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Post Info TOPIC: New American Car but perhaps of interest to you guys


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New American Car but perhaps of interest to you guys


Just picked up a 69 Catalina 2 door hardtop.  Typical northeast dealer inventory type options but in exceptional original condition.  28k original miles and very original down to paint, top, interior etc.  One owner always garages and never winter driven (all it's life in just outside Pontiac Michigan).  Factory options are limited to power steering and brakes (drum), automatic, vinyl top, decor group (drip moldings, deluxe wheelcovers and steering wheel etc), AM, white walls and remote mirror.  On delivery the dealer added mats and door edge.  Color is Matador and interior is black cloth. 

Standard engine is the 400-290 horse high compression 2bbl and car has most of it's original single exhaust system.  A few negatives include a nose that has leprosy (luckily I have a really nice spare), a vintage alarm system that resulted in a lock switch drilled into the front fender and it was Ziebarted new so some holes drilled.

The interior is in amazing condition, literally like new and 100% original.

All in all a nothing special car when new but a nifty time-warp 52 years later.  I'll be curious to drive it and compare it to my 2+2, the lack of AC and similar options will make for an interesting comparison.  The 2+2 has the advantage of a Qjet (350-300) and the lighter chevy chassis and the Catalina has an extra 50 cubes.  Both have single exhaust and co-incidentally the same axle ratio (2.73) even though they are completely different diffs. 

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John

Montreal 

26 1969 American Pontiacs

and a 1969 Canadian 2+2 Hardtop



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Hi John

Congratulations on another addition! That interior looks really sweet! Did you bring it home yet?



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"Dad, which car are we taking?"                      "The Pontiac!"

"Which one?"                                                    "The red one!"

'67 Parisienne 2+2 - red

'01 Montana            - red

'06 Buick Allure

'12    Japanese minivan



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I saw that car.

In the old world, not too far from me.

How about you have it shipped to me and drive that 1969 Grande here and then drive this one home biggrin



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A real survivor. Nice that it's with someone who appreciates it.



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65 Laurentian post, 67 Grande Parisienne 4 door HT. 
 


A Poncho Legend!

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Very nice! I remember a neighbor had a Corvette (mid 70's) with one of those alarm systems with the key cylinder in the fender).


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Canadian Poncho Superstar!

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Beautiful!  Congrats on the new acquisition of yet another 1969 Pontiac!  smile



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Poncho Master!

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John, Very pretty , I love survivor cars ... How do you find all these survivors, could you share some tips ? Congrats and Thanks :)



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Canadian Poncho Superstar!

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Nice original car. Ziebart around here was not good for rust, it was hard and eventually came unstuck and trapped moisture between it and the metal, then rusted. Nice interior.

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63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC.
1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada

Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic



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Nice clean looking car, congrats!

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A Poncho Legend!

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Cool! They're still out there.

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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles 

1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars



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Thanks guys, It just arrived in a storage unit across the border from me. I've got a guy going to pick it up Friday (lucky bastard is allowed to cross the border!), I'll meet him at Canada customs so they can suck my wallet of Taxes in person.

Maybe that guy worked for Ziebart, the head office is right there in the same little town the guy lived in. Maybe it was a scam? buy a new car, Ziebart it, never drive it in the winter but say you do and then promote how the Ziebart protected the car

I've always had that bug for untouched survivors. Once I get them my role is to do a tiny bit of "sneaky resto" by addressing the weak points with NOS, good used bits and detailing without taking away the originality. For example in this car, put on a good nose, remove the alarm etc, fill the holes in the inner fender with matching color sealer so I don't repaint anything. Put a correct replacement exhaust system to replace the incorrect replacement stuff (I actually have NOS a muffler and resonator for this specific application). Sort of like the movie "Christine", the car looks like it went backwards in time a bit

The decision will be what to do if anything with that alarm switch on the fender, if that fender was already repainted at some point (no sign of that) then I'll just have it filled and painted again. If not I might just leave it or I was thinking since it's probably a cleanly drilled hole I could hole saw a matching sized plug, paint it red, use structural adhesive to glue it in from behind and then use colored putty to hide the seam. Obviously wouldn't hold in in weather but for a car living in a climate controlled building it would outlast us all.

Someone asked how I find these untouched cars. Pretty simple answer, I do regular programmed searches (daily on eBay, kijiji, weekly for Hemmings and Cars on Line). Having been into such a narrow focus for so long I've developed a instant sense at first glance which cars merit further review. There are a lot of survivor cars out there, especially if you get out of the focus of everyone else (Mustang, Camaro, GTO etc).

