1965 Pontiac Bonneville_Catalina 421 V8 - The Perfect Family Hauler - Overview, Design, Ride & Drive

Well , time for the review on the wonderful 65 Pontiac .

Let's take it out .

Hello , it's Adam and welcome to Rare Classic cars today for you .

We have really the pinnacle of full size cars .

Us built full size cars this 1965 Pontiac Bonneville .

And I say that knowing that obviously there's an Oldsmobile Buick Cadillac , of course , there's vehicles from Ford as well as Chrysler .

But for 1965 and for my money's worth , this is the best full size car that was out there and at least motor trend tended to agree with me because they named the entire 1965 Pontiac lineup as the car of the year .

But this Bonneville is very , very special in a number of ways .

And I would say most particularly because full size cars in the US never got better than this .

This car has great power , extremely smooth , beautiful styling , beautiful detailing and it was all done at a very reasonable price in the time .

That combination just didn't exist again , especially for many decades after this car was produced .

Now , how did this vehicle slot into the General Motors line up ?

Well , the base price on this .

Bonneville was $3433 .

Now , one down from that , the Chevrolet Impalas were retailing for about 2929 50 .

In that zip code , the oso the 88 was almost the same price as this .

But the 98 the top line old was $4200 .

And then the Cadillacs even the Calais , the base Cale was $5200 .

So it represented about , let's call it a 20 a little less 15% premium over the Chevrolet .

And then if you wanted to go to the 98 you were paying about $800 more or 25% premium for the 98 over this .

And if you went to the Cadillac , you're paying 5200 or $1800 more than this car .

It's almost a 55 0% premium .

Boy .

What a great value in that context .

I think another interesting thing to mention at this point is that General Motors was really differentiating in their full size cars in terms of the length .

So the more you pay the longer car you got , not only when you look from Chevrolet to Pontiac tools and to Cadillac , but also within the individual divisions lined up .

So this Bonneville as an example , rides atop 124 inch wheel base .

The Catalina were around 121 .

If you went to the old or buick , the Delta 88 S and the Sabers had 123 inch wheel base .

The 98 S and Elects had a 126 inch wheel base .

Cadillacs were 129 and a half inch wheel base and the Chevrolet Impala was 119 .

So you kind of got more and more and more car , the more you paid it makes logical sense .

You're paying by the pound , right .

It's just like deli meats , but this car is far more attractive than deli meat .

And you can't drive your deli meat around , but you can drive this vehicle .

So it was slotted as I'll say , somewhat of a near luxury value priced car , but again , tremendous value for the money on this vehicle .

And it was critically acclaimed at the time in almost every dimension and for my money , I would say this is just about the perfect car in the era .

It does everything .

Well , it has great steering , great ride .

The handling by the day was actually pretty good .

It wasn't bad by today's standards .

No , it's terrible , wonderful power , comfort , quietness , roominess , great .

I would say HVAC systems , great radio , even by the time and the radio even still sounds cool today .

So what more would you want ?

It's just a wonderful , wonderful vehicle and it has great styling which we'll talk more about in terms of the design team that did this vehicle .

But let's take a little bit more walk around this car and we'll talk about the specific options it has because it has very special options including what's under hood .

So let's take a walk around the car .

This is a one year only design significant departure from the 1964 model year .

There was a lot more slabs sided and Pontiac was coming off of some styling themes in the early sixties like the 63 Grand Prix .

That really were its response to the Lincoln Continental of the time , believe it or not .

And you can see that in the designs just in terms of the sculpting and the form language .

But by 65 obviously , there's a lot more form here , the curvature on the body sides as well as the front , having more of a pronounced w shape and the headlight having this carved out bucket , I guess if you will , I love the spear in the middle that would clearly not pass any pedestrian impact standards today either .

And you did get a Pontiac unique feature in this time butterfly wipers .

The Preens in Canada did not have this by the way and the Canadian Pontiacs didn't but the US Pontiacs did and it works well .

