Offering a wide choice of combinations of engines, transmissions, and body styles must be done on a careful, pre-tested basis, no matter how proven the separate components. The buyer has to have the assurance that his choice of powerplant, gearbox, axle ratio, and body style will offer the same degree of reliability, safety, and handling as the most basic combination. In the line of personalized passenger cars, there are buyers who want luxury, austerity, economy, performance - not only in separate packages, but often all in one automobile.
      Pontiac for 1965 has everything and a few big plus items. Comfort with good handling, utility with beauty, performance with economy. This last combination was the subject of a lot of retesting, especially with the GTO. Here's a car with 389 cubic inches in the engine, acceleration that's almost unbelievable (delivering wheelspinning power to the rear wheels through a two-speed automatic transmission), yet is capable of over 18 mpg at 65-70-mph highway cruising speeds - this with a convertible model that weighs more than 300 pounds over the '64 car. This weight addition comes from slightly larger dimensions and a reinforced, boxed-in frame. Just to satisfy the specialty buyer, seven optional axle ratios are available.
      Interior appointments and quality control are of superior design. We say design, because quality control is a direct function of it. If the design requires a specialist to hand-install either a dashboard or a bit of chrome trim, and the specialist lacks skill, then quality will suffer. Pontiac, we believe, has gone ahead in this design concept, and fit and finish are among the industry's finest.
      All of the models offered, while having marked differences in appearance and size, have the same handling and ride qualities. This is another mark of Pontiac's thorough, down-the-line engineering research of their 1965 cars.
      It's this kind of leadership that produces quality products acceptable to the average car buyer, demanded by the discriminating, insisted upon by the experts. Proof of this is Pontiac's sales position, a healthy #3.
      Again we congratulate this GM division on winning, for the third time, MOTOR TREND's Car of the Year award.     /MT

E. M. ESTES (LEFT), PONTIAC GENERAL MANAGER, ACCEPTS CAR OF THE YEAR TROPHY FROM CHARLES NERPEL, MT EDITOR AND PUBLISHER.

MOTOR TREND

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February, 1965

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