Me & My Car: Bay Area man’s ’61 Pontiac Ventura design lasted just a year

Pontiac history goes back to before there even was a Pontiac car.

The Oakland Motor Car Co. was founded in 1907 in Pontiac, Michigan (Pontiac is the county seat of Michigan’s Oakland County, which neighbors Detroit), and became part of General Motors in 1909. In 1926, Pontiac was introduced as a companion brand to the more expensive Oakland brand.

Pontiac was a success from the beginning, offering greater value as it was priced with competitive four-cylinder models but had an inline six-cylinder engine. Pontiac was named for the famous Odawa Native American chief who led a rebellion against the British in 1763.

Another interesting historical tidbit is that Pontiac cars were manufactured from knock-down kits in two GM Japanese factories from 1927 until 1941, when some other well-known historical event occurred. In terms of GM’s brand hierarchy, Pontiac was one step above Chevrolet but below Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac.

When Wall Street’s “Black Friday” happened in September 1929, sales of Pontiac and Oakland (as well as all other makes) dropped dramatically, but since Pontiac was the less expensive model, GM management kept Pontiac and discontinued Oakland.

Starting in 1959, Pontiac was promoted on the lifestyle the car promised rather than the features of the car itself. This was the start of the “Wide Track” design and of advertising Pontiac as GM’s “performance division.” The advertising line used was “we build excitement.” Before then, the Olds Rocket 88 was GM’s performance car when it started to beat Hudson in mid-1950s NASCAR competitions.

Most of the 1960s and ’70s Pontiac models shared body styling from other GM models except for Cadillac, but Pontiac offered its own engines, front styling, rear styling and interiors. From 1960 through 1968, the full-size Pontiac offered eight-bolt, finned wheels that helped cool the brake drums.

This issue’s featured vehicle is a 1961 Pontiac Ventura bubbletop. You never heard of a bubbletop? I hadn’t either until the owner of one, San Jose’s Michael Cady, contacted me. It was a one-year-only design with a distinctive roof line. It has no “B” pillar and is cited as a proto-muscle car, equipped with a 389-cubic-inch V8 engine and a four-speed manual transmission but no power steering or brakes.

It was manufactured several years before the popular GTO Pontiac. Cady has owned this car painted Coronado Red since 1999, paying $70,000. This Ventura is identical to a car he owned in the 1970s, when he was in the Navy.

“I used to go pick my wife up when she was still in high school,” Cady said. “When we got married, we had to sell the car. I spent 35 years looking for another one. I found this one in Cassville, Wisconsin (population 771). I didn’t fly out because I didn’t care what kind of shape it was in because I knew I was going to go through it. Everything was terrible with the exception of the paint.”

Cady is mechanically inclined but had a machine shop rebuild the engine. Other than the interior, he repaired or replaced almost everything else himself. He ordered the interior from a company that could duplicate the factory’s product, but getting it took three years.

“I finally got the interior and had it installed, and the car was complete. This was last year. That was on a Friday. On Saturday, I went to a car show with this car that I had been working on since 1999. I cracked the door open, and a gentleman in a pickup truck came by and caught the edge of the door, bent it all the way forward until the hinges broke off.”

The car was repaired locally, but there was one piece of stainless-steel trim needed.

“I went on the (World Wide) Web, and a guy got back to me from North Carolina,” Cady said.

He had a package of stainless-steel parts and would only sell the whole package for $2,300. Cady ended up paying $2,300 to get one small stainless-steel strip (a lesson in supply and demand).

He loves his beautiful Pontiac and he has no plans to sell it, but Cady’s son and grandson love it too and hence are its likely future owners.

Have an interesting vehicle? Email Dave at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To read more of his columns or see more photos of this and other issues’ vehicles, visit mercurynews.com/author/david-krumboltz.