A 1967 Pontiac Beaumont at Northern Illinois Classic Auto Brokers in Wauconda stirs a certain “Twilight Zone” sensation.
You circle the Beaumont once, then again, trying to get a mental fix.
You’re old enough to recall the 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle, and a Beaumont seems vaguely reminiscent in shape and styling, at first glance. But the front- and rear-end treatments are wrong. Time to give it up. Snag the sales manager, Randy Paddock, and ask him: What is this thing?
“You can’t put your finger on our Beaumont?” Paddock said, smiling. “You were almost correct with the Chevelle comparison. The Beaumont is a Canadian Chevelle. They were built in Canada as Pontiacs on the Chevelle platform, using Chevy engines and drivetrains. Underneath the Beaumont is all Chevelle.
“We always try to keep one Beaumont in stock, but the problem is, hardly anybody knows these cars exist and they sit for a while. I’ll sell a 1967 Chevelle in three weeks. The Beaumont may go 90 to 120 days before a collector comes by for a look.”
These General Motors models, along with other Canada-only vehicles by Ford, Chrysler and Studebaker, were never sold in the U.S.
Besides the Beaumont, there was the Dodge Crusader (a version of the U.S. Plymouth Savoy) or Mercury Frontenac.
A Mercury Frontenac is a 1960 Ford Falcon, said Canadian Ford historian R. Perry Zavitz, author of “Meteor/Monarch” (Canadian Classics), a study of Canada-only Ford products named after two of the offerings. Other models were also redone in the 1960s. “Frontenac appealed to French Canadian buyers in Quebec and the Maritimes. GM had the same idea with the Laurentian and Parisienne, which were essentially Chevys sold as Pontiacs,” he said.
Why did the Canadians need models unique to their market?
Several reasons.
Before the Auto Pact of 1965 repealed punitive Canadian import tariffs on U.S. automobiles and original-equipment parts, it made better economic sense to build and market model lines in Canada. All of the major U.S. builders still maintain independent Canadian operations. Ford has the Ford Motor Co. of Canada. General Motors is General Motors of Canada and DaimlerChrysler is DaimlerChrