1963 Pontiac Grand Prix Vs. 1963 Oldsmobile Starfire Coupe – How Did These Sporty Luxury Hardtops Compare?

In the early 1960s, GM’s Oldsmobile and Pontiac divisions responded to the burgeoning personal luxury market with re-trimmed B-body hardtops, the Oldsmobile Starfire and Pontiac Grand Prix. Both were restyled for 1963, taking rather different aesthetic approaches to the same mission, with very different degrees of aesthetic and commercial success. How did the 1963 Grand Prix and Starfire compare? Let’s take a detailed look.

During its lengthy heyday, General Motors spent a remarkable amount of time, energy, and money competing with itself. It could scarcely do otherwise — in this period, GM controlled more than 53 percent of the U.S. market, and it was only in certain segments that its domestic rivals posed any substantial commercial success. GM’s mid-price divisions went at it hammer and tongs, and even when their efforts were ostensibly aimed at some third party, they had a unique talent for stealing each other’s lunch money as they vied for supremacy in more or less the same market segments.

 

Originally available only as a convertible, the Oldsmobile Starfire had debuted in 1961 as a sporty personal luxury car, lobbed in the general direction of the trend-setting Ford Thunderbird. Unlike the T-Bird, which had its own unique body shell, the Starfire was essentially a well-trimmed Olds 88 convertible with bucket seats, a center console, and big swaths of brushed aluminum side trim. Sales were modest, but Olds kept at it, adding a Starfire coupe for 1962 — the model’s best year, with production totaling 41,988 units.

At that time, Pontiac got into the act with its Grand Prix. Offered only as a hardtop, it was essentially a well-trimmed Pontiac Catalina with the obligatory buckets and console, with a level of interior trim approximating that of Pontiac’s flagship Bonneville. This first Grand Prix did okay, selling 30,195 units for the model year.

 

For the redesigned 1963 Grand Prix, Pontiac design chief Jack Humbert pulled out all the stops and pulled off most of the exterior trim, leaving a cleanly chiseled shape highlighted by a stacked-quad headlight treatment and a crisp new “formal” roof, both highly influential.

 

Stripping off extraneous exterior trim was a standard customizer trick, but while it wasn’t wholly without precedent in Detroit (the 1955 Chrysler C-300 had done the same thing), it wasn’t the usual order of things. For one, the auto industry had long relied on external brightwork to signify a model’s position in the hierarchy: The higher the price, the heavier the “gorp” (as contemporary stylists called the brightwork). Having a pricier model with less chrome and frippery could make the sales force very uneasy. For another, as comics artists and graphic designers will tell you, the fewer lines you draw, the more right each of those lines had better be. Here, Humbert’s exquisite draftsmanship really paid dividends: Even with its lack of trim, I would hesitate to call the the 1963 Grand Prix “subtle” or “understated” — as with most Pontiac designs of the early ’60s, the net effect is rather brash — but it is supremely confident from nose to tail, with no need for costume jewelry.

 

By comparison, the 1963 Starfire is (with due apologies to author John Irving) another refugee from The World According to Gorp. Its signature brushed aluminum side spear adds a couple of levels of clutter to a design that already looks overly busy, with its peaked fenders (each topped with a line of stainless steel trim), demi-fins, and crucifix taillights.

 

There’s a degree of nervous fussiness to this design that reminds me of Chrysler products of this era, which is not helped by the fact that in profile, the Starfire’s roofline looks an awful lot more like a 1963 Dodge Dart GT than I would prefer in a car costing well over $4,000.

 

Although their sail panels are obviously different shapes, both the Starfire and the 1963 Grand Prix share a concave backlight. I suspect the tooling for what automakers call the roof upper was also common to both models. However, I don’t think the average observer would grasp that the Starfire and GP both share the same GM B-body shell — they don’t look at all similar, despite the common rear window design.

 

Their exterior dimensions aren’t the same either: The 1963 Grand Prix is 211.9 inches long on a 120-inch wheelbase, 78.2 inches wide, and 54.1 inches high; in keeping with Pontiac’s contemporary “Wide Track” advertising theme, tread width is a sizable 62.5 inches in front, 64.0 inches in back. The Starfire is 2.6 inches longer overall, 214.5 inches on a 123-inch wheelbase, 77.9 inches wide, and 55 inches high, with track widths of 62.2 inches in front and 61.0 inches in back. Not huge differences, or enough to prevent the bodies from sharing significant chunks of their inner structure, but it helps these cars look different from one another.

