You're right. Sorry about that.

@@Barchetta No worries. I wasn't trying to be a jerk. Just wanted to let people know.

The Mako Shark Corvette was painted the colors of the Mako Shark.

Frickin shark-nadoes with laser beams on their heads!

If you want the same pronunciation as the fish, try, "Mahko-Shark" (long "a") The reader actually has it pretty close.

Till the final slap in 2009

Not just Pontiac. Every GM division had that problem. It's a minor miracle that the Camaro and Firebird ever got greenlit.

Sure was a slap down, the 1964 Pontiac Banshee never came about due to GM thinking it would move ppl away from buying the Corvette. GM then gave the design to Chevrolet to use as their 3rd gen Corvette. The same happened with the Firebird, every Firebird from 1967 is based off of the Camaro. That was the only way GM would allow Pontiac to put out a pony car.

@@dlm9477 I’m a huge Pontiac fan but I have to set the record straight about this one. When Ford introduced the Mustang it caught GM off guard because the Mustang was the answer to the Plymouth Barracuda and GM was behind. All these pony cars were sporty cars assembled with parts bin parts from other car lines. Initially, in addition to the Chevy Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, Oldsmobile was supposed to have their own F body variant. The Camaro was the first introduced but the Firebird took way longer than anticipated due to DeLorean’s insistence that the Firebird had to be superior to the Camaro in every way. All these delays actually screwed Oldsmobile out of their own version of the F body.

@@benn454 Not really. The Camaro and Firebird was GM’s response to the Ford Mustang. Chevy would have a version as GM’s sales leader and Pontiac would have one as GM’s (supposed) performance division. Oldsmobile was also supposed to have their own F body because their sales were slumping at the time.

Oldsmobile too !

Pontiac is part of GM duh

You’re right PMD was the Bastard Stepchild.

@@Floridaredwing25 No doubt about it but the board of directors had pet divisions they favored heavily.

Don’t really need to steal what you already own.

@@rapid13 That's true but barring Pontiac from using its own researched technology and giving the resource to a much better funded division was commonplace within GM. Making Pontiac seem a lesser vehicle in the GM lineup.

Headlights are Opal

The Opel was based on the Corvette as well. I'd much prefer to have an Opel GT, than a Corvette.

At some point someone shoulda said maybe your just not making the fast car fast enough

Like the Grand National

@@PaulKurz-iy7iv To be fair, the Grand National probably helped extend the life of that platform by years. GM was killing off RWD platforms left, right and centre in that era, to the point there was discussion of the F-body going FWD.

Nowadays the people you see driving Corvettes are usually old, white-haired men, it's a grandpa sports car. The new mid-engine Corvettes look too much like Ferraris, how are they at attracting younger drivers?

@@maxbrandt6 They got too damn expensive. They've always been priced twice as much as the pony cars it seems, today that is a big difference than the 60s. A 65 Mustang sold for around 3000 for a GT model where the vette was over 6000, today that Mustang GT is close to 40000 and the vette is almost 90000. It's just out of reach for the young crowd who would drive the car like it should be driven, the Mustang is still in the range of the average buyer for performance that rivals the vette in the right engine package, and with some aftermarket parts will beat that expensive vette. The Camaro is going to be gone soon and maybe the Dodge cars due to government interference with what the market wants, people need to fight for the freedom to choose an enjoyable ride before they disappear for good. You can always get a classic vette for a reasonable price today and enjoy.

Mercury and Plymouth too.

I miss oldsmobile

I miss all of them.

I doubt it. Lexus succeeded.

@@AdamWaffen Because it was allowed to.

They did. Chevy took it for the later Corvette

You are correct. The vets parents were Pontiac 😎

It's been said that when GM axed the idea for the car they allowed Corvette designers to use much of the design to create the C3. SO this car did end up becoming the c3 corvette.

I always thought it was the Opel GT the C3 was a copy of, astheticly.

​@@topcatcoast2coast579Those came out the same year.

​@@number3665axed after stolen is more likely. The banshee is the stingrays.

Opel was the German division of GM.

Opel GT was a German GM product

The Opel GT was an excellent car with a 400 stroker, I found that to be true, it's sitting in my garage right now.

I liked the opel GT but it was a little over priced. But it sure was sharp, looked like a mini Corvette! I did drive one an it was fun.

Don’t remember the Opel GT having a V8 in it.

There were a few Opel GT and Manta vehicles in Southern California where I grew up in that era. I don't know how popular these models were in the rest of the US.

@@chairman-jenkem-yogurt ya i lived in so cal in the 80´s and early 90´s before moving back to germany in 96...we were german migrants and my step dad opened a small well running repair shop for european cars and i remember seeing a few german import mantas and gt´s come into the shop to get inspections and such, do to the orange county and anaheim area having a pretty large german community...and i cant tell you how often people came in just to ask what cars these are... my guess is if you saw these cars in the US then mostly in areas with german communities near by since these cars are imports and not the typical kind like porsche, mercedes, and co...you kind of had to be a german culture insider to even know the brand opel...

