The Pinnacle of Pontiac_Coke Bottle Design - 1965 Bonneville & 1966 Catalina - Walkaround & Drive

Ok .

Well , welcome back to Rare classic cars .

We have Mark yet again yet again .

I'm back by Unpopular Domain .

Unpopular .

Ok .

You see the videos where you talk about cars , nobody really likes them but ok , I felt sorry for you .

Ok , so this is why you called me earlier today and said , you know , I should come over here because that was just a robot .

No banter .

So welcome again , Mark is here and we're going to talk about two , the epitome of Coke Bottle design here , two mid sixties Pontiacs this time , both , both cars are yours and my quick disclaimer at the beginning of the video because I currently work at General Motors as a designer and I am uh disclosing this to all the viewers so that there is no um misunderstandings even though I've worked at a bunch of car companies , but I've been actually at General Motors for quite some time and talking about these wonderful beautiful cars here is actually something that's a lot of fun for me to do .

So .

Thank you for the invitation to join you in a video again .

Well , thank you , Mark .

Well , let's walk around each and we can talk a little bit about each .

Yeah , I'm there .

Well , I mean , they're your car .

So , why don't you introduce ?

So , I'll tell a little bit about how I acquired both of them .

This one here , I actually picked up in Great Falls , Montana .

And it's an 8000 mile car owned by a little old lady who owned a restaurant that was about a block from the house .

So she drove back and forth , she walked back and forth to work .

Hence , the car is low miles .

And this one I picked up in Illinois probably a couple of years ago and this one's got about 40,000 miles or so .

So 65 Bonneville , 66 Catalina .

And this one also is special because it's a 421 engine , 4 21 4 barrel ride and handling package .

This is a standard 3 89 2 barrel .

This is finished in Maroon and this is in Marina Turquoise , which each of these colors was used on various GM vehicles .

But that was , I think the Marina Turquoise was also the Tropic turquoise , right ?

The Tropic .

It was on Tropic .

Turquoise .

Yeah .

Yeah .

And I think it was just plain turquoise on Buick .

They had a number of names for it , but it's not even turquoise , it's green , but never mind you're the design to start the discussion again .

All right , we have a friend who was very insistent that this is turquoise and I say it's green .

Well , let's start the discussion .

All right .

So let's get into it .

Mark .

And you had mentioned in the introduction , something about peak Coke bottle design .

So what does , what does that refer to ?

Well , obviously , these cars have a beautiful , very pronounced wave or hip shape here under the sea pillar , which if you go and look at the whole side view , the proportion of it reminded a lot of people of a Coke bottle that's laying on its side , right ?

So this is where that terminology came from Gm's first car to really play up .

This design motif was the 1963 Riviera , which was a car that was one of Bill Mitchell's favorites in terms of his influence over the gestation process and how it was developed .

He had seen some coach build British cars like big large limousines in London that had a certain way of creating a sheer surfacing look and the way the windows were set in .

And they also had the body work creating a certain type of surface character that he wanted expressed in the Riviera .

And so the Rivera mixed a few of those influences with some very sporting , very elegant cues from some performance cars .

If you recall , say the C One Corvettes , the original Corvettes , the BMW 507 Roadster , and many of those classic Roadster cars , they have a hip shape because in order to get the big wheelhouse under the body structure and to have a low belt line , oftentimes these cars had a dip down in the side and then they kind of humped back up over the rear wheels .

And that was a typical mark of some performance cars that were very small where the wheel packaging kind of drove the body shape volumes and it was , it became a bit of a queue for sportiness and for exclusivity .

So Mitchell applied that to the 63 Riviera and forces and that was the first car to really express that Coke bottle shape on the body sideline and that caught on so successfully that it was applied across the board except Cadillac .

Every GM division had a Coke bottle shape in one form or another in the mid sixties .

So peak Coke bottle is around 65 66 67 .

It quickly disappeared and then it quickly disappeared because they were on to another thing .

That's the nature of the fashion nature of the car styling of the design aspect , especially in a market that is so styling driven like the American market was so styling driven like the American market in those days .

And uh but it was so impactful that it went global .

