big mike pretty well descibed it in your link

Jennifer and Wayne wrote:

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I'm going to figure out what an "A" and "H" platform is.

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"X" platform is the chevy II design (i think) and A is the chevelle body style.  such as my 63 beaumont wagon looks like a chevy II " X platform" and your wagon looks like a chevelle "A platform". clear as mud?

The General Motors A platform (commonly called A-body) was a mid-size car automobile platform.

The rear-wheel drive X-body underpinned the Chevrolet Nova and similar cars of the late 1960s and 1970s

wikipedia has a good article on the acadian link

The reason that many people consider these cars Pontiac's is because they were sold exclusively at Pontiac dealers throughout Canada. It has been pointed out may times that you will not find the word Pontiac anywhere on the car however as you note the arrowhead emblem is prominent. Pontiac did not place their name on Bonnevilles and Grand Prix's either.

GM Canada made a business decison based on prohibitive import tarriffs and did nto sell/ import the A body Tempest/Lemans line into Canada until 1970 choosing instead to build a car for Pontiac to sell based on te Chevelle. For buyers who wanted an American model many dealers would import the cars at added cost. The added benefit of making an exclusive car for Pontiac to sell was that it created jobs in Canada and utilized high quality parts made in Canada, such as the McKinnon engines from St. Catherines.

When I asked the same Question a few years ago this what I got from http://cdnclassics.chevelles.net/chevfaq.html

Hope this will add to your understanding.

in reply to    I'd be curious if they actually had signs that said "Pontiac-Buick-Acadian-GM Trucks

Here is another one with Acadian added to the sign.

All my paperwork tells me to have my Cadillac DTS serviced at my Cadillac dealer HOWEVER the dealer I bought it at is City Chevrolet.

All my service manuals for my old Firebird say Firebird, no Pontiac anywhere to be found.

My sales brochures for my LeMans say printed by GM Canada.

In 1962 Dad bought Mom a car at Hogan Pontiac Buick and we called it a Pontiac Acadian.

Now I don't understand

All I am trying to say is a lot of different things were written and understood. We are never going to settle this Acadian or Beaumont or Pontiac debate.

One thing that I would like to mention is that back then the midsize and compact cars were very new to the market.  Up until then cars were either Chevys or Pontiacs, they're we no A bodies or X bodies or whatever. I am old enough to have lived through this so this is first hand. In common everyday language the name Pontiac meant a big full sized car, Acadian meant a compact car and Beaumont meant a midsize car. All these cars were purchased at the same place, Usually a Pontiac Buick  Dealer but often it was a Pontiac Buick Acadian GMC dealer. I can't ever recall seeing a Beaumont dealer sign but I could be wrong.

The other thing to consider is that GM Canada was a huge company. Anyone who works in a large company knows that plenty of material is written and distrubuted that is different from what some other divison or department has done. Marketing might write copy to appeal to a certain segment but engineering would write a manual to repair the cars. We shouldn't put too much faith in assumig these things were all cross checked and controlled in a centralized place because they probably weren't.

Beaumont4008 wrote:

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Yes the mystery lives on.  Personaly I think there was an atempt to market it as a separate Marque but with all those Pontiac styling Q's people just could not stop thinking it was a Pontiac model. I realy do not mind that it is thought of as a Pontiac as I always liked Pontiac over other GM makes and if it has to be lumped in with something why not Pontiac..

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 Pretty much sums up my feelings too.   And I don't disagree with anything said so far.  I always learn something when this topic is discussed though and one day we might just discover someone from up high that can fill in the blanks.  Something tells me there could be some interesting stories.

Canadian Poncho wrote:

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I think the only way to clear this up is to find someone who worked in upper management at Oshawa during the time of Acadian and Beaumont and tell us whether General Motors felt it was Pontiac or a separate Marque.
The odds of finding such a person are slim.

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A friend of my wifes worked in advertising at gm in the 60 and 70's. she was one of the bosses. i asked her and she said acadian was lumped in with pontiac. made no difference to her she drives a cadillac.

Funny enough the Acadian and Beaumont styling changes were done by Pontiac design staff in Detroit. A couple of years ago the actual gentleman responsible for this spoke at POCI convention. He said his job was to make the Chevelle and Chevy II look as much as possible like a Pontiac.