 

Strictly as a contest of design, I think the Grand Prix wins hands-down. This was a style-driven segment, and the GP’s outstanding tailoring is more appealing than the Starfire’s cluttered and sometimes dated detailing.

Let’s also see how they compare in other significant areas:

Contrast With Line-Mates

Unlike the Thunderbird or the 1963 Buick Riviera, the 1963 Grand Prix and Starfire are dressed-up B-bodies, so it’s reasonable to ask how they compared with the cheaper models in their respective lineups, which offered the same mechanical package and most or all of the same features.

The Grand Prix is fundamentally a plusher Catalina with a different roofline and different trim, so the family resemblance is hard to avoid. A 1963 Catalina hardtop is also a handsome car, and as a practical matter, its chrome side-spear would have some value in crowded parking lots. However, the Grand Prix has dressed for dinner, whereas the Catalina looks like it might be more comfortable parked outside a Bob’s Big Boy. The GP doesn’t obsolete the Catalina (good news for Pontiac, which sold a lot of the latter for 1963), but the Grand Prix does look like the better-dressed, more prosperous older brother.

 

Even more than in 1962, the 1963 Starfire doesn’t strike me as an improvement on the basic Dynamic 88, whose simpler side spear, less-cluttered grille, and sporty pseudo-convertible hardtop roof (shared with the Catalina Sports Coupe) seem more on-trend for 1963 than the pricier Starfire does. I am a documented sucker for the buckets-and-console interior treatment on the Starfire, but when it comes to the exterior, the Starfire seems like a step down from its cheaper brother — not a good thing in this league.

Price

At first blush, the Starfire and Grand Prix wouldn’t seem to be in the same price class: A Starfire Coupe started at $4,129, while the Grand Prix started at only $3,489 — a sizable difference in 1963 dollars. (The Grand Prix seems to have been positioned to compete with the Chrysler 300 two-door hardtop, which started at $3,430.)

 

However, the Starfire had much more standard equipment, including power steering, power brakes, Hydra-Matic, and a number of other features. Most Grand Prix buyers ordered those things anyway — only a dedicated drag racer or a fool would order a new full-size Pontiac with manual steering or three-speed manual transmission in 1963 — so the actual price difference for typically equipped cars was more like $200. Nonetheless, unless you ordered the Grand Prix with one of the H.O. engines or got really carried away with the dealer-installed accessory list, the Oldsmobile was likely to be more expensive, at least in suggested retail terms.

 

This didn’t extend to resale values: After three years, the Grand Prix would command an extra $100 in trade compared to the Starfire Coupe. Today, a nice GP is worth a good deal more than the Olds as a collector car, with the hotter powertrains commanding even higher prices.

Performance

Given Pontiac’s performance reputation, you might assume the Grand Prix would easily win this category, but it wasn’t quite that simple.

The Starfire was available with only one powertrain: a high-compression four-barrel version of the familiar 394 cu. in. Olds Rocket V-8, with 345 gross horsepower and 440 lb-ft of torque, linked to a three-speed Model 375 Hydra-Matic transmission with a 3.42 axle. (Oldsmobile marketing in this period was still trying disingenuously to claim this was a “four-stage” transmission, an assertion that continues to mislead uninformed fans; the Model 375 was NOT a four-speed automatic like its predecessor.)

 

Base engine in the Grand Prix was the four-barrel 389, which in standard form made 303 hp and 430 lb-ft of torque while requiring premium fuel. A regular-fuel economy engine withe 235 hp was a no-cost option with Hydra-Matic. There were also several more powerful optional engines, including the rare Super Duty 421 racing engines, which were ill-suited to street use. For civilians, the top choice was the Tri-Power 421 H.O., with 370 hp and 460 lb-ft of torque. Pontiac also offered 21 different axle ratios, half of them obviously aimed at racers. With most of these engines, the Grand Prix came standard with a heavy-duty three-speed manual transmission, which for $231.34 you could replace with either a four-speed manual gearbox or the three-speed Hydra-Matic. The latter was the same Model 375 Roto Hydra-Matic used in the Oldsmobile Starfire, which went into 92.9 percent of all 1963 GPs. (The older four-speed Model 315 Super Hydra-Matic still used on the Star Chief and Bonneville wasn’t available on the Grand Prix.)