I mean , the Coke bottle went global um Ford uh was kind of late in adapting it .

They had a bunch of vehicles in the early seventies that still did it .

If you look at the mid size cars , the Montego and you know , the Torino's and those cars had a very strong hippie kind of coke bottle reference in the shapes .

And then also the European Ford Cortina Taas , the Cortina Taunus T C in the early seventies in Europe , that was a very , very pronounced Coke bottle shape .

GM Europe , of course , this coming from , from North America , but GM Europe , Opel Vauxhall had a lot of very strong coke bottle shaped cars and then GM abandoned it by the late sixties , early seventies , it was all but gone and pretty much gone .

By the time 1971 rolled around and 71 Pontiacs in the seventies looked a lot different than this too .

They do , they do the full size cars , at least they're still echoed a little bit in the mid size cars .

It lingered a little bit , but by 73 was basically gone , except some of the colonade cars in 73 had sort of big sweeping fender shapes , the regal , the regal , for instance , and there were some other cliches , but they weren't really Coke bottle because Coke bottle also means that it's not just a crease line and the body side , the window line comes with it .

So it's really pronounced and you can really tell from a very , very far distance .

There's a lot of cars that have flowing hipped lines on the body side creases , but they don't necessarily take the window graphic with it .

And that's one of the main hallmarks of the Coke bottle shape is the entire roof line .

The belt line , everything flows along this sort of wave shape on the body side .

So you have that you have that first theme that the Coke Bottle design and you also have kind of this fast back .

That was another cliche that was very popular .

By the time the mid sixties , late sixties rolled around was all of a sudden the two door coops became almost two volume cars instead of three box cars .

A coup was traditionally also a three box car , meaning three boxes , one is the engine compartment and the cabin and then the trunk and they became almost a two balling car , a two box car by having a very , very fast rear pillar and back light and flowing very gracefully into the trunk .

And that of course peaked at about 1967 68 the subsequent Grand Prix and the full size cars as well had very , very drastic fastbacks .

So did the the mid size cars .

It was a very popular styling motif until it gave way to the more formal executions in the seventies when the big brome age and you know , the very , very pseudo luxurious cliches came in then the back sort of disability .

Another thing that Cadillac didn't copy they had very formal roof lines in correct .

So because Cadillac taking a different position in the corporate line up , being more dignified , having to have more sort of conservative prestige , not so advanced , the very sporty , very flowing , very sexy shapes of the Coke bottle design weren't deemed appropriate for Cadillac .

So Cadillac stayed with a much more conservative approach and a much more formal approach interesting .

And then this also has the stacked headlight theme that came , that was one thing that uh that Pontiac became one of the main uh main proponents of Cadillac , of course , also having stacked head lamps in the mid 19 sixties .

But it is an interesting detail that comes out in the 66 versus the 65 .

The treatment of the front end on the 66 is in a way much cleaner and much more unified than it was originally on the 60 fives .

And Pontiac followed a formula .

They were doing this on the Grand Prix as well just with a one year 63 64 Grand Prix , just with a one year time delay , they were a year ahead of the full size cars .

So they started out on the front and treatment started out with a very sculptural and very very complex looking assembly with very strong emphasis on the individual chrome bezel for the headlamps .

And we don't only have a vertical stagger .

We also have a four a stagger because the upper head lamp is a little bit ahead of the lower .

So it gives you a little bit of a forward leaning character that's supposed to emphasize all these you know , these Z shapes that are leaning forward and giving the whole thing kind of a , a hunched forward posture , a little bit of , uh , dynamic motion in , in , in the character that even with the , the front of the hood , right , everything has , there's nothing really straight on these cars , there's nothing really upside , you know , uh up , down in a vertical fashion , everything has slight angle and lean to give it the character of motion and sort of a , you know , a car that's ready for , for speed .

And then everything is has little details like , you know , the stagger four a of the headlamp pods , the the highly detailed headlamp paws or bezel with these ridges here , the emphasis on the chrome surrounds and then you go to the 66 and you have a much more unified and almost formal approach because now you simply have stacked stacked headlights that are no longer staggered for a , you have a body color molding that is the bezel around it .