That 4dr 427 Grande looks to be a sweet car, my friend looked at it last year when the previous owner was selling it. Rust free legit car, could of bought it for $10k less than the dealer is asking now. Needs more detailing than the photos in the current ad would indicate and the paint wasn't great, dealer probably had someone cut the paint.

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John

Montreal 

26 1969 American Pontiacs

and a 1969 Canadian 2+2 Hardtop

427


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I have a bunch of NOS exhaust parts that are for a 69-70 Catalina and Bonneville, including a muffler, resonator and pipes if you are interested. It is a single exhaust system.



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Guru

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Id definitely would be interested. Feel free to contact me with particulars on those exhaust parts.



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John

Montreal 

26 1969 American Pontiacs

and a 1969 Canadian 2+2 Hardtop



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Nice to see there are still some original examples like this , congratulations John!



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Got the car home, very happy and no surprises. Already have a nice nosepiece over at my body shop for painting, lucky I had one and also fortunate that my body man just painted another car with 1969 Matador so he already has the paint.

A careful inspection of the car confirms it is 100% original paint. An oddity is that the rear valence is plastic. It is factory, Ive seen reference to them in the parts catalogue and shop manual but never saw one in person. Apparently it was a test done on a certain percentage of cars to get some real world experience with plastic in that kind of application. I can suspect why Ive never seen one. Even in a low mileage example like this one is cracking (not from impact) and deforming, I imagine they were junked and replaced with new or used steel ones.

I wonder if they also experimented with plastic valences on Canadian cars (Canadian rear valences are quite different than the US one.

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John

Montreal 

26 1969 American Pontiacs

and a 1969 Canadian 2+2 Hardtop

MC


Canadian Poncho Superstar!

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Thanks for the info about the plastic rear valence - I had never heard of that before, and it's somewhat fascinating that they would just put them on a number of customer's cars to see how they worked - kinda like clandestine real world R&D that they could judge success by the number of warranty claims for said parts.  Seems a little sneaky, but likely they had already tested them extensively to have enough confidence to put them on production vehicles.

Do you have any documentation about it?  It would be interesting to see if it had a different part number, for example.  There may have been some internal documentation or dealer notices about how to treat a warranty claim (i.e. send parts back to the zone manager, etc.).  It would be neat to see.

On a side note, if you have a spare steel valence, it might be an idea to get it painted at the same time as the nose piece, just in case the plastic one starts to crack more - it's such a rare piece I suspect you'd want to take it off before it broke to keep as wall art, or at least proof that they were out there. 



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Thats exactly the plan, I didnt have a spare valance but I just bought one off of eBay. Ill remove the original and store it in a protective tube.

My US MPC (November 69 edition) lists part numbers for both the plastic and metal one but later MPCs only list the steel one. The shop manual also shows the install of both versions (the plastic one uses a different spacer to bolt the the bottom center of the valance to the frame cross member).

Interestingly there is also reference to a plastic front valance in the MPC but Ive never seen one. This would be more relevant to Canadian cars since the front valance does interchange between US and Canadian models. A further hint that the plastic front panel was at least seriously planned (if not actually produced) is the front parking lamp assemblies. All those parking lamp assemblies have a unused blade connector on the top of the house In behind the lenses for a ground wire. This would never have been needed on steel valances. This was also planned for the Abody in 69 (except the GTO) as the LeMans parking lamps also have that unused ground blade.

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John

Montreal 

26 1969 American Pontiacs

and a 1969 Canadian 2+2 Hardtop

MC


Canadian Poncho Superstar!

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Very cool!  Thanks for sharing this, I love learning about these little quirks and rarities  that exist in the old car world.  smile



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Uber Guru

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As you know, I love all the 1969 stuff !

Could you imagine what a plastic front valance would look like after one Canadian winter ?

 



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One thing I noticed about the plastic rear valance that I like is that it is deeper (vertically) than either the Canadian or US steel valances. This has the effect of better hiding the fuel tank. The US fuel tank is especially close to the rear frame crossmember so with the steel valance it is quite visible, an unsightly design flaw in my opinion. Perhaps they intended to address that with the larger plastic valance.

As for the possible plastic front one I can just imagine how poorly it would have held its shape with the far more complex shape and the counter levered weight of the parking lamps. Not to mention the effect they effect of the first snow bank you plowed through!

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John

Montreal 

26 1969 American Pontiacs

and a 1969 Canadian 2+2 Hardtop

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