(first posted 2/19/2011) Take a good long look at this handsome car. This beauty was one of the best in that beautiful decade of the sixties. Are you seeing its magnetic attraction yet? Well, this slightly rough survivor might need a little help; try squinting a bit. I sure saw it when I was seventeen; I simply couldn’t keep my eyes off a black coupe exactly like this. And as a consequence, I learned a painful and lasting lesson. OK, better stop looking and keep reading.
For 1965, the mid-sized Tempest/LeMans/GTO were finally bequeathed the distinctive stacked headlights that were such a hit with the 1963 full-sized wide-tracks.
The 1963 Grand Prix was one of Bill Mitchell’s masterpieces, and this LeMans is a virtual knock-off. No other GM division could equal Pontiac’s success in transferring their halo car’s styling across its whole line. Even the cheapest Tempest looked good; they all shared the clean lines and unadorned flanks of the GP. And there’s more than a touch of Riviera here too. The LeMans was truly the favored child in the GM mid-size gene pool.
And its parents were not disappointed. The 1965 LeMans handily outsold its corporate mid-size siblings. And that’s where the competition mostly ended. Does anyone even remember the forgettable 1965 Fairlane coupe? GM utterly dominated the mid-sized sector, which helped propel GM to a 50+% market share and its largest profit that year to date, a handy $1.7 billion ($11.5 billion adjusted). Yes, the mid-sixties were GM’s final golden years. Market share and profits (inflation adjusted) would never again be replicated. And its cars would never again look so good, like this LeMans, glowing with self-confidence and understated elegance.
Like most non-GTO LeMans, this one sports the almost ubiquitous 326 cubic inch V8. A small-bore version of the Goat’s 389, either 250 or 285 horsepower were on tap, depending on whether a two-barrel or four-barrel carb was on (non-super) duty. Despite its two-speed automatic, the un-GTO was reasonably brisk. The LeMans was the perfect date car and a great Saturday night cruiser, as long as you resisted stop-light drags. That’s what the real GTO was for.
Pontiac’s innovative OHC Sprint six was still one year away, so the standard six was a 215 CID number that was strictly a Chevy six with the bore (or stroke?) jiggered to come up with a distinct number. This was still a time when using identical engines across divisions was a no-no, and this was as close as it got then.
Pontiac moved almost 200k LeMans/GTO’s in 1965. The following years saw even bigger numbers, but by 1970, the party was over. Just like the excitement decade of the sixties flamed out, so did Pontiac’s glorious ten-year run in the number three spot. Why? John Z. DeLorean, Pontiac’s dynamic General Manager during the sixties moved on to Chevrolet, and…DeLorean (and cocaine).
Pontiac styling became fat and blobby, as did the cars themselves. Performance had defined Pontiac in the sixties, but that orgy crashed. By the early seventies, Americans were looking either for the (faux) trappings of luxury, or heading down that other cultural divide of imports, especially those from Japan and Germany.
Those that stayed true to GM mid-size coupes found their landau-roofed object of desire in the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Brougham Coupe. The baton was handed off, and the over-named Olds ran right to the very top of the sales charts, for a number of years, too. Oldsmobile became the new Pontiac; at least in sales.
In image, BMW became the new Pontiac. It’s not a coincidence that just as Pontiac was diving into the horrors of its mid-seventies dark night of the bloated (Grand Am) soul, the new BMW 320i became the…LeMans. Handsome, cleanly styled, fun(ner) to drive, and, once again, the perfect date car. And just like the LeMans, the 98hp 320i wasn’t really fast. But it was the thing to be seen in, as the 3Series still is today. The fact that it looked just like a GTO, minus a few badges, didn’t hurt in the least. Many LeMans soon started sprouting GTO badges prolifically, not unlike the many M badges on 328s.
In high school, I had a weekend job at a small corner gas station. A kid my age who knew the owner dropped by regularly at the end of the day, sometimes to help out, but mostly to minister to his shiny black ’65 LeMans coupe. He’d change the oil and primp his beloved ride. And he always gave me a ride home, or we’d go cruising. All the while, my jealous eyes were magnetically glued to the Pontiac.
In between my endless covetous leers, I vaguely noticed that he always wore a jacket, even in Baltimore’s sweltering summer heat. One day I suddenly realized he was working with one hand in his jacket pocket. With the thoughtlessness that seventeen-year olds are notorious for, I loudly berated him for his laziness in using only one hand. He gave me a hurt-puppy look, but said nothing.
Later, the owner told me that the kid had blown his hand off playing with fireworks. I felt like a total idiot. After all these months, I hadn’t even noticed that he could do almost anything I could do, even with one hand in his pocket. Yet I was intimate with every detail, nook and cranny of his beautiful LeMans. It was a painful lesson I had to relive every Saturday after work, as I trudged home. The rides had ended.
I’m always facinated by old CCs like this where the tires, wheels, and interior indicate some sort of regular use and love but the paint is horrible. I guess that’s the way to tell it the car is really used and loved. Certainly not a trailer queen and definately not completely trashed like a few of your CCs have been. Makes me want to hop in and see what she’ll do.