So you de emphasize the complexity and it gives it a very different character and it gives a very strong differentiation between what is essentially identical bodies because the main panel stampings were identical between 65 66 .

So this was a classic face lift , but a face lift with details done in a way to give it a very different character .

And that's something they also did on the 63 to 64 Pontiac Grand Prix , if you compare the front end treatment especially , but also some of the rear end details .

It follows a similar philosophy .

It starts with a very complex very chrome accent driven design and then it becomes a more integrated design that has more of the body color surround .

So the details don't show up as drastically and this changed so significantly between 66 7 and they have a much different , very different philosophy of the era of 67 was sort of the the peak concealed headlight era , so concealed headlamps became very popular .

Another one of those design motifs that were trendy and very fashionable and of course , they were complex and they had quality and alignment issues and they had reliability issues ultimately after a long use time .

And so they went away again in the early seventies because of all these reasons , but they were around for a while because that was a trendy thing to do .

And again , a totally different philosophy there very much integrated .

We're seeing the loop bumper themes lurking that came , came in in the late 19 sixties was a very popular theme then where it was even cleaner and even more integrated than this design , which is already a very clean and dramatic presentation of shapes .

Another interesting thing for the Pontiacs is of course that this is a very specific way of how they handled the stacking or doubling up of elements and shapes .

This is something that's very typical of Pontiac of the era where you have identical shapes that are doubled up and stacked and organized in a way to give you authority and presence on the road , making it look very authoritative and very important , but also at the same time , adding visual interest .

Um and then towards the late 19 sixties and also when other brands tried similar approaches , you have um a move away from this complexity and you go to the loop bumpers .

Like if you think of the 69 Chevrolet , the full size Chevy Chrysler , you get the opposite where you get a simplification of all the elements and ultimately the reduction to just one major element , which is , you know , the loop or the oval for the bumper .

So within a few years , you have a complete 180 when it comes to the approach of how to define front end signatures .

Even Chevrolet tried that in the two thousands , the Malibu and that graphic that I that was a , that was a traditional Chevrolet or a branded Q from the early seventies where Chevrolet had these grills that were bisected by the bumper .

That's right .

And so we had an upper and the lower grill and that and the big grill bar in the middle of some of the Chevy truck front ends .

That's a reference to this classic dissected Chevy bumper , front end theme that's been around basically for , for half a century , I have to say to these cars , you know , now a lot of vehicles don't have overly distinctive rear end treatments , but whether it's your 59 impala lurking in the background or these cars , they certainly have a distinctive signature from the rear much .

So here's also a typical treatment .

This is the Bonneville , the top of the line .

So the emphasis here was clearly on width .

Um If they could have , they probably would have gone with a full width tail cluster here on the Bonneville with all the chambers and the and the lamps illuminated .

They chose not to do this .

Usually it's a cost driven thing because electrical engineering say we don't want that much wiring , not so many bulbs design usually wants that .

So in this case , we have a very unified horizontal theme , typical motif of the time making them look wide , right ?

Everything that is already enormously wide looks even wider when you make it a horizontally theme .

The Grand Prix took that the extreme Grand Prix took it to the extreme with these the ribbed panels that it had always thought that it looked very , that was the whole thing .

It was mysterious , it was a little stealth and it had that clean look .

So it was something that was supposed to draw attention to itself for its for its character .

And there's a hint of that here with the ribbed insert panel between the tail lamps .

Um but um it's ironic that these enormously white cars that really don't need any further horizontal clues to make them look wider .

They , they accentuated those to make them even more uh wide looking , which in today's U V world is , is positively shocking when you see the change of proportion .

When these cars going down the road .

I wonder , you know , I'm looking at this car on the side and I'm wondering if mercury copied for 68 a bit or 67 plus , you could , you could rise .

The Cougar too has very similar approaches .

A sculptural flare at the bottom .

This is a very interesting thing when we talked about our automobiles a few weeks ago and we mentioned the skeg line , which is this very strong distinctive lower body side feature .

