What about a Hurst Bonneville Wagon? [Archive]

StealthBird

07-26-2011, 07:21 PM

Very cool car! <<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/beers.gif

It's interesting to see how involved Pontiac and Hurst were, years before the Hurst/Olds was built in 1968. George Hurst and Pontiac were already firmly established in the early 60's. When George Hurst developed his first 4-speed Hurst shifter in 1961, Pontiac added Hurst shifters to their order forms.

Pontiac was the first GM Division to have Hurst Shifters as standard equipment in their cars. Every GTO made from 1964-1974 had a Hurst shifter. That ruffled a lot of feathers at GM, as they felt every part in a GM automobile should be sourced from GM, or one of their contractors, not from a high perf aftermarket company. But again, DeLorean and Pontiac broke the rules.

George Hurst also built a 1965 Hurst/Pontiac Bonneville, and had a special contest for Tiger Gold colored 1965 Hurst/GTO's, equipped with Hurst wheels. He also built a special NASCAR Pace Car 1965 GTO, shown below.

http://image.popularhotrodding.com/f/10236978/0806phr_07_z+hurst_wheels+.jpg

Pontiac had planned to use the Pontiac 8-lug wheel on the 1966 GTO, but when that fell through, DeLorean looked at using Hurst Wheels on 1966 GTO's. Unfortunately, while Hurst was busy building the toughest and safest wheels on the planet, and making them to OEM specs, they were was also the heaviest wheels in America. They would have posed a warranty problem, and ironically, a potential safety problem, if they were used on the standard GM spindles of the day. Pontiac nixed the plan, and developed their own wheel for 1967, called the Rally II.

In 1966, George Hurst built a few Hurst/Pontiac wagons (like the one above), and some Hurst/Grand Prix's in a gold/black paint scheme for promotional purposes.

By 1967, Hurst continued to press DeLorean for a possible Hurst/Pontiac, but now DeLorean showed very little interest. Pontiac had enough on their hands, with the hot selling GTO, the new Firebird, etc. Pontiac didn't need additional advertising for their high performance cars.

George Hurst again built some black and gold Hurst/Grand Prix's in 1967.

http://image.highperformancepontiac.com/f/features/hppp_1105_1967_pontiac_grand_prix/32088955+pheader_460x1000/hppp_1105_hp+1967_pontiac_grand_prix.jpg

With Hurst manual trans shifters being used in all GTO's, Hurst finally struck a deal with Pontiac in 1967 to use Hurst Dual-Gate shifters on automatic equipped GTO's. But the idea for a Hurst/Pontiac production run, something George Hurst had tried for since 1965, was over.

George Hurst then approached his second choice, Oldsmobile, and the rest is history. The 1968 Hurst/Olds turned out to be a great showroom traffic stopper. The 1968 Hurst/Olds promotional car was black and gold, and was actually in the same paint scheme as the 1967 Hurst Grand Prix.

StealthBird

08-01-2011, 07:47 PM

Another bit of Hurst Pontiac trivia.

In 1968, Royal Pontiac built a one-off 1968 GTO with their new Royal paint scheme (similar to the paint scheme used on the famous 1969 Crystal Turquoise RAV GTO), and Royal chose white and gold, capping it off with a set of gold Hurst wheels. Jim Wangers drove this around as a loaner car. Unfortunately, a Royal Pontiac salesman sold the car out from under him, and Jim never saw the car again.

During this time, George Hurst (who was friends with Jim Wangers) was very interested in the car, and loved the paint scheme. This 1968 Royal Pontiac GTO became the basis for the 1969 Hurst/Olds paint scheme.

Picture courtesy of Sean's Ultimate GTO site.