At the time I had put pen to paper to draft this piece, I was on a plane to spend the December holidays with family in southwest Florida. This was the first Christmas I didn’t sleep under the roof of my parents’ house. Rather, I crashed on my brother’s couch like it was 1997. Did Mom and I have a falling out like any two members of the Bluth family? Nope. Here’s what happened. Some wild, uninvited, destructive houseguest named “Irma” did a number on the Dennis family ranch which, coincidentally, is a ranch house built in the 1970s.
At the end of 2016, however, it was a completely different story, with everything being relatively normal around these parts. The truth is that I never really super-loved that house, as I didn’t grow up there and really missed Michigan when my folks moved to Ft. Myers after my late father’s retirement. All the same, it’s Mom’s home and haven. Also, I love my mom, but she’s not coming to live with me. It is absolutely imperative that her house gets fixed. Thankfully, she feels the same way about all of these statements.
When I’m back in Florida, I also try to plan visits with close friends who live in other parts of the state. I have been blessed with many solid friendships throughout all the different phases of my life, I take them very seriously, and I am loyal to a fault. I had borrowed Mom’s car to take a trip up to the Tampa Bay area, when the featured ’66 LeMans beckoned me with its loud, red paint from the entrance way of a business not far from I-75. I only hope this thing (and its owner / seller) made it through Irma unscathed, because it was a honey.
This generation of Pontiac A-Body has gotten its share of love here at CC, and rightfully so. Pontiac Division (and arguably General Motors, as a whole) was at the top of its game in the mid-’60s, with a nearly flawless trifecta of engineering prowess, gorgeous, trendsetting styling, and a strong brand identity rivaled by few other marques. This red LeMans, even as a “post” coupe, is still a stunner, half a century on.
Having a look inside, I thought about how hot that black vinyl must get in the tropical, Florida sun. This thing must be a rolling sweatbox, and it simply has to get funky in there. I had supposed that wouldn’t be a primary consideration of anyone who deigns to feel the power of up to 285 horses from an optional, four-barrel 326-cubic inch V8 mated to a four-speed manual. Interior cooling comes from “Two-Sixty” air conditioning: two windows down, sixty miles per hour. Regrettably, pictures that would provide clues as to this car’s actual powertrain configuration were a casualty of the demise of my old computer.
This example was one of just over 16,500 LeMans post coupes produced for the model year, out of just under 360,000 total Pontiac A-Bodies in any body style. It should be noted that the hardtop coupe version of the red-hot GTO outsold our featured car by a ratio of over 4:1 that year, with about 74,000 sold. The post GTO coupe sold roughly 10,500 units.
It should be obvious that this car wasn’t in perfect condition for what I recall to be its $10,000 asking price. It was all there, though, and awful purty. I thought about knocking on the door of the nearby business to ask if I could look under the hood or (gasp!) take it for a drive, but I didn’t want to get the seller’s hopes up under false pretenses. Still, this car seemed to be calling me like a siren as if in the lyrics sung by the inimitable Grace Jones: “I’m not perfect… but I’m perfect for you.“
Dare I treat myself to this red sled for Christmas and drive it back to Chicago? The reality is that this car spotting was from what was already a year ago, and this car probably sold a while back. Whatever. It has taken me over a decade to move up to the number four slot on my condo building’s waiting list for an underground parking spot. Maybe once Mom’s house is fixed, she would let me store a car like this in her garage. Regardless of where I’d park such a vehicle, though, perhaps 2018 should be the year I start Joe’s Classic Car Fund. There. That’s my New Year’s resolution.
Fort Myers, Florida.
Monday, December 26, 2016.
Related reading:
- From Paul Niedermeyer: Curbside Classic: 1967 Pontiac Tempest Custom – A GTO By Any Other Name;
- From JP Cavanaugh: Curbside Classic: 1966 Pontiac GTO – A Goat or a Mule?; and
- From RL Plaut: COAL: 1967 Tempest OHC-6 – Nice Work, Pontiac!
To me, I don’t care for the look of a 2 spoke steering wheel, too flimsy looking I guess.
I’d still take a strippo OEM steering wheel over one of those craptacular aftermarket things. It’s a pet-peeve to see a very nice old car’s interior ruined by a Grant steering wheel. It’s not that difficult to find one of those places that restores old plastic steering wheels.
True, are those cracks I see in that one?
Yep, but from what I can gather, those old, great, hard plastic steering wheels can be repaired to be made to look as good as new. Don’t know the cost, and I’m sure it’s more pricey than an aftermarket wheel but, damn, they sure look a whole lot better.
The 66 and 67 Tempest/LeMans are “almost” identical but somehow the 66 manages to look longer and leaner. Or another way to say it: the 66 looks like a long distance runner while the 67 looks (to me, anyway) like a football player or wrestler.
My “perfect” 66 LeMans would be a 4 door hardtop, or maybe just a 2 door hardtop, with the OHC 6 and a floor shifted 4 speed for the complete “Euro” vibe that the LeMans name hints at.
Or to be truly oddball, a wagon but with the Sprint spec OHC engine and floor shifted 4 speed manual.
Dan, what’s funny about this is that I had almost completely forgotten what this generation of Pontiac A-Body wagon looked like. I just went to Google, and it was an “Oh, yeah” moment for me.
I have a slight preference for the looks of the ’67 coupes over the ’66s.
The 67 Tempest was used to escape a Zombie in The Night of the Living Dead, but I’d suggest the undead may actually have been attracted by the Tempest’s color.
