A fellow member of a car group I belong to on Facebook says they recently bought this 1973 Pontiac Luxury LeMans to "save" it. "Saved" a term as broad as the rear fenders on it. It hails from the state of Washington so at least it's been spared the rust-breeding brine they put on roads up here in Northeast, Ohio during wintertime. Still appears to need everything if it's going to be truly "saved".
I remember seeing GM Colonnade's like this as a car crazy nine-year-old running amuck at the New York Auto Show in the fall of 1972. Shout out to the long since demolished New York Coliseum in Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Their extended front bumpers with shock absorbers built into them were all the rage and made anything that didn't have them appear old and outdated. That's really funny now that I think about it given that cars made before 1973 are generally worth more now primarily because they don't have the battering ram "safety bumpers".
I used to go weak in the knees over stuff like this. Seriously. However, my recent restoration of our 1977 Corvette has me appreciating a weekender that has a little something extra and really different from my daily drivers. The way I look at it these days, if your "classic" is going to break your heart and bank account, at least make it worthwhile to the seat of your pants. Your opinion may vary. See dealer for details.
The first Pontiac LeMans was a top-of-the-line trim level on the weird and wonderful 1961 Tempest (above). With its canted, "half-of-a-389", inline four-cylinder paint-shaker and flexible, cable like driveshaft feeding torque to a transaxle, what's referred to colloquially as "rope drive", built on the same chassis that also underpinned the Chevrolet Corvair and Buick Skylark, the Tempest was arguably the oddest of a really odd bunch. That said, I really like 1961 and 1962 Tempests, I'll pass on the '63's. And I'll take mine stuffed with a 326 cubic-inch V-8 although that saucy mill wasn't available until 1963. '61 and '62 Tempest's could be ordered with Buick's alloy, 215 cubic-inch V-8. No six-cylinder was offered on 1961-1963's Tempests and LeMans'.
For '62, LeMans became its own model line although it really was still a top-of-the-line Tempest. LeMans and Tempest were fused at the swing axle through '63 and were siblings through their more conventional GM A-body intermediate phase through 1970. For 1971 only, Tempest was replaced with something Pontiac called "T-37", also available in GTO knock-off guise as the "GT-37". From 1972 through 1981, LeMans was Pontiac's intermediate model.
As muscle cars or cars with a whiff of performance got insurance surcharged up the tailpipe, they were replaced with "luxury" cars. Or anything deemed or termed remotely luxurious. Hence the madness of the "personal luxury car" niche of which, to some degree, Pontiac's "Luxury LeMans" could be lumped into if no other reason by what it's labeled as. Pontiac debuted the first Luxury LeMans in 1971, abovie is a 1972. I guess a luxury car was anything that the manufacturers said it was.
These 1973-1977 "Colonnades" are nothing if not distinctive although, again, I'm a tad foggy on what the "Luxury" moniker really denotes on these otherwise mundane LeMans'. Aside from the fender skirts which were rare back then on anything that was considered "full-size". Somehow, they work, don't you think?
New owner claims this has a "455" although there are no pictures of it. You don't post a picture you can claim anything you want. Seeing this is fairly devoid of most obvious luxury accoutrements like bucket seats and a console, I'd venture to guess this has a Pontiac 350 with a teeny-tiny two barrel. Just a hunch. You could technically get a "SD455" in one of these too although those only came with 4-speed manuals.
Can you imagine this fender-skirted behemoth with an SD455 and a stick? That's something that even this recovering personal luxury car fan might be able to get his arms around.
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