 

With the milder available engines and axle ratios, the Grand Prix was definitely slower than the Starfire in a straight line. The white GP featured in this post has the Tri-Power 389; this version of that well-known engine didn’t have the hotter camshaft it used in the later GTO, so it was rated at only 313 gross horsepower, just 10 hp more than the standard Grand Prix engine. With Hydra-Matic and a 3.23 axle, Car Life found that it was a full second slower to 60 mph than the Starfire; Motor Trend‘s standard four-barrel/Hydra-Matic Grand Prix was 0.4 seconds slower still. The 421 H.O. engines were a different story, especially with a four-speed manual (which the Starfire didn’t offer at all), but their greater performance would quickly erase the price difference between the Grand Prix and the Olds: Ordering a 421 H.O. cost an extra $290.84 with a four-barrel carburetor (353 hp) or $403.71 with Tri-Power (370 hp).

Here are some comparative acceleration times. The Starfire and 313 hp Grand Prix figures are from Car Life (February 1963 and May 1963), the 303 hp base and 421 H.O. Grand Prix from Motor Trend (May 1963 and June 1963):

1963 Oldsmobile Starfire vs. 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix Performance

Acceleration (2 aboard)	Starfire, Hydra-Matic	Grand Prix, 303 hp/Hydra-Matic	Grand Prix, 313 hp/Hydra-Matic	Grand Prix, 370 hp/4-speed
0–30 mph	3.6 sec.	3.3 sec.	3.5 sec.	3.0 sec.
0–60 mph	8.5 sec.	9.9 sec.	9.5 sec.	6.6 sec.
0–100 mph	22.4 sec.	N/A	31.5 sec.	N/A
Standing ¼ mile	17.2 sec. at 89 mph	18.1 sec. at 80 mph	17.3 sec. at 81 mph	15.1 sec. at 94 mph

 
In testing the 370 hp 421 H.O. (which had the close-ratio four-speed and Safe-T-Track with a 3.42 axle), Roger Huntington calculated that the engine’s actual net output at the clutch was about 320 hp at 4,600 to 4,800 rpm and 415 lb-ft of torque at 3,400 rpm — and this from a completely stock engine that wasn’t quite broken in and suffered some problems with lifter pump-up.

The Starfire was clearly no slouch here, but if you wanted go as well as show, Pontiac had more to offer.

Brakes and Chassis

In standard form, neither the Pontiac nor the Oldsmobile was very good at slowing down. Both had 11-inch drum brakes whose swept area (310 sq. in. for the Olds, 311 sq. in. for the Pontiac, per the AMA specs) was meager for the weight of these cars, which were well over 4,200 lb at the curb.

 

Pontiac offered a partial fix in the form of its familiar 8-lug aluminum wheels with integral drums, a highly worthwhile $122.13 option on the Grand Prix. Stopping distances weren’t exceptional with these brakes, and like all drums, they were prone to pulling to one side if heated unevenly, but fade resistance was greatly improved, so if you wanted to be able to stop from 70 mph or more, they were a must. Oldsmobile didn’t offer any such relief, and the Starfire’s standard power brakes were also excessively sensitive, demanding a light touch to avoid premature lockup.

 

Like most big American cars of the time, both the Starfire and the Grand Prix were tuned for a cushy ride at the expense of any semblance of handling composure. However, it may surprise you to learn that the standard Grand Prix suspension was actually softer than the Starfire’s, particularly in roll control — Car Life called the standard Grand Prix “a real handful if pressed.” This wasn’t to say the Starfire handled especially well: In addition to stiffer front springs, Oldsmobile had specified a stiffer 1.09-inch front anti-roll bar, which ensured pronounced understeer. Car Life complained that “the deceptiveness of the silent ride and easy speed can betray the driver when he discovers that a corner is sharper than he had anticipated.”

 

The closest thing the Starfire options list offered to a heavy-duty suspension was stiffer rear springs, intended for trailer towing and probably not very helpful otherwise. Pontiac was more accommodating in this regard, offering both medium-duty and heavy-duty spring/shock absorber packages, for the bargain price of $3.82 and $6.24, respectively, when purchased on a new car. Car Life thought the high-rate package was probably too stiff for most people, but felt the medium-rate set-up provided a big improvement in handling and body control with little sacrifice in ride.

Bottom line: The Pontiac could have better road manners and brakes, but only if you selected certain extra-cost options. In standard form, both of these cars were soft, clumsy, and had very marginal stopping ability.