Both of these are what they call articulating wipers .

So they sweep very vertically at this end of the travel as opposed to rotating very functional design and works great .

But even by the standards of the time , this car doesn't have a lot of chrome trim on it and it looks very tasteful .

I would say you've got this bottom trim piece , the bumpers and that's about it .

This car is finished in burgundy paint with no vinyl roof and a white vinyl interior .

I admit to loving , I admit to loving the block lettering as well says Bonneville and the rear treatment is equally as striking as the front with the reverse lights in set in the bumper .

This wonderful chrome trim , the block lettering appears again , this three tail light theme and this , I don't know what you call it like a backwards sloping quarter panel reminds me a lot of the 2000 era Buicks like the Park Avenue didn't have that in the two thousands , but the Park Avenue did in the Riviera of the time , although that terminates at the rear door , whereas that car it went all the way forward .

Yes , this car does need new tires by the way .

So I can't clean the white walls up more .

They're just too old , but I wanted to show you the car in any case .

Let's take a look at the interior .

Well , here we are in the interior of the 65 Bonneville and there's few cars that I would say of this era where the interior can really match the styling of the exterior .

But wow , this one really puts so many other cars , I would say even the Cadillac interiors of the era to shame this is real wood trim here on the instrument panel .

This is not fake wood and that was something that was really not used even on the most expensive vehicles of the time , much less a mid price vehicle like this .

Look at all the chrome a pillar trim that goes all the way back down the C pillars of the vehicle and all of these beautiful driver facing gauges , the grab handle , uh the attention to detail this loose site wheel , that's not just clear , it's actually tinted red or tinted to the color of the wheel .

It's an amazingly detailed interior , excuse me in so many ways and sitting in here , you just understand that somebody put a lot of time and care into it and you also start to understand a bit why some customers really started shying away from the domestic vehicles aside from the build quality on its own .

Think about if you were a buyer in 1965 and you bought this , even the Catalina was very similar .

It didn't have the real wood trim , but a lot of what you see in here was quite similar , including the chrome trim and the A pillar and down the C pillar , et cetera .

And then you went to go buy a new vehicle 10 , 15 , 20 years later .

Yeah , this was the pinnacle .

It never got better than this when it came to full size American sedans .

They only went down , down down and yes , the 1987 .

Bonneville is a pretty nice car , but there's not real wood trim .

There aren't these driver facing gauge pods .

There isn't this beautiful loose site wheel unique gearshift lever , turn signal stock .

The detailing on this is just superb and I think that's part of what really hurts the domestics is they did such a good job in these years .

There is nothing on this interior that screams a finance person or a bean counter .

And I can say this as a finance person , there's nothing that screams that one of those individuals touched this interior or anything on it .

It feels rich , feels expensive and it feels finely detailed even to the point that you have this reading light here for the passengers .

I love the way the air conditioning vent is integrated into the instrumental top pad .

This is the sensor for the automatic climate control .

This car does have automatic climate control , which amazingly still works .

I would say it works all that well .

It has a hard time switching between heat and vent .

They didn't have a blend door on these cars for the heater control valve .

They just started blocking off more and more coolant into the heater core to lower the uh outlet temperature .

It kind of works .

But then it abruptly switches over to just vent which comes out the upper register sometimes depending upon the temperature does have amazingly cold air conditioning on our 12 refrigerant .

In spite of having just this upper vent .

There are these , I call them knee cooler vents in each corner .

And then there are the we'll call it lower extremity coolers down here as well .

So you're definitely going to get chilly in this car if you want to .

But in terms of interior detailing , as I mentioned , the gauge cluster here is great and unfortunately , this really didn't persist that much longer for Pontiac .

By 1967 a lot of this went away , the wood became fake .

And then the 71 to 76 generation was just a general letdown .

When it came to the interior , it had a cool cockpit theme , wrap around cockpit , but it just was never quite the same .

