1959 Pontiac Parisienne - The 'Frankenstein' Canadian Pontiac

A unique Pontiac .

Next .

So today we have a very special Pontiac .

It's already attracting some Spectators out here .

Can anybody guess what this is ?

I'll give you a hint .

It is not a Bonneville , it is not a star chief and it is not a Catalina one hint , take a look at the wheel and how far in board it is .

This is a 59 Pontiac Parisian , the Canadian model .

So for those viewers in Canada , hello , this is a very special car .

Very rare Canadian Pontiacs have a very different history from us .

Pontiacs and they were only built and sold in Canada and they're really a Frankenstein car .

So this vehicle in US equivalent terms , the Presen was the high end car in Canada , but it's a Catalina sized body I E the short body with the Bonneville trim , this side spear and these little do dads off the side riding atop a Chevrolet Impala chassis with a US medium duty truck engine .

So the Canadian Pontiacs until about the mid seventies were a unique offering just like Ford had the media and the Monarch and Chrysler had the Fargo things that weren't offered in the us .

This car is very different from a US Pontiac .

It looks similar , but again , it's riding atop a Chevrolet and Pala chassis , which at the time Pontiac had the wide track slogan .

This is a narrow track Pontiac and it's all the more accentuated because the body kind of flares out like this bumper flares out to accentuate the wide track on the US Pontiacs , but this car does not have a wide track at all .

I mean , look at how far in board the rear wheel is that , is , that is stock .

I have not done anything .

This is a totally unmodified 15,000 mile car .

You can also see this , this car has a Chevrolet column .

It's got a power glide transmission in it .

Chevrolet brake and gas pedal .

This is an original interior .

It had all the shrink wrap on it when I got it , I took it off really beautiful interior .

But again until the mid seventies , these Canadian Pontiacs were really Chevrolets with a Pontiac body .

So you could get , if you got a 1970 Pontiac .

As an example in Canada , you could get the Chevrolet 454 V eight in it .

They had Chevrolet power trains .

This , you could get a 283 V eight in it as an option .

So um the 70 let's say 71 72 Paris , you get a Chevy 350 in it , which was different from a Pontiac 350 .

So they're very unique cars and they were only sold in Canada .

So they're rare , rare , rare to see today .

This car has all of its original paint .

It was a barn fine .

So it's got some scratches and boo boos , but I'm not going to touch it from an originality standpoint .

This is not acrylic .

Lacker .

Canada used a cheaper low grade paint that was not as good as what was in the US .

You can see by the way , this has the Catalina short tail lights , it doesn't have reverse lights up on top of the cat's ears .

Here , there's the logo , wonderful wrap around back window and front window .

One point on these 59 vehicles .

A lot of times between Chevrolet , Pontiac Oldsmobile Buick Cadillac , even on the 59 S , they share doors , they share roof panels .

So you'll notice like this has an applique , a trim applique , the Olds will have an applique as well to change the shape of the door , but the underlying door is the same .

So a bit of an ingenious cost savings that people probably didn't notice .

But General Motors was using a lot of common things in these vehicles and was astutely disguising them .

Let's take a look under the hood .

Chevrolet in the US had a 235 cubic inch six cylinder standard in the Impala .

This is a 261 cubic inch in line six cylinder off of that same design .

It was only used in the US , in medium duty trucks , buses and other vehicles .

You couldn't get it in a passenger car , but it was used as the standard motor in this Pontiac .

And it's , it's a beautiful , beautiful running engine .

Uh , it is not , this is not a , a drag racer , it's not a hot rod , but the motor is absolutely silent .

It has plenty of torque .

Um , this motor was around for a long time .

I think back to the 30 for Chevrolet .

And it's just a very , very sturdy well built motor with the external distributor here which actually physically rotates as you as you rev the motor .

I had never seen that before and I thought something was wrong with it , but no , this distributor actually on the outside rotates to get the spark advance .

Let me just start this up for you .

So you can hear what this sounds like or what it doesn't sound like wonderful gauge cluster .

By the way , can you hear that running this idles at about 450 RPMs , which is the stock spec , it has just one , a big one barrel carburetor on it .

Let me see if I can rev it in a little bit .

I mean , the only noise you hear when you rev it is the non de clutching fan .

What a beautiful engine .

There's the exhaust , super quiet exhaust is actually is still the factory exhaust factory muffler on here , believe it or not .

And inside you don't hear anything .

This car doesn't have power steering , it is manual steering and you really need that big wheel , especially with radial tires on here .

From a gauge perspective , very similar to the US Pontiac .

The steering wheel is different , wonderful detailing .

I mean , this is getting in this car , in the interior , it just feels so premium .

The door panels are beautiful .

The seat fabric is great .

You know , maybe one cheaper area is this mirror only pivots up and down .

It doesn't pivot side to side and there are no exterior mirrors on this car which takes a bit of time to get used to , but you get used to it because look at your side vision , there is no blind spot in this car .

You just have to physically turn around and look if something is not showing up in this rearview mirror and smart idea , this is not a day nightmare but it is tinted .

So you really don't need a day nightmare .

I've never seen that before since on a car .

It does have the AM radio , one speaker AM radio .

As I said , you can see the power glide shift quadrant .

So this is a Chevrolet and does have a power glide made by General Motors of Canada .

Just a super unique car that you don't see anymore .

Don't see the 59 Us Pontiacs much less these .

So let's go take it for a drive .

You'll enjoy this one .