@@TheBirdFlu666 well if you drove an opal it must have been a real jewel...lol... but if you drove a 1958 opel it was probably a kapitän or olympia and honestly many cars from that era where rust buckets if you did´nt care right for them...cavity sealing with wax and galvanizing body panels was´nt all that common and paint layers where thin in the 50´s so most cars that where exposed to wind and weather year round rusted away within a few years if you had a poor care and maintanence game... and you got to remember 58 was 10 years after ww2 and germany was still rebuilding parts of the country...so they had better to do then produce high quality metal sheets for body panels...at that time many car parts where sourced cheaply from other countries...that and from 56 to 57 german metal industy workers started the longest strike against the bad work conditions in german history...so you truly picked a bad year to drive a car from germany! but that been said you´ve also gotta remember opel was/is no brand like mercedes...opel´s focus was allways to produce affordable cars for the average people and like most cars of that kind they have to save on cost´s somewhere and thats usually the quality of the parts they use!

@@pauls.8748 Grew up on the east coast and old enough to have been around when the Opel GT was new. They weren't what I would call common to see but not that rare either saw plenty of them. I thought they were a mini Corvette back then.

@@stuglenn1112 ya the production numbers of the gt were a little over 100,000 cars, and do to the baby corvette design it caught the eye of americans pretty quick...and actually almost half of all the cars produced got imported to the US and Buick overtook all things marketing and distribution...but concidering the size and population of america then the around 50,000 cars is´nt that big of a number and still made them a pretty rare sight... and i cant speak for the 60´s and 70´s or the east coast...but i know that in the 80´s and 90´s on the west coast these cars became a very rare sight...many did´nt age very well do to rust issues and those that did make it you primarilly saw in areas with german communities who still knew what opel even was.

That thumbnail pic is pretty sweet.

326-455 had the same outside dimensions. 301 had a short deck. 326, 350, 389, 400 had 3" mains. 421, 428, 455 had 3.25" mains.

@@user-gq4hz7rh6k Agreed. The point being that here and elsewhere writers report, "We can fit a 389 in there." When anywhere a 326 fits, the 389/400/455 will fit. Pontiac already put a 421 in the first gen Tempest.

@@rondpert5167 Understood..point taken.

Pusillanimous...now there's a word one doesn't see every day. Very apropos.

China is why. In China, Buicks are the equivalent of a Mercedes or BMW. They were the preferred chariot of the rich and powerful.

@@benn454 I have heard that but, is that really the case in 2023? The affluent Chinese would seem to have moved beyond Buick as the status symbol of wealth and success.

@@msh6865 Recently, yeah. The Chinese car industry is in a much better place than they were back in 2008. Nowadays, the market has shifted to more domestic Chinese marques.

I've seen the Banshee. It's currently owned by a classic car dealer in CT.

Please tell me more about that. i was wondering why didn't Pontiac used forged connecting rods. you are telling me that Gm management didn't allow pontiac to use forged rods?? i tought it was Pontiac's decision to use cast rods

@@jaskopeter813I’ve never heard anyone other than this guy claim that daddy GM made that decision, I’ve always known that as a Pontiac misstep.

100% correct. I feel that GM’s 400CI limit in A body cars was to prevent Pontiac from ruling the performance scene at GM. There would have been $0 added to allow Pontiac to install a 421 in the original GTO or the later 428. They finally lifted that for the 1970 model year which was the pinnacle of GM performance and the first year for Pontiac and Buick’s 455. Oldsmobile was given the green light for their 455 for sharing the FWD Toronado with Cadillac in 1968. But Pontiac had stuffed most of their high performance R&D into the 400 because it was the biggest engine allowed into their high performance cars. It always puzzled me as to how the 1969 428 HO had a 390 HP rating but the 455 was only rated at 370 HP in 1970.

Just what I thought

Yup. And GM always sided with Chevy.

Pontiac blocks were intermediate size. Bigger than a small block Chevy but smaller than a big block. It is actually closer in size to the SBC. It is like a SBC on steroids. You are partially correct in calling them big blocks. The Oldsmobile and Buick big blocks were basically a tall deck version of their small blocks. In that thinking Pontiac would have only introduced their “small block” in 1977 with the 301.

Thanks for your thoughts. To my best knowledge (admittedly imperfect), I was told that, in the weird universe of GM, the big block/small block issue was a measure of dubious merit, based the bore centers! Huh? Why? Who knows... PS: never laid a wrench on Olds or Buick; not qualified to support or dispute your comment. Good News: all us old motor heads are not, apparently dead. If you are a young gearhead: Welcome aboard!

@@hughbarton5743 I’m far from an expert. I’ve never worked on a Buick V8 or even owned one. I’ve had an Olds 350 and 455, 2 Pontiac 400s and have a 455 on a stand and a TPI Chevy 350. All Pontiacs share the same bore spacing though not sure about the 265 and 301. Also not sure on the Olds and Buick. Obviously the Chevys don’t share the same bore spacing.