And I think to be honest , that really hurt a number of the domestics because it just didn't get any better than this .

How do you improve on this for a mid priced car ?

I don't know that you can .

Let's take a view from the driver's seat here .

I love the way the light hits this loose side wheel and the gauges are extremely clear .

I love the turn signal indicator .

Let me turn the key on and this stock down here that activates the turn signal level lever .

Just it's a wonderful piece of design on its own , just like the gearshift lever up here .

And they work brilliantly here .

You have the rear defoor control , the reverberation control for the radio which you can turn on , well , not my favorite music .

And then look at the finely detailed Bonneville name plate with the grab handle and these driver facing gauge pods .

As I mentioned , this car does have automatic climate control and it looks like a second radio almost , but it's not , this is an am reverberating radio and you see it has normal defog the ice and then this is the blower switch , you can see it says low , high and that's really it in terms of the blower and then you just push the buttons and listen to this .

I mean , if this doesn't say quality , I don't know what does .

So normal basically will automatically vary the fan speed .

It will also vary which outlet the air comes out of the lower or the upper register .

When you put it on the fog , it then starts blowing some air out on the top and when it's on the ice , it overrides the coolant temperature switch , which generally doesn't allow the fan to kick out until the engine coolant temperature hits a certain , uh , I think it's 100 and 20 degrees .

This just goes to full fan and air at the upper outlets here to de ice the windshield and then you turn and adjust the heat by turning this right knob .

You can see it moves the temperature .

I do have to replace the heater core on this car .

So it's blocked off at the moment .

I don't want it further leaking but tends to happen on these cars that have sat for a long time with 7800 miles .

Incidentally , some people will say that's not original because these don't all line up .

Well , you can watch my other video where this car didn't roll over to 7800 .

It has 77 90 and they're all perfectly lined up .

These odometers never lined up very well from the factory , especially in the , when they have few digits like three as this has more and more miles that eight will start to come up a little bit .

And that's just how they worked .

I mentioned the loo site wheel here with the wood inlay and the horn .

You just squeeze that beautiful bright work on the pedal trim as well .

And loop pile carpet with Pontiac floor mats .

This red and white kind of lipstick interior is quite spectacular .

These are the optional dome reading lights that you can do that to activate a reading light supplemental to that reading light and the back seat is also a nice place to be nicely trimmed .

No armrest .

There's the rear window defogger for those who don't know before there were the electric grid lines .

This is a blower style defogger .

That's why it's not a defroster .

It's a defogger because it doesn't blow heated air .

It just blows air to try to get some more air circulating on the back window and defog it .

But what a nice place to be how luxurious look at the trim on the door panels .

My goodness , let's talk now about the design of the car and I thought I would just mention a few things about the design of this 1965 Pontiac .

So Pontiac's chief designer during this time period was a gentleman by the name of Jack Humbert and Jack was really Pontiacs styling leader from the early sixties until the early seventies .

So he was responsible for everything from the 1963 Grand Prix , which really was Pontiac's response to the 61 continental .

Then obviously , these 65 s that motor trend named car of the year , the entire line up .

And it's tough to find a bad 65 Pontiac or even bad GM car from a styling perspective .

They all just looked absolutely wonderful .

The 66 with that front end , the revised front end that I believe was done by a designer named Eliot Russo and then also the 68 GTO with the endure front end that was developed with Bill Porter in 70.5 .

He also did the second generation Firebird and the 69 Grand Prix .

I forgot about that one as well .

So a lot of these seminal Pontiacs that set the design direction before Pontiac really lost it in that 70 s era when they had four or five general managers in between 1969 and 1980 .

They really lost their way in that time period .

But Jack and his team put together an amazing car and it's pretty interesting from what I've learned about him .

He at least claimed or told people that he was half Native American .