We have a version of that here and the beautiful , the beautiful thing about these mid sixties Pontiacs is they are symmetrical in the sense that the body side line flow at the belt line is mirrored at the lower body side , which makes them even more Coke bottle shaped and , and refers to , you know , the classic Coke bottle tipped on its side and there is something very , very beautiful in the way the reflections run over all these complex in and out shapes .

I always refer to this period , you know , the early to late sixties , actually , late fifties to late sixties when I look at my 59 Chevy as the era where the cars threw shadows on themselves , you know , because they had such deep draw complex shapes on the body sides .

And that's certainly the case here very much accentuated with that lower bright work cladding , the lower panels that are following that line and making the body side look even leaner and even longer .

It's interesting .

It's handsome now Ford kind of did it .

But they , here , there's a bit of a shoulder , but Ford always had that pronounced , that pronounced the shoulder on the door as well .

A little bit different style that they kept G M had more cleaner side sections .

I think , you know , even into the seventies , I mean , Ford had its own interpretation of this style .

If you look at the 1964 Thunderbird , which has an interesting body side sculpture , you find elements of that on the Cougars and on some of the later early seventies Ford cars where you have a very sculptural body side theme with little changes in direction of the lines .

They have little kick ups and little undercuts and little scallops in there .

The T bird has that but in a much more angular way .

So you don't read the sort of central shapes .

These cars here were very central , they were very sexy .

They had very natural , very , very organic looking shapes that were all very well controlled with the crisp trim lines and the very , very controlled and disciplined detailing they had .

So you had this very elegant flow of the reflections and the play of light over the surfaces that made them look very much alive .

And you had the impression that this was a technical product by all the metal details that were added to them to accentuate the shapes .

But they gave them some look of precision and definition .

And it's amazing because this is a top of the line car , but it's quite devoid of chrome aside from some very well , I wouldn't call it devoid of chrome if the entire lower cladding is stainless fair .

But it is because it's so big and because it has so much surface area to work with and it's all done with the shape , I mean , this car could do without the bright work accents to convey the theme .

It's mostly done with the shape , it's very clean , but I wouldn't call this a void chrome .

What's very nice about these cars is that the attention to detail extends into little things like picking up the body side section in the uh in the bumper shapes .

You know , you see here how it terminates and blends into this very clean uh profile line .

Um And you have the um w plan view shapes which was a very popular motif for , for some that was very popular into well into the early seventies , the second Viera , right , to an extreme , even where this helps give some visual interest and some liveliness to an otherwise very austere and severe theme and you have these broad horizontal lines , it can look very architectural and almost lifeless if you don't have something in it that gives it a little bit of definition and some visual play and interest .

So as soon as the reflections sort of hop around here , you've got that little crease in the middle that terminates in the V shaped Pontiac logo .

And you have these beautiful angles and surrounding bezels around the tail lamps .

All of that is visual interest that makes the shapes that are fundamentally quite beautiful , even more intriguing to look at .

And it's similar but different back here in the Catalina they have .

Yeah , this is a , this is a less expensive execution .

You have more emphasis on the individual tail lamp bezels .

So you have two group pods left and right .

And of course , you don't have quite as much money riding between the lamps because it's just a Catalina .

And so it's just a painted panel instead of that expensive bright work that you see on the Bonneville .

I just love the tape , the roof line kind of set in board from the fender line .

There is so much depth , which is a fascinating aspect of these cars .

When you look at the outer edge , extreme edge of the body and then where the actual back light outer edge is , you have about a foot and a half .

This is probably 15 , 16 inches , if not more from the most extreme to about this portion .

And while these cars certainly were somewhat excessive in their size , they're so beautifully sculpted and they're so sensual and they're really sexy looking cars that , um , you forgive them the bulk in a way because they're in spite of the bulk , they're quite lean and the flowing lines make them look just so beautiful .

It's hard to take your eyes off of them .

Well , very good .

Let's maybe take a quick break and we can talk about the interior a little bit .

All right , let's talk a little bit about the interior mark .

Uh knows quite a bit about interior design as well as the exterior lately lately .

Uh because it's been ma mainly where I've been playing the , the sandbox , I've been playing in for the last 10 years or so .