Interior

Even adjusting for standard equipment, the Starfire was a more expensive car than the Grand Prix, which was evident in its interior trim. The Grand Prix cabin was hardly plain, especially in this example’s white Morrokide, but it lacked the Starfire’s fancy-looking swaths of brushed metal.

 

The Starfire also had leather upholstery, although how much of it is actually “Barcelona-grain leather” and how much is Moroceen (vinyl) is an interesting question. Pontiac offered only Morrokide vinyl, although the brochure sniffed, “Expanded Morrokide, you know, is softer and more pliable than leather.”

 

One minor point, as you can see from the photo above, was that the longer Starfire console and taller center seat pattern effectively make the Starfire a four-passenger car. (I guess you could stuff a fifth person in there for short trips, but no one would be very happy about it.) The Grand Prix is a bit less restrictive here.

Both cars’ dashboard treatments are very shiny, but fall short of ideal in a number of respects:

 

The horizontal speedometer seems out of place in both cars, a cost-driven choice that betrays these models’ kinship with their cheaper siblings. Also, I’m not sure I understand Pontiac’s logic in providing an ammeter, a fuel gauge, and a clock, but not a coolant temperature gauge. I can’t help thinking how much more appealing the Grand Prix interior would be with something like the Rally Instrument Cluster later offered on the GTO, with a round speedometer, an in-dash tachometer, and secondary gauges (although that setup had gauges for everything but battery).

 

A center console was standard on the 1963 Grand Prix, and entitled you to one awkwardly placed console-mounted gauge. With manual transmission, this was a tachometer; with Hydra-Matic, you instead got a manifold pressure gauge, seemingly positioned for the amusement of a small child sitting in the rear center position.

 

Even with Hydra-Matic, you could still order a tachometer (for $53.80), in this case rather crudely lashed to the left side of the instrument panel. In this position, it’s somewhat easier to see, but still feels like an afterthought.

 

The instrumentation situation is even worse in the Starfire, which has only the horizontal speedometer, a fuel gauge, some warning lights, and a clock.

 

You did get a tachometer on the Starfire, although its position at the forward end of the console meant you would be lucky to see it was there, much less read what it said. (This car’s aftermarket air conditioner installation presumably doesn’t help.) On the other hand, the three-speed Hydra-Matic didn’t encourage much manual control anyway, so perhaps Oldsmobile wasn’t entirely wrong to treat the tachometer as a cosmetic item.

Conclusions

The 1963 Grand Prix and 1963 Starfire had similar origins, a similar marketing pitch, and broadly similar prices, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the Grand Prix was the more successful in execution: It still looks great, and with a careful selection of optional equipment, you could order one that was indeed capable of, as Pontiac put it, “grand touring in the best North American manner.” Factoring in the lower price and higher resale values, it’s not surprising that the Grand Prix outsold the Starfire by about 3 to 1 (72,959 units to 25,890). In fact, for 1963, the Grand Prix even outsold the Ford Thunderbird, which was then in the last year of a three-year styling cycle. (That ranking would be reversed for 1964.)

 

By comparison, the 1963 Starfire lacked much of a USP beyond its bucket seats and center console. As a collector car, its cluttered styling and fancy interior are quirky and fun, but in a year of exceptional automotive designs, it was not impressive, an uneasy melding of ’60s angularity and ’50s overdecoration. If you could live without buckets, a regular Super 88 Holiday Coupe was more tasteful, and little different to drive.

 

Both these cars have their shortcomings — Roto Hydra-Matic is a big one, with the lack of suitable instrument panels another — but when it comes to the basic question, “Which would you rather have, then or now?” the grand prize goes to the Grand Prix.

Related Reading

CCOTY Nomination: 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix (by Kevin Martin)
Curbside Classic – 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix: Another Time, Another Place (by Aaron65)
Curbside Outtake: 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix – Soldiering On (by Ed Stembridge)
Vintage Car Life Road Test: 1962 Pontiac Grand Prix 421 Super Duty – “The Fastest Accelerating Stock Production-Line Car We’ve Ever Tested” (by Paul N)
Vintage Car Life Review: 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix Model SJ – “Tiger In Tuxedo” (by me)
1962 Oldsmobile Starfire Coupe Vs. 1962 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 Holiday Coupe – Thunderbird-Fighter Or Just A Fancier Olds? (by me)
CC Outtake: 1963 Oldsmobile Starfire – The Pageant Loser, But Good Enough For Denise Huxtable (by Laurence Jones)