The simplest, clean designs are the most enduring. A friend in high school had one of these in the mid ’70s in sky blue with a white top and white interior. And fast. I don’t remember the details but that it had a Hurst shift…but what a feeling to ride in that machine.
In “me too” mode, Ford also had stacked headlights for a few years starting in ’65. (Imitation and flattery you know.) The ’65 Ford was similarly cool looking, but while the Pontiac appeared sleek and elegant, the Ford was sleek and ever so slightly menacing.
Another good looking car is the 1963 Mercury S55.
That’s a beautiful car, and looks like it’s in very restorable condition.
And you’re not alone in learning life’s lessons the hard way sometimes. Thanks for sharing that part, too.
Had one of these in the early 80’s.Bought it and a ’61 Galaxie for $100.00 for both from a family that was leaving town.Drove ’em both home (not at the same time!) and
immediately sold the Ford to a co-worker for the c-note! A free LeMans!! Drove it for about a year and traded it straight across for a 1972 International Travelall.Sure wish I’d have kept some of the old ones,but don’t we all!
Beautiful design is timeless. Keep it simple, folks, keep it simple! Wish they’d style ’em like that now, I’d be in 7th heaven!
It wasn’t just the cars alone. The ‘Fitz and Van’ Pontiac advertising artwork of the 60’s was amazing. So much better than the silver car/truck/crossover on a road with the ‘closed course, professional driver’ legalese at the bottom.
Tom; hang on a couple of days, because I have a F & K treat in store for you.
I have to agree that the 64-65 LeMans was one of the prettiest cars of the 60s, and it is clearly better looking than any of the other mid sizers. But for the first runner up, I would nominate the 64 Olds Cutlass. I grew up with one of these. Like the LeMans, the Cutlass picked up styling themes from the big Oldsmobiles, and was a really fresh, clean design. I never liked the 65s quite as much (although I preferred the 65 LeMans to the 64).
I also agree that the Fairlanes were not in the same neighborhood, and the Belvedere/Coronet were not in the same city. But for 1966, it was a different story.
This (not this particular car) was my dad’s car when he met and married my mom–326, four-on-the-floor. They traded it in 1968 for a new Impala SS hardtop, probably because my mom wasn’t too competent with a stick (or as my dad would’ve called it back then, a “standard” transmission) and the Impala had an automatic. So a few years later I was driven to preschool in an Impala SS. I don’t think the ’68 Chevy is considered one of the more distinctive years, but they still make my head turn whenever I see one.
One of my buddies in high school had one of these, inherited from his parents. We never gave it much respect, that two-speed really sucked some of the life out of the motor. And the lock on the ignition was busted, you could start it with a screw driver or anything else that would fit in the keyhole. But it took our abuse without complaining, I don’t remember it giving him any problems and it was over a decade old at that point.
I didn’t realize it until the missing hand, but I think this is the first CC I remember reading on the other site. It could also be that it was the CC that motivated me to sign in and reply for the first time. I am so glad to have CC back Paul. Thank You. I enjoy each one, and Can’t tell you how much I look forward to reading each new one I discover. It was just as good the second time around.
The 1965 Pontiac Le Mans was one of the nicest of the B-O-P-C intermediates period, but then again, 1965 was definitely a banner year… As would be 1967 as well. It is funny, I have noticed that when GM unveiled the new for 1964 intermediates, they were a most superb complete revamp of the previous model year, but then to top it off, when the 1965’s were unveiled, they too were a total improvement!! Can you imagine the number of buyers remorse cases between 1963 and 1967?!! Personally, I think the 1965 and 1967 models eclipse the 1964 and 1966 models in looks, but really, ever so slightly… ALL of them are just AWESOME looking cars! One of the first cars I drove (and I got my drivers license in 1977) was a ’65 Le Mans (cameo ivory with a gold interior)… It was a NJ car (built maybe in either Baltimore or Framingham, Mass… By 1979 and 1980 when I would detail it for the original owner (she was born in 1941, I in 1960) it had about 147,000 on it… The frame was toast due to the road chemicals and salt they use on the roads in a typical NJ winter. By 1983 or 1984 it was scrapped… Oh, I still cringe. The first time I had laid eyes on that car (1978) I wanted to buy it.
Yep, 1965 Pontiac was a tough act to follow… Whether you bought (as the ads said) the 1965 PONTIAC PONTIAC or the 1965 PONTIAC TEMPEST… What a car!
Looks like a decent resto candidate!
Oh, just nitpicking, but the car pictured is a hardtop, not a coupe…..
A Pontiac coupe has a pronounced “B” pillar in between the front and rear windows, that is there even with the windows down. If you rolled the windows down on the car pictured, there would be nothing between the front and rear…..
Here’s a pic of a coupe…..
http://ultimategto.com/icongraf/1965post.jpg
’65 Sport Coupe….
Pontiac did have a really sporty image through the late 50′ up into the 70s. My folks had a ’64 Tempest station wagon w/326/auto that I thought was the bomb! One thing I like about this featured car is the engine call out with the checkered flag behind the 326 numerals. Just the thing to fire up a ten year old boy’s imagination! The engine call out emblems were just so fantastic during this time, just like some of the engine air cleaner decals.
