Back to a different future

Pontiac's Tempest was packed with improbable engineering and ingenious bodgery from a young John DeLorean. Sam Glover drives an early survivor

- Sam Glover

THE PONTIAC TEMPEST was a product of General Motors' post-war anything goes' period. These halcyon years of designer-led innovation and iconoclastic engineering brought us the plastic-bodied 1953 Chevrolet Corvette, the fuel-injected 1957 Pontiac Bonneville, the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham with Citroën DSinspired pneumatic suspension, and the 1960 Chevrolet Corvair with its unitary construction and air-cooled rear-mounted flat-six engine. It gave birth to the world's first two turbocharged production cars the 1962 Oldsmobile Jetfire and Corvair Monza Spyder - and climaxed with the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado, which had a 7.0-litre V8 driving its front wheels via a Hy-Vo chain. The 1961 Pontiac Tempest was the dark horse of this bunch. Its unassuming Eisenhower-cool body cloaked what was possibly GM's weirdest ever drivetrain: a 3.2-litre slant-four engine at the front, a transaxle at the rear, and a curved torsion bar 'rope drive' connecting the two.

Pontiac enjoyed a renaissance in the late 1950s. The marque occupied a narrow ledge in GM's hierarchy, above Chevrolet but below Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac. It'd ticked over post-war by building competent but unstimulating cars for the elderly and unadventurous. A step-change came in 1956 when 43-year-old Semon 'Bunkie' Knudsen was appointed division manager. He recruited Oldsmobile's 40-year-old Elliot 'Pete' Estes as chief engineer and Packard's 31-year-old John Zachary DeLorean as head of a new department titled 'Advanced Engineering. Estes went on to become president of GM; DeLorean would make it as far as vice president before stomping off to establish the DeLorean Motor Company.