Twenty-five years ago, I was entering my mid-twenties and hell bent on finding a Pontiac Catalina two-door hardtop. Youth is filled with hope, but there were plenty of hitches in my scheme, not the least of which being that I was broke and living with my parents. Another was deciding what model year I liked best, and this may have been a taller hurdle than the first. One thing I knew is that I didn’t really like the 1964 Catalina, and looking back, that just doesn’t make any sense.
My first love was the gorgeous 1963 Catalina, and I spent many blissful hours daydreaming of walking out to a red one in the college parking lot, taking up all the space in the world, being the envy of…probably no one, but that didn’t matter. I tried to convince myself that I liked the 1962 model equally, but it just wasn’t true. What I really wanted was one of each, but the possibility of that happening didn’t even rate a daydream yet. I’m not crazy.
I will say that even to this day, I think I’d buy a ’63 if given the option. The stacked-headlight theme was brand new, and often, the first thought is the best thought. It’s nearly perfect from every angle.
But then I found a cheap 1965 Catalina Ventura for sale and fell hard for it; although it looks somewhat bulkier than the 1963 car, its graceful curves and swells made me a convert. I wasn’t quite in the position to buy the Ventura (one of my few regrets in life), but it vied for supremacy in my heart with the ’63.
But the 1964 Catalina in between was nowhere. It lost the canted-forward headlight bezels, although these more delicate replacements now, to me, look much cleaner than those on the 1963 car. It also lost the thick side molding and moved the graceful cursive “Catalina” script down to the center of the fender. Script placement on a car makes a big difference, and from this angle today, I like the 1964 car better, a concept I never would have entertained as a young man.
Pontiac revised the tail, too, and extended the taillights down into the bumper. They were massive but graceful, and at least as attractive as those that came before and after. The “Catalina” badge in a field of checkered flags (even though General Motors had recently and abruptly ended their overtly funded racing programs) was also a new feature.
The 1963 Catalina’s taillights, although visible from the side, were about half as large.
The Singapore Gold 1964 Catalina that I photographed at a car show in Flint, Michigan, has the Ventura trim package, which, according to the brochure, was “for people who like to gild lilies.” As an aside, lily gilding must have been a popular metaphor in the 1960s; it pops up in a lot of things I read, especially about cars. In reality, the Ventura package offered the buyer special “all-Morrokide” upholstery (and fender badges).
Something must also be said about the Pontiac’s dashboard. The instrumentation is boilerplate GM, but something about the font (and font size) is just right, and the ribbed dashboard trim shows that Pontiac did the little details better than anyone in the 1960s. It’s dazzling (both figuratively and probably literally, there’s a reason why the industry left bright interior trim behind).
Taken as a whole, I can’t see what my earlier reticence was; the 1964 Catalina is equally stylish, adept, and bold as the cars it is sandwiched between. It has the same complex curves on its expansive quarter panels. There is literally nothing to earnestly criticize.
And to complicate matters, the Grand Prix perhaps looked even better, maintaining its predecessor’s almost-European absence of trim, scaled up to an American-size car. But I’m in some ways a down-to-earth guy, and I’ve always been fine with the Catalina. No need to show off.
But there’s no going back and talking to myself 25 years ago; I’m just left with the decisions he made. Nevertheless, I think he’d be open to a reasonable chat from his older self about how dumb he was about the frankly beautiful 1964 Catalina. Heck, we all make mistakes, don’t we?
Related Reading
Curbside Classic – 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix: Another Time, Another Place (by me)
1963 Pontiac Star Chief Vista Four-Door Hardtop: The Forgotten Middle Child (by me)
1965 Pontiac Catalina 2+2 – “Stop Telling Me I’m Beautiful, Love Me For What’s Inside” (by me)
And to think it could have been born a GTO?
This is an interesting question. I was an early fan of the 64, after my grandma replaced her 55 DeSoto with a used one in the summer of 1967. It was a beige Catalina sedan with an interior color similar to this (Saddle, according to a brochure I just found online). But somewhere along the line I decided that both the 63 and the 65 were better styled cars. Now you have me rethinking this. The boomerang taillights are certainly unique, and the front is not bad (even if the headlight treatment is a little flat).
The shame of the Catalina is that you were stuck with the Roto Hydramatic – I remember that my grandma traded her car in 1969 when her 64 started shifting funny. You could get the old-school 4 speed HM in a Bonneville or a Star Chief, which would steer me to one of those models, attractive as one of these Catalinas might be.
The Ventura Custom Interior was a little more elaborate than just all-vinyl upholstery, which Pontiac offered at some points as a standalone option for less money. The Ventura had different door trim (shared with the 2+2 hardtop), the vertical pleated seat style, and the contrasting color stripes around the inserts, so it looked fancier than the standard Catalina interior. I confess I’m not persuaded that it was ENOUGH fancier to be worth $118.36 extra, but buyers seemed to love it. So did dealers — there was a $75 wholesale allowance for Ventura trim even on a three-year-old car, suggesting high confidence in its buyer appeal.
You couldn’t find a bad-looking Pontiac between 1959 and 1967. All were master classes in graceful, good design. I’d happily have any of them in my garage.
+1 to that, yet the 1963 remains my favorite.
My first car was a ’64 Strato Chief. Bottom of the line Pontiac but loved the car. The tail reminded me of a caddy, the front was unique, unlike anything else. It was well used by time I got it, and was daily driver.
