the exact car.