And here you have somebody who's half native American in charge of designing a car with the , at the time , what was called , the Indian head still has it on the bright light , the bright light indicator on the instrument panel , there's no more Indian head on the front of these vehicles that was long gone from Pontiac by this point .

But everything I've read about Jack was that he was really a gentleman's gentleman and an excellent designer , very highly regarded , wonderful person .

He sadly died of Leukemia in 1985 .

But his work really lives on and it's amazing when you think about all of those people that worked with him and the knowledge that he imparted to them , even the 67 Pontiacs , which were done in the preliminary design studio under a gentleman by the name of Bernard Smith .

I believe Dick Rusin was responsible for those .

And then they got transferred into Jack's production studio , Dick Rusin , by the way , is the person behind the 92 s in El Dorado and the Lumina APV , among other things .

And Bill Porter went on to lead Pontiac designed for many years and then went to Buick and did everything from the mid nineties , Riviera to the Park Avenues to the uh the mid nineties , Riviera was really penned by a designer who worked in Bill's Studio , Eric Clow .

But the individuals who went through this Pontiac studio , anybody who did really just spoke highly of Jack .

And I think the other thing that I learned was that he was an interior designer before he became the exterior studio chief for Pontiac .

And he had just this fascination with detail .

And you see that on this car , almost the total lack of chrome here except a very tasteful treatment along the bottom in this mid century modern Bonneville script , creating almost this very distinct look for the time devoid of chrome .

Even when chrome was starting to come off cars , this car is arguably quite plain for a top of the line range car .

But nonetheless , the styling is absolutely splendid and let's take a greater look around it for a while and here's a view of the car in the morning sunlight , just beautiful how it glistens off of this burgundy red paint even though this paint is quite old at this point .

Now , almost approaching 60 years old still shines pretty well , especially with these chrome accents like I just pointed out in the hood , just a wonderfully detailed car .

Mhm .

We'll walk around it a little bit more and then we will pivot to discussing the engine under hood , the trunk as well as the various ride and drives .

And here we have it a very rare option .

This is the 4 21 cubic inch four barrel V eight .

You can tell by the chrome air cleaner lid and the chrome valve covers .

The 3 89 the standard 389 4 barrel did not have that .

It just had a black painted air cleaner top and then the same color as the engine block here for the valve covers .

So this engine was rated at 338 horsepower and Pontiac during this period was so proud of their entire engine lineup that they had a whole page in the brochure devoted to it .

This car did come standard with a 3 89 4 barrel , as I said , premium fuel engine that an automatic transmission form , a 325 horsepower and a manual transmission form 333 horsepower .

This as I said was 338 horsepower , but you could also get above this particular engine .

A 356 horsepower , 421 32 barrel V eight or the top dog .

A 4 21 high output 376 horsepower V eight with 32 barrels as well .

On the flip side , you could get a credit option , regular fuel , 392 barrel V 82 that I think made something around 290 horsepower .

So a full compliment of inches that you could get the 421 s are very , very , very rare though , in 1965 of all full size Pontiacs , Bonnevilles , Catalina's et cetera .

There were 10% of them had a 421 .

That's it .

And you know , the 3 89 for the time it's hard to beat .

I have a 66 Catalina with a 389 2 barrel .

It feels like a much bigger engine .

These 3 89 and the 3 89 standard engines , they run ridiculously well , and the 4 21 yes , it's happier .

But if I were just looking for an everyday car , it's hard to beat .

The 389 they were ran about eight seconds , 0 to 60 in the day with a 3 89 .

This car is probably in the mid seven , a little bit faster .

So that's moving for back in the day for a full size car .

This isn't a G T O or anything , but I will say it's fast and if you're going about 20 miles an hour and you stop on it and it kicks down , it will light the tires up even though this car also has the posit traction rear end .

So somebody really optioned this thing quite well does have a Carter A F B four barrel carburetor under there .

It's not a Rochester .

The quadrajet wouldn't come out until 1966 .

