'64 Parisienne CS "barn find" - last on the road in '86 ... Owner Protection Plan booklet, original paint, original near-mint aqua interior, original aqua GM floor mats, original 283, factory posi, and original rust.
Whats really cool about what we have found out is that the very last 409 cars were Canadian. My bro currently owns the March 1965 409 4 speed car already mentioned so I have actually seen and driven one that was produced after the americans made the switchover.
With sales being low on the big blocks in Canada back then, plus the amount of effort to change things mid-year, well I wouldn't at all be surprised if Oshawa sat on a few pallets of 409s to be picked away at until the 1965 build-out. I mean, so few Custom Sports were built with the 340-horse 409.
In Canada it looks like for 1965, unlike the U.S.: the 220-horse 283 didn't reappear, the TH400 didn't appear, the 396 didn't appear (not until 1966). Now the H.D. 3-speed manual was in the 1965 Canadian Pontiac brochure as an upgrade option on the 327s over the Saginaw, and a minimum mandatory item with the 409s. That particular h.d. 3-speed was a mid-year addition (I think) and was a Warner T-13 (much like a cast iron early T-10 4-speed in design).
In the 7 years since that reference post was created I still haven't seen any evidence to support the switch to the Mark IV big block from the W-motor on Canadian 65s. In that old post our late lamented friend Hillar made the point about why Chevrolet wanted to get the Mark IV into production ASAP from a racing point of view. In Canada we didn't have the same racing sanctioning bodies so the business case for making major mid-year changes just wasn't there.
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67 Chevelle Malibu Sport Coupe, Oshawa-built 250 PG never disturbed.
In garage, 296 cid inline six & TH350...
Cam, Toronto.
I don't judge a man by how far he's fallen, but by how far back he bounces - Patton