But of course , I also did exteriors for a long , long time because I'm really old , um been doing this for 30 years .

But , um yeah , this is an interesting interior because it has a , a fascinating um balance of simplicity and complexity , um simplicity because the basic shape of the instrument panel , the basic shapes on the interior , it's a bench seat .

It's got very simple door cards or door trim panels .

Uh It's got stock General Motors , uh hardware that was reused on many other models at the time .

But then it has some interesting uh complexity in the way the gauges are arranged and the gauges have a driver orientation which is also noteworthy that was not commonly done in those days .

And later in the seventies , companies like BMW took a lot of credit for pioneering driver oriented cockpits .

But that's nonsense because versions of that have been around in , in several car companies .

And Pontiac was one of the pioneers , uh the Grand Prix of the late sixties , early seventies had very driver oriented cockpits , the 66 tornado with that .

Yes , it did .

It was graphically driver oriented , isolating the driver with the color break up , but it wasn't driver oriented in the sense that the instruments or the controls were , were curved around the driver .

Uh When , when we speak of driver orientation uh in the design world , we mean that the driver uh position of the driver uh uh placement is specifically catered to by the by the shapes on the interior , meaning that the control is all curved towards the driver and uh and the instruments are all angled towards the driver .

And examples are this , this , this placement of the um the gauges here , the instruments to the uh to the right of the speedometer on a flat face up .

There's not much uh there's no driver orientation in the basic shape of the instrument panel , but the gauges do that , which is an interesting execution .

And then later on in the Grand Prix and even some of the parts of the uh you know , the the and , and some of them uh Chrysler products .

They had a driver oriented cockpit where you have a cluster that , that wraps around the driver area .

What about the 71 to 3 G M ?

Absolutely .

Yeah , absolutely .

The ones with the modular uh or the , the serviceable instrument panel segments were very much driver oriented and all except the Chevy were driver oriented with a half round , like a sweeping , almost half round arrangement of these individual pods around the driver .

So there's many interpretations long before companies like BMW and others picked it up in the later 19 seventies .

But of course , these cars weren't necessarily made for engaging , you know , curvy mountain road driving .

So it did a lot of us got the right in handling package .

Well , I'm sure it's nice at the shopping mall , but I'm not sure if that makes any sense in any other roads , but we laugh about this , but these cars handle surprisingly well for the bulk .

They do and they have a bad reputation , but most people don't know what they're talking about because these cars are actually a lot more drivable and road than they're being given credit for .

They are .

I mean , we have quite a few roundabouts in the area and I surprise people and run them around the , I think what is mostly in the way of enjoying a more engaging drive driving style , so to speak , other than the bulk is that most of the time you have very flat seats like you have a bench seat here , there's no lateral support in the seats .

The seat is the limiting factor is the limiting .

Exactly .

The seating is a limiting factor .

And , well , the suspension I'm sure has limits too , but they were much better than their reputation in the context of their times .

You have to modify that .

Classic cars are all relatively garbage compared to today's cars when it comes to handling .

But for most of the everyday driving , we do even at the speeds that you know , the army , the armada of suvs is moving today , these are totally capable of holding their own .

And this one has no wood trail , but it does have a nice detail .

The Catalina detail there on the that , that's a nice cliche that was often deployed because it gives you a three dimensional depth .

It's a clear panel that floats over .

Basically , you can , you can see a little bit of depth , you perceive a little bit of richness there you do .

And it's not really done with much effort and with much investment , but it gives you a lovely three dimensional effect because you can see through the clear material and that adds a little bit of intrigue and visual interest and gives you something to look at that says , OK , my money went somewhere and to Mark's point , these are all rotated toward the driver .

You can see it a little bit better and that works quite nice .

I think they're actually from a , from a readability point of view quite good .

The , the , even though they have bright work around them , they don't reflect too much .

You can actually see the instruments quite well .

No , you have enough of an overhang .

You have enough of a shaded pad on top that allows you to read the instruments .

Well , which was a bit of a problem in those days with many cars that had a lot of bright work and bling dazzling you on a bright day .