Rochester did have four barrel carbs before that like the four jet , but this does have a Carter A F B and I love Carter A FBI think they're great .

Carburetors .

Very reliable , easy to tune Edro pattern their carburetor after it .

So , works just great .

Let's close the hood up .

Do you miss that hood closing sound ?

Just tells you that the car is made out of solid metal .

Let's take a look at the trunk .

I'll get the keys .

So , here we go .

You want to see a six body trunk ?

This is about 20 cubic feet .

It has the cool trunk light that you can unwind .

This thing rotates , you pull it down and rotate it and you can walk around the car .

It's like a trouble light .

Very cool but just an immense trunk with actually a good lift over here .

Nothing offensive and obviously plenty of room .

This is just a box from the previous seller with some spare parts and a cover for the vehicle .

Just immense .

You know , it's kind of no wonder why people complain about cars .

They've all gone to suvs .

There's no car with a trunk like this anymore and didn't quite close .

There we go .

Just a stunning vehicle overall though .

Yes .

Not a bad angle on it .

And here we go for a ride .

Great turn signal .

Jeez got to love it .

When only it's half throttle , you can swing the back end out on the posit traction rear car .

You heard the voter didn't even rev up so smooth , so quiet .

This car does need new tires but effortless power tracks on the road straight .

This car does have the ride and handling package .

And to be honest , the ride doesn't feel that firm .

And I think I've mentioned that the firm handling package in this car had coil springs and a stabilizer bar .

There are about on par with an old 88 .

So it was a firm ride and handling package only in name only .

This was not a handling car .

I think that was part of the Brilliance of Pontiac during the era was that they sold this wide track performance mantra and brand , but the cars did have the wide track , relatively speaking and they did have good performance , certainly good performance , but they had a boulevard ride at least the full size cars did .

The Pontiac has a softer spring rate for the coil springs up front than really almost any other , any other General Motors division of the time , including Cadillac .

So this car was set up to ride very , very soft and the firm Brian handling package I would say feels about right to me .

I would have ordered it as well , especially being an option that was about $10 but you sit behind the wheel and I love the air conditioning vent here and as well as the lower vents , just an absolutely stunning car .

Really nothing to fault on the interior at all .

Smooth shifting moves away from a stoplight with authority .

Wow .

Oh , man , this thing is fast .

Holy goodness .

Wow .

Well , let's see what we got here .

I'm not going to stomp on it from , uh , it does stop really hard .

I don't want to peel out and then , you know , I haven't checked these motor mounts or anything .

These , these old cars are at the retirement club .

You want to be a little gentle to them , but it doesn't mean you can't get on it .

So , let's see .

Wow , still has plenty of , oh , it's a little shakedown ride , I would say in pass with flying colors aside from I got a little , I think the driver's side , rear brake is a little sticky .

Everything else seems to be really nice .

And here's a brief nighttime view of the car .

I did have to mute the sound that was originally in the audio because I had the AM reverberating radio on it sounded great and I was trying to demonstrate it and of course youtube picked it up as a potential copyright claim , but in any case , you can take a look and see what it's like here to drive a 1965 Pontiac around at night , just beautifully lit gauges .

The light glistening off of the loose side wheel overall , a smooth comfortable ride .

And I would say for the time , quite good illumination on all the gauges as well too .

But the nighttime drive of these vehicles is almost just as if not more fun than the daytime drive because a lot of them have unique lighting that you just don't see in the current day .

And it evokes a simpler time back when there was no Bluetooth and cars or NAV systems or fancy touchscreen displays .

There's nothing here but man and machine and that's the way arguably it should be .

Cars have since become places for not only driving but eating entertainment , a place for your cell phone to display things on the touch screen as well as through the radio speakers .

No chance of that happening in this car .

And let me tell you , it's a wonderful thing .

Hope you enjoyed this review of the 1965 Bonneville and until next time , take care .

Thanks for watching this video in the 1965 bottle .

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