In music, the concept of a summer fling was perhaps best captured in Chad and Jeremy’s “A Summer Song,” which reached Number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1964. For those who haven’t heard the song (and why haven’t you?), it’s a simple tale of a past summer love being told from the melancholy setting of autumn. “And when the rain beats against my window pane/I’ll think of summer days again/and dream of you.” Simple but powerful. It’s especially poignant because so many of us know that love can be ephemeral; many of us have fallen in love, even if only for a day, an hour, knowing that it couldn’t last. Well, as a happily married man of 20 years, my flings tend to be automotive in nature, and on the cusp of August, I found the “one.” At least for a moment.
Yes, it was a simple 1964 Pontiac Tempest Custom Convertible located at the Pontiac Transportation Museum in Pontiac, Michigan, a place I’ve covered before. The museum is even nicer this summer, with an additional room for displays and a car you can sit in for pictures – and that’s “my” Tempest. For some reason, I differ from a lot of car guys that I come into contact with because I’m a sucker for imperfections. I don’t necessarily go for the hopelessly derelict, but I like something that’s been lived in, something that’s seen the world. The Tempest’s ratty old paint job and off-color touch-ups are anathema to some, but perfect to me.
The Tempest Custom was not the basic Tempest, but it was the basic convertible. From there, you could get a LeMans, or (eventually) a LeMans with the GTO package. For a base price of $2,641, you got a convertible with the 140-horsepower 215-cubic-inch six (the Pontiac OHC six was still a couple years away). For the sake of comparison, a LeMans convertible cost only $105 more, so it’s no surprise that Pontiac sold over twice as many of them as they did Tempest Custom Convertibles (17,559 to 7,987).
In 1964, however, $105 was not an insignificant amount of money, and the Tempest Custom was still a nice car. The interior of the convertible came in only three colors: blue, aqua, or red. This one is aqua, and you can see that the standard wall-to-wall carpet is most likely original on this lived-in museum example. The bench seat was upholstered in “easy-cleaning, long-lasting Morrokide,” which was Pontiac’s brilliant epithet for vinyl. A one-time owner of this car took the upholstery’s protection seriously enough to cover it in clear plastic, so that Morrokide should last until the meteor strike, as long as museum visitors are reasonably gentle getting in. Front seat belts were not standard in American cars until 1965 (all states required them for that model year), so the black lap belts may have been a later addition; although they were on the options list, I have to assume they’d be color-keyed to the interior if they had come with the car.
Audiophiles might enjoy the Audiovox FM receiver and “Remo Tune” speaker control mounted under the dash – just more now-quaint evidence of this car’s past.
Tempest Customs had just a little more trim than its basic counterpart, but none of the Tempest line was gaudy in 1964. Pontiac was judicious in its use of brightwork in the mid-1960s, and that trickled down to even the most inexpensive models (some of which were shorn of trim for cost reasons, and because that’s the way it was always done anyway). A bright molding just below the beltline and some additional (much-needed) trim on the rear deck was about the extent of it. This one looks perfect with these wheel covers, those redline tires (radials in this case), and that gorgeous, gorgeous color: Gulfstream Aqua. It’s the color that did me in for good. You may also notice the fender badge for the 326 V8.
Photo Credit: Bring A Trailer
I’m polite, so I didn’t open the hood of the museum car, but this ’64 Tempest Custom Convertible, which sold for $35,000 on Bring a Trailer back in September 2022, has the 326 option. Surprisingly, only 3,522 of the 7,987 Tempest Custom convertibles sold were ordered with a V8, which had a Rochester two barrel and 250 horsepower; a 280-horsepower four-barrel version was optional, but the museum placard says that our car doesn’t have it. When mated to the two-speed Super Turbine 300 (not a Powerglide, as many people say), the standard rear axle was a tall 2.56:1 (a 2.93:1 ratio was the “performance option – yikes!). Pontiacs did not have the “switch-pitch” torque converter shared by Oldsmobile and Buick, so takeoff from a stoplight would be leisurely at best in this Tempest, but it wasn’t meant to be a street racer, just a nice, relaxed cruiser with enough power for passing, which it certainly has.
In the 1960s, General Motors did an extremely good job of hiding the fact that their car lines shared a basic body structure, but there are always clues. This coming together of panels at the fender, door, cowl, and A-pillar look exactly the same as they do on my ’65 Skylark, because GM saved money in the places that nobody would notice. The sheet metal on the outside was almost completely unique among divisions, and although you may know that the underpinnings were all similar, you could always tell a Tempest from a Chevelle from an F-85 from a Special.
Here, you can see the extra trim on the rear deck and tail panel of the Custom compared to the basic Tempest (which, once again, was not available in a convertible). More trim is not always good, but in this case, it breaks up the bland.
I’m a big fan of ’64 and ’65 General Motors A-Bodies in general, and I’ll tell anyone I can that if you can own just one collector car, any one of them is a good choice. Because I’ve owned mine for 22 years and I generally like Buicks, I’ve long convinced myself that I like the Skylark the best of the A-Body line, but I think I’ve always known deep-down that Pontiac did it best. Both model years were racy in a way that its divisional linemates were not.
And that doesn’t even count the GTO, an unqualified success out of nowhere in 1964. The museum has one of those too, and it’s in better overall condition than the basic Tempest that they let you sit in for pictures. With its 389 and uncommon paint color (Sunfire Red?), it’s bound to be a more popular display.
Yet I returned once more to say goodbye to “my” Tempest, with all its fantastic little flaws. I had a hard time saying goodbye, because I knew it would be a while before I saw it again, but on a cold, rainy day this autumn, I’ll be able to look back fondly on my summer fling. And I won’t have to pay for insurance, storage, registration, or maintenance.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1964 Pontiac Tempest Custom – You Bet It Hauls!
Curbside Classic: 1964 Pontiac Tempest Custom Safari – In Defense Of The Barn Cat
I can’t believe that anyone could make a post talking about the similarities and differences between the early 60s Skylarks and Tempests without mentioning Mona Lisa Vito! It would have been a lovely, lovely addition to this otherwise great submission.