So let's take a look at the 65 because this has the square pods in 65 they were round .

Yes , another way to differentiate years .

So Pontiac did that .

They vacillated between round and square just for the heck of it .

And here we see basically the same instrument panel .

Once again , the expensive tooling , the metal stamping , tooling , the one , the tools that you strike the instrument panel , metal with , they're the same as on the Catalina .

And here we have real wood trim , which is a unique thing to Pontiac .

It was Cadillac also did some real wood trim , but for the most part , American car companies , by the mid sixties , if they were using wood trim at all , which was rare , then it was already fake and Pontiac stuck with the real stuff for quite some time .

My 64 Grand Prix also had real wood veneer .

Um We see some of that very beautiful here in the , you lost one in the back .

Yeah , you still have the original one but it is real wood veneer .

It looks like Walnut to me .

Uh What , what is this , uh , is this Walnut ?

I think it is .

I think it walnut and it's just a low gloss .

So it's very trendy .

It's kind of open pore , low gloss wood .

It is trendy they're doing now .

It's very , very much a but right now everything that's going on right now , Harkens back to the mid century .

That's 19 sixties .

So more elaborate door card here .

Yes , you have carpeting at the bottom .

It's an upscale version .

So you have a more dignified and richer look with the vertical pleading , but it's essentially the same instrument panel with some different detailing inserted like the round bezels for the instruments and the wood veneer .

But it's otherwise the same instrument panel .

I thought it was a cool theme they had for the AC cars where they integrated the vent into the top .

The AC cars usually had two or three vents on the IP .

This one has , I see .

I think it has three .

Right .

Yes .

One on either side was pretty typical of the time .

Usually they were all under the instrument panel or done in such a pod .

If you look closely , you have , this is an add on piece .

This is actually the corner piece can be removed in the non AC cars .

It doesn't have that circle event .

So it's just a different , this is actually a casting .

This is not even the stamping and the ones on the dash pad , this is a molded part .

So there was a different tool for the top pad , for the instrument panel pad , molding to receive the center vent there .

And then on the passenger side , you have what we later called the crotch coolers , which is basically blowing at , at your most intimate area .

When you're sitting in the car .

Actually , we have four .

Yeah , I didn't see that one steering columns in the way .

So we have actually four , which is unusual .

This is more than you would normally get .

Normally , you'd get two , maybe three in the sixties .

And it wasn't until the late sixties , early seventies that the outlets , the vent outlets became pretty much standard because in those days , you had these babies here , right ?

That even windows and they are very effective .

And towards the late sixties , you see , start seeing them go away as air conditioning became more ubiquitous and the vent window was no longer needed .

So by the late sixties that became a little visual queue that you were a high roller , you spent the money on air conditioning because those cars often deleted that that border window .

This car does have the first year for automatic climate control .

That was non Cadillac .

Cadillac had an exclusive in in 64 automatic climate control with a very complex system .

This is , this is the sensor for it .

Something that is , but this is , this does have automatic climate control .

So you rotate this for the temperature and it changes the fan speed and where the air comes out .

And of course , designing it exactly to look like another radio .

The radio is a perfect set up for inadvertent actuation of the wrong thing .

So you want to change a station and a lighter and there's a lighter in the middle .

So you're going to set the car on fire while you are trying to change the station .

But you're getting a blast of cold air in your face .

That's so good .

Right .

Well , I mean , they didn't have smartphones in those days , so they had no other distractions .

So we needed to have something else .

Oh , very good .

Yeah .

And this is the both of these cars actually have .

I thought it was funny they had an optional custom foam front cushion only where you could pay extra money .

I noticed that when I first got in the car because it doesn't have it in the back and the rear seat is significantly less comfortable in the front seat to sit on .

And it says on the option sticker that it's only for the front .

It says custom foam cushion .

Foam rubber was a relatively new thing in the 19 fifties .

Foam rubber really came in in the 19 fifties .

My 59 Chevy Impala has foam rubber cushions for the seat .

That was a selling point .

That was a Hallmark of the Impala series .

The other ones did not have that .

And I'm surprised that by the mid sixties , Pontiac still made that optional .