Wish I could get one again.
Cheviac. That was a Chevy in Pontiac drag.
Enthusiasts tend to deride the Cheviacs but, today, seems like it would be way easier and less expensive to keep a Pontiac with a Chevy drivetrain operational.
Curious if both radios are functional…
One of them is for climate control.
not that one; there’s an add-on to the left of the steering column as well as the actual factory radio still in the dash, plus the climate controls that look like a third radio.
Gotcha. I missed that one, but that pic isn’t from the featured car, FYI.
ALL of these are lovely cars, I too like the cleaner looking ’63s & ’64s .
That aftermarket FM radio is *very* poorly placed, I understand not wanting passengers to fool with the radio / CD but any frontal collision and you’ll never walk normally (if at all) again .
GM certainly did good styling in the 1960’s =8-) .
-Nate
Not a fan of the 1964 grille and the way the chrome trim comes up to the ‘nose’ split. To me, the 1963 grille is more attractive. I’d even go for the more bulky 1965 fastback before the 1964 car.
It’s a shame the 2+2 didn’t arrive until 1964. I would have liked to seen that package available for 1963.
I even like the full-length side spear of the 1963 Catalina better than the short spear of the higher tier Bonneville.
Regardless of the choice, Pontiac really had it going on and was most definitely the ‘it’ car of the sixties.
These were beautiful cars, by far my favourite cars of the 1960s. I like the 1963 best as it seems more restrained than later iterations. I still like the ’65, but the ’63 pushes all the right buttons for me.
I like the more subtle grille and taillights of the ’63 better but the ’64 headlights are a bit better resolved.
You can get a lot of the Grand Prix’ looks on a Catalina just by opting for a 4 door hardtop or a post sedan, either of which had a cleaner roof treatment than the faux-convertible-top of the non-GP 2HT. For that matter, in ’64 you could’ve gotten the crisper hardtop roof on a Tempest.
This really shows how Pontiac was hitting above their weight in the market. It was just the second step on the Sloan Ladder, but it was a much nicer and expensive looking car than the Chevrolet. My brother had a ’64 Chevy SS for many years that he fixed up, but the Pontiacs just looked richer and cooler.Plus they had the 389! I’d take any big Pontiac from ’59 to ’66.
It certainly helped Pontiac in ’63 that Buick carried over too much of the ’61-2 look especially up front while Oldsmobile went full “generic car on the parts store flyer”.
Personally, I’ve always wondered why everyone goes ga-ga over the 63. To me the 63 Impala was a far more cohesive design than the 63 Pontiac . The swelling hips clash with the razor straight lines everywhere else on the car. The headlight bezels are overdone and look very 50’s. The 64 front and back ends bear some resemblance to each other with the drop downs on the bumper ends. The softer lines just look better to me. And the taillights are far nicer than the 63’s. I’m not saying the 63 is a bad looking car. I just don’t see why it is so highly regarded.
> Script placement on a car makes a big difference
When I was first becoming a car buff circa 1976, I noticed that while the most common placement seemed to be on the front fenders behind the wheel openings, more expensive, prestigious cars usually had the nameplate at the back of the rear fenders, just in front of the taillights. That’s where it had been on Cadillacs for decades, and where it was on full-size Buicks as well. Oldsmobile split the script location – front fenders on the 88, rear fenders on the more upscale 98. Chevy and Pontiac had the model names on the front fenders. Similar story at Ford – Lincolns had the “Continental” script at the back of the rear fenders, while Fords and Mercurys had it behind the front wheels. Obviously rear-placement nameplates = more prestige! Did anyone else make this association or was it just me? (Only Mopar diverged from the norm, putting New Yorker or Imperial badges on the front fender.)
Some newer cars in the ’80s started putting the script (increasingly in non-cursive letters) on the front fenders ahead of the wheel openings, so I associated that with modernity, though it may have been because the rearward location of the front wheels on the increasingly common FWD/transverse engine layout didn’t leave enough room between the front wheel openings and the front door to place the nameplate there.
My father bought a 1964 Catalina 2-door hardtop with the Ventura trim option in late 1963. It was turquois blue with a matching interior. At that early age, I had no knowledge of the appearance of the 1963 model or any other car except the 1959 Catalina 2-door hardtop which shared the garage with the 1964 model for a few months until he sold the older car. Frankly, the skegs on the rear of the ’59 frightened me a bit especially since they were practically at my eye-level. I liked the ’64 much better.
As time went on, and I recognized the various Pontiacs from the 1960s, I came to prefer the 1963 over any other year of that decade, primarily for the way the front end was styled. That said, I do prefer the “boomerang” taillights of the ’64 over the Lincolnesque taillights of the ’63.
In retrospect my father owned some pretty neat cars; at least a couple dozen in all. Late in his life I asked if he had a favorite. He said it was the 1964 Catalina (except for the “slim Jim transmission) and that was from a man who once owned a 1956 Bel Air convertible! Honestly, I’m sure the Pontiac rode and handled better than the Chevy. It also had factory air conditioning. We did live in Texas after all. 🙂
Adam Wade has featured these cars on his You Tube channel, Rare Classic Cars and Automotive History. He owns a 65 Catalina in that gorgeous lavender color and the headlight details are beautiful. Probably your favorite would depend on the condition and color.
In my opinion, the ‘64 full-sized Pontiac (with the exception of the Grand Prix) had the BEST tail lights EVER!