Car manufacturers are sometimes a little… er, ambitious with their names. The ideal car for running on the salt flats of Bonneville is not one of the largest production vehicles ever produced, fitted with drum brakes and a three-speed gearbox.
The Pontiac Bonneville first launched in 1958 as a two-door hardtop or convertible, based on the luxurious Pontiac Star Chief, but de-specced to bring the price down. By the fourth generation – pictured here – the range had expanded to include four-door hardtop, sedan and station wagon body-styles, all of which were powered a range of variously-sized V8 engines, and the luxury had been reinstated to make the Bonneville Pontiac’s most expensive model.
This beautiful Model Team recreation of the Bonneville two-door ‘Sports Coupe’ from 1966 captures the excess of the car superbly, with builder Jakub Marcisz replicating the full-size barge in stunning detail.
Opening doors reveal a wonderfully accurate interior, a lifelike V8 engine sits under the opening hood, and the trunk opens to reveal, well – some complicated building techniques, but the real car’s trunk was almost unfeasibly large, thanks to a total vehicle length exceeding 5.5 meters.
Come to think of it, maybe Jakub’s Pontiac Bonneville isn’t so optimistically named after all. It’s really very large, and very yellow, just like its desert namesake, and there’s much more to see at Jakub’s ‘Pontiac Bonneville 1966’ album on Flickr. Head into the heat of Utah via the link above.