But as we learned from your car , they did , they did indeed .

Well .

Very good mark .

Thanks so much for the interior .

And next year , your design detail of two of I would say mid sixties gm's finest .

They're gems , they're really , really beautiful cars .

They stand out today .

They even stood out back then in the sense that that this was a significant enough design trend that was copied by almost everybody .

Actually , it was copied by everybody .

It was certainly copied by Ford and by Chrysler a little later and it went global .

There was a whole slew of , of hippie cars meaning the shapes , not the , not the social movement .

And uh uh as soon as everybody adopted it globally G M had dropped it .

So by the time the early seventies rolled around , it actually looked kind of outdated .

Um Chrysler Europe adopted that for their uh bigger cars , the Chrysler 1 82 liter cars , they looked like a shrunk down version of the 1969 fuselage cars with a little bit of a a hip line to it and they looked very , very much out of date by 1972 or 73 .

So this was a fashion trend and like all fashion trend , it comes you know , trends , it comes and goes .

Oh , very good .

Thanks so much , Mark for your design commentary and coming back to rare classic cars , really appreciate it .

And uh one thing we should probably also mention is we're going to the eyes on design .

Speaking of design , which is a very uh unique .

There's that word again , it always pops up , but it's very specific to Michigan .

It's a , it's a classic car show that focuses exclusively on design and the designers and it's held every year at the uh beautiful grounds of the Florida State in Grosse Point .

And we'll see each other again on Sunday and hopefully to be able to do a little walk around there .

That's right .

I will put in the description , the information of the show .

It's in Gross Point .

Michigan as Mark mentioned , it's on Father's Day .

So traditionally , last , last year , it was different , different to September because of COVID because of COVID .

But now it's back to the usual Father's Day Sunday in June .

And it's definitely a worthwhile show to check out .

You know , there's a profusion of classic car shows , but this one is truly special because it does focus on the aesthetics .

There's not many open hoods .

So the friends of , of , you know , displacement and hot cams and air filters are not going to be going to that show primarily .

But the people you prefer talking about the , I prefer talking about the design and I prefer looking at cars with a hood down .

Well , very good .

Well , thanks so much , Mark and yes , if you want to come see a car show here in the southeastern Michigan area , then Isen design is a great choice for sure .

Thanks , Mark .

You're welcome .

We're going for a little spin in the 65 .

I haven't driven it yet .

So thanks for giving me an opportunity to drive it .

I absolutely love .

We forgot to .

You've mentioned this before , the clear resin steering wheel rim , the partial clear resin steering wheel rim .

It looks amazing in this light as the sunlight comes in and refracts and gives you this jeweled look and it doesn't even look half as tacky as I thought it looks actually quite convincing , like a mysterious sort of because it's still in excellent shape .

It's not cracked .

I'm just gonna do a little spin around the cul de sac here to just see the light play .

Well , now the sun goes away , but I just wanted to see how the light plays through the rim as you , as you turn the wheel .

It's just an amazing effect .

Just an amazing effect .

It's really , it looks great .

I love that .

It does , doesn't it ?

Yeah , it's a very , very classically handsome instrument panel .

It looks quite upscale .

Uh This is another neat feature that Pontiac was promoting for many years .

They grab it , you know , the Yeah , they can , you know , um , where are we going right .

I lost , I lost my weight here before .

Um yeah , this , this grab handle .

It was a very , very popular Pontiac accessory , not on all cars but on the up level ones in the Grand Prix and such , it was in the Bonneville as it was very common .

Right ?

And the uh the detailing on this instrument panel is also quite beautiful .

There's no plastic here at all except little things like the for that , it's a temperature sensor and uh a couple of very small things .

So we're seeing the beginning of plastique on the interiors , but everything else is properly solid material , real metal , real wood , bright chrome , painted metal .

The column is all painted cast or stamped .

It's just amazing .

The quality , love it .

The garnish is a paradise aluminum .

All the all the moldings on the garnish are added as aluminum polished .

A lovely thanks for watching this video on the pinnacle of Pontiac design , the 1965 Bonneville and 1966 Catalina .

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Take care .