My first car in 1974 was a clapped out 65 Tempest Custom. Bench seats, pillars and a different grille separated it from a LeMans, but it was my $150 ticket to freedom! It suffered from a bad timing chain and a couple of burned valves, but every other car that I drove as a potential replacement didn’t feel nearly as good. It also suffered from two primered fenders on the passenger side, I eventually sprayed them with too many cans of Dupli-Color spray paint, found at a Pic N Save for a quarter apiece.
Eventually, I decided to bite the bullet and repair the engine, shortly thereafter I was rear ended by a gas station employee in his Road Runner and never got a chance to fix the engine. The guy who totaled my Poncho had a job and a Road Runner, but he was driving without insurance. My dad paid him a visit and intimidated him into paying $50 a month for reimbursement, he paid me $450 for the $150 car.
Then I got a 68 Volkswagen. Funny, the car I somewhat scorned in 1974 is the one I wish I could have back.
I have similar, painful memories of faux pas at that age. Teenagers are stupid. Not in an intelligence realm, rather they just haven’t lived long enough to know better.
That LeMans is a looker. Make mine an OHC 6 with a manual. Oh, and make it a wagon.
My dad was born in 33. By the early 80s we had a 76 malibu that was reliable but the trim and interior were melting like cars of that era. The Oklahoma sun just baked those cars. Now that I look back and I can’t help but wonder why he didn’t buy a little old lady owned, low mileage example of these great 60s a body cars. They weren’t rare and they were cheap. I bought some in the early 90s and they drove as well or better than anything from the 70s.
My college roommate, who lived on Loch Raven Blvd, came to his freshman year with a ’65 LeMans coupe in the fall of 1970. A great looking car in turquoise with black interior, but burdened with an anemic 6 cyl and 2 spd automatic. His older brother was a crackerjack mechanic who worked mostly on small foreign cars, but convinced him that more power was required. A huge used Pontiac 421? engine was sourced from a junkyard, bored out to 430, built with the usual hot cam and other speed parts, and dropped into the LeMans with a floor shift manual 3 spd, of all things, and Hurst shifter. It had so much torque that the 3 spd was actually fine, shifting being rarely required. That car was the hardest accelerating car I’ve ever ridden in (usually in a state of abject terror) to this day. And he did win more than a few street races on Perring Parkway, usually at around 1 o’clock in the morning. His taste changed with time, and 2 years later it was traded for a ’69 BMW 2002, another great and fun car.
The LeMans may have been a fashionable car to drive in its day, but the BMW 320i was an expensive fashionable car fifteen years later. Alfred P. Sloan intended Pontiacs to stay beneath Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs in the public eye and on the price charts. The BMW 320i didn’t have any such limitations placed on it, and it was a good thing considering the weakness of the USD against the DM. I’d say the 1980 equivalent of a LeMans was a Celica or 200SX.
Whenever I hear or read people argue that some automotive brands are too far gone to save (Chrysler? Cadillac? Lancia?), I point them to the radically successful reinvention of Pontiac in the relatively short 1957-1963 time frame, a multifaceted effort that resulted in new management, revamped advertising, new car names, new logos, new styling, new engineering, and most importantly, new product. Stodgy styling with chrome “suspenders” became crisp and modern. Native-American names like “Super Chief” gave way to monikers that connoted speed: Le Mans, Bonneville, Grand Prix. Bunkie Knudsen and John DeLorean worked their engineering and marketing magic, bringing sporty demeanor to the fore. And it was all brought to the customer via Art Fitpatrick and Van Kaufman’s elegant portrayal of those Wide-Track beauties, where the surrounding people and places were just as gorgeous as the cars everyone always seemed to be focused on. It made it hard not to want a Pontiac.
Pontiac itself couldn’t revive its heyday by the 80s and 90s, and eventually was put out of its misery. Their story does prove a seemingly moribund brand can make a comeback though, if everything is done just right.
All true about the spectacular revival of Pontiac in the late 50s and into its glory days of the 60s.
However, today there is no real need to revive moribund brands; simply add the right models to existing brands. The Kia Telluride is a prime example currently.
The ’65-67 Pontiac Tempest/LeMans/GTO were by far the best looking of the GM intermediates with the Buick Skylark a close second. The ’64 was nice looking but the stacked headlights on the ’65 really made it stand out. In my senior year in HS(1965), virtually everyone I knew wanted a GTO or a Mustang, there were some in the parking lot, I’m not sure how they could afford those, probably thanks to the parents. I have to agree by 1969 the party was mostly over, but it was fun while it lasted.
While Bill Mitchell was indeed head of GM styling, the details of these Pontiac’s including the ’63 Grand Prix were the fruit of Pontiac Chief Designer Jack Humbert. He gets lost in the shuffle with the other members of the Pontiac team like Eliot Estes, John DeLorean and Jim Wangers taking more credit.
Still one on the best “mass class” GM cars. My brother’s best friend had a Nightwatch blue 65 GTO tripower with Rally I wheels. Always spotless. Can still see it setting in the shade under the oak tree in the back yard after a fresh Blue Coral wax.