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| Wide Track: Bunkie Knudsen, Pete Estes, and the Pontiac Renaissance |
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| Written by Aaron Severson |
| Saturday, 17 July 2010 00:00 |
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Page 1 of 5 In 1956, GM's Pontiac Motor Division was close to death. Its sales were down, its market share declining, and its image at a low ebb. That summer, however, help arrived in the form of Bunkie Knudsen, Pete Estes, and John DeLorean. Together, they lifted Pontiac out of its mid-fifties doldrums and put it on track for its unprecedented success in the 1960s. THE BIRTH OF PONTIACFor years, if you asked Pontiac executives when the division was founded, they would tell you 1909, the year the Oakland Motor Car Company became a division of General Motors. The Pontiac brand, however, was born in the economic boom of the mid-1920s, part of GM president Alfred P. Sloan's plan to fill the gaps between the corporation's various makes by giving each division a complementary "companion make." Cadillac was paired with LaSalle, Buick with Marquette, Oldsmobile with Viking, and Oakland with Pontiac, which took its name from Pontiac, Michigan (where Oakland was headquartered) and Chief Pontiac, the 18th-century Ottawa leader whose stylized likeness became the new car's mascot.
The original Pontiac was one of GM's first exercises in what we would now call platform sharing. It was based on the contemporary Chevrolet, sharing much of its running gear, but it was somewhat bigger, with a distinct appearance and a new 187 cu. in. (3.1 L) six-cylinder engine. Since the Chevrolet had only a four, the Pontiac had little difficulty justifying its $180 price premium, and it quickly became very successful. By the time of the Crash, it was GM's second best-selling marque.  Pontiac received its first real redesign in 1929; it was bigger than the initial 1927-1928 model, and the engine was bored and stroked to 200 cu. in. (3.3 L), giving 57 hp (43 kW) at 3,000 rpm. This was the first Pontiac to be designed under the auspices of Harley Earl's new Art & Colour Section. (Photo © 2007 Lars-Göran Lindgren; used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic license) By 1931, with the U.S. economy in ruins, Oakland and Pontiac were moribund, and GM seriously considered terminating them both. Sloan still saw a need for a mid-priced brand between Chevrolet and Oldsmobile, however, and since Pontiac was now outselling Oakland by more than five to one, it seemed to have the better future. In 1932, GM abandoned the Oakland brand, and the division was officially renamed the Pontiac Motor Division. Although the Depression was a difficult time for every automaker, Pontiac sales recovered by mid-decade, thanks to increased commonality with Chevrolet, a newly optional straight eight, and attractive new styling. It was not a flashy or exciting car, but it represented good value for money, and it was consistently in fifth place in overall automotive sales, occasionally reaching as high as fourth. Pontiac soon earned a reputation as GM's most conservative division. General manager Harry Klingler, who led Pontiac for 19 years, emphasized durability and dependability over frills, and chief engineer Ben Anibal had no interest in technical fillips like Buick's Compound Carburetion or Oldsmobile's Hydra-Matic. (Pontiac did not introduce Hydra-Matic until 1948, the year after Anibal retired.)  A 1937 Pontiac DeLuxe Six sedan. Although Pontiac offered both a 223 cu. in. (3.7 L) six and a 249 cu. in. (4.1 L) eight, most Depression-era buyers preferred the six, which was somewhat cheaper. The 1937 model was the last to be designed under Frank Hershey, who left the Pontiac studio for Buick in 1935. He was replaced by Virgil Exner, Sr., whose designs for Chrysler would shake up GM Design in the fifties. (Photo © 2009 Charles01; released to the public domain by the photographer) That conservatism served Pontiac well in the thirties, and it was no particular handicap in the postwar sales boom. Pontiacs were nicely styled, reasonably priced, and reliable, with a lengthy list of factory and dealer accessories to fatten its profit margins. It was not until the Korean War that Pontiac began to stumble. Wartime restrictions on production and consumer credit caused 1951 sales to fall nearly 20%, and another 26% for 1952. When the restrictions were lifted, Pontiac sales recovered, but its market share remained static, while GM's other brands grew at impressive rates. By 1954, Pontiac was more than 150,000 units behind Buick and about 65,000 units behind Oldsmobile, despite its rivals' higher prices. Pontiac still enjoyed volume of which the independents could only dream, but something was clearly wrong.  The 1949 models were Pontiac's first postwar restyling, although they still offered fastback styling, introduced in 1941. Fastbacks were called Streamliners; notchbacks, Chieftains. Both were available with either the six or the straight eight. THE PONTIAC V8Pontiac's general manager in the early fifties was Robert Critchfield, previously the general manager of the Delco-Remy division and, briefly, Allison. Critchfield was a manager of solid managerial talent and no particular interest in automobiles. By the early fifties, that was not uncommon at GM -- ambitious executives vied for general manager slots because they were a stepping-stone to more-senior executive positions, rather than out of any great desire to build cars. Nonetheless, in later interviews with historians Jan Norbye and Jim Dunne, some Pontiac staffers expressed a certain resentment at the fact that Critchfield was not a "car guy."
 The postwar "Silver Streak 8" was little changed from its prewar form, still displacing 249 cu. in. (4.1 L). It now made 104 hp (78 kW) with manual transmission, 108 hp (81 kW) with Hydra-Matic. It's tempting to blame Critchfield for Pontiac's slump, but by the time he arrived in 1952, the styling for the 1955 models was well under way, and many major engineering decisions had already been made. Perhaps the most critical of those was the decision to delay the launch of Pontiac's new OHV V8 engine. The division's engineering staff had been working on the new engine since 1946, and it would have been ready for the 1953 model year, but chief engineer George Delaney had asked for an extra two years to resolve some design and manufacturing issues. Delaney's concerns about reliability and production costs were commendable, but the lack of a V8 certainly hurt Pontiac in 1953 and 1954. The mid-priced market was becoming tougher, and Pontiac was being squeezed both from below -- with models like Chevy's plush Bel Air -- and from above; Buick's entry-level Special was priced to compete with the Pontiac Eight.  A 1952 Pontiac, still sporting the division's trademark Silver Streaks. The driver didn't stick around long enough for us to confirm this model's identity, but the odds are that it's a Chieftain Eight DeLuxe, the most popular '52 Pontiac by a significant margin. The old flathead straight eight was now up to 268 cu. in. (4.4 L), making either 118 or 122 hp (88 or 91 kW); the latter was standard with Hydra-Matic, which most buyers preferred. Pontiac's new V8 finally debuted for the 1955 model year. It was a fairly orthodox design, with cast iron block and heads and pushrod-operated overhead valves. (It was not the division's first V8 engine; back in 1932, Pontiac had briefly offered a 251 cu. in. (4.1 L) V8 with a flat-plane crank, inherited from Oakland.) It had two novel features: reverse-flow cooling (pumping coolant through the heads and then the block, rather than the other way around) and an unusual "Ball-Pivot" valvegear layout.
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Great, informative article, as usual...but, the last page needs reformating as text is cut off on the right.