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_14501-Pontiac-LeMans-1967.html
Either year looks great especially in hardtop form.
A fun find, but for $10K automotive DennisDollars I think you could do better.
In the 66 GTO piece of mine that you referenced, I eventually concluded that the car was a genuine GTO and not a clone. I think this LeMans may be a bit of a mongrel with that GTO-style scooped hood and those funky red interior highlights (which no 60s Pontiac ever paired with a black interior. )
I am not loving the 2 door sedan body or the resale red paint. Still, it is a very attractive car. It reminds me of the driveway next door when I was a kid. Mr. and Mrs. Bordner had 2 cars that were as similar yet as different as it was possible to get: a beige 4 speed 66 GTO hardtop (hers) and a light green 67 LeMans Sprint hardtop with the OHC6 and a 4 speed (his).
My classic car price barometer must need recalibration. I have to research prices on Hagerty’s website from to time, and I thought $10K was on the lowish side, but you’re probably right.
If it was mine, I would probably lose the Centerlines and GTO hood and go for a more factory look. But I don’t think it looked bad as-is/was.
Or perhaps it is mine that needs adjusted. I think those Hagerty numbers tend to be higher than real-world prices. But maybe I have spent too much time 1) in the 70s and 80s and 2) around Studebakers and 4 door Chryslers. 🙂
My antennae always goes up when I see a car that someone has messed with. Stuff like the hood and the interior is easier to see, and I always wonder what other surprises are lurking elsewhere.
10K? Boy I envy you in the US. For that money here in the EU the car would have been sold and on the road to my storage within 5 minutes. I just had a trip to Berlin to see what turned out to be a butchered 69 Le Mans for which the seller wanted €25K (there was no point in even making an offer on it). Sigh.
IRT the question of whether to pick one up? ABSOLUTELY!!
Currently restoring a sky blue 2+2 with my amigo Jim. (Also in Chicago)
It’s been a ton of fun and it’s a vehicle not often seen in working order.
Nice writeup!
Thanks, Maque Sim! Would love to see pics of your 2+2 when complete. Thankfully with Chicago being back to double-digit temperatures this week, you may resume spending time in the garage with it. All of last week was bruuuutal. Thirty-five today felt downright balmy.
Though I have a slight preference for the ’67 models (pictured) with their lean-forward tail and the narrower grille, this is still a very nice-looking car.
I think the ’67 grille was the same size as the ’66; it just was made of a metal, cross-hatch design as opposed to a plastic square pattern. But, yeah, the ’67 Pontiac intermediates had somewhat better taillights (especially the Goats).
The 67 bright crosshatch grill that you refer to was only on the GTO. Lemans and Tempest had a dark vertical grill.
No, the ’67 grille was narrower in the vertical direction. Compare this shot to the ’66 and look at the space between the top of the grille and the edge of the hood.
I do believe you’re correct. But, man, that’s got to be one of the most subtle differences between model years.
Agreed!
After 50 years of watching ’66’s & ’67’s, I never, ever saw that difference.
A million times, I pulled up Tonyola’s photo & compared it with the top photo of the Red LeMans. I felt like the David Hemmings photographer character in the 1966 British-Italian film, “Blow Up.”
(Here’s a still from the film….. in an MGB ?)
I also slightly prefer the ’67 over the ’66. To me, this side profile brochure shot defines the “Coke Bottle” shape.
The ribbed console and 4 speed take me back to my first car purchase in ‘71… a ‘64 GTO… dark blue paint and a lighter blue interior. Bought for $550 and sold for $575 9 months later.
Someone added a GTO hood, but looks forced in. At least not trying to pass it off as a GTO.
A recent car custom show, on Velocity channel, took an original looking ’67 GTO and IMHO “butchered it”, making a resto-mod. Why not get a plain Tempest/LeMans and leave the Goat alone? Was for an overseas buyer with cash to burn.
I sure hope this car has the OHC 6 and that it in good shape.
If I recall correctly, the OHC 6 was an option in ‘67, but could be wrong.
I just had to research this… The OHC 6 was first available for ’66, with 165 hp with the single 1-bbl carb (for both ’66 & ’67), and the version with the Rochester Quadrajet 4-bbl had 207 hp for ’66, increased to 215 for ’67.
I have always found it fascinating that Pontiac got so much power out of a six, even if I have no idea about the mechanics of it all.
Looks like a pretty nice vehicle just not 10K worth of nice FWIW I owned one of these with the OHC 6 and it ran fine but the base 326 did just as well and is a lot more common
Great find! I hope your mother was alright through the hurricane and that the damage wasn’t too bad.
Thanks, Brendan! Mom was fine and is as feisty as ever, though the night of the hurricane had my stomach in knots. Hopefully she’ll be back in her house before too long. 🙂
By age 17, I had driven several cars of family members. All were large, rambling GM affairs, especially the ’65 Impala & ’63 Olds 98.
But when my dad acquired the ’66 LeMans 2-dr hardtop, our 1st air-conditioned car, everything was just right. The 326 V8 responded at a touch of the gas, and the console-mounted shift made me feel like I was in a Riviera ……. no matter that it was a 2-spd. automatic.
During class, I’d doodle pictures of the instrument panel. When waxing the car, I marveled over the buttressed C-pillars – interesting that both the hardtop & post sedans had the same form.
Then I left for college, and embarked on a world of new adventures………
Loved reading this, Dan – thank you.
+ 1
Where in FM are you? I’m in south FM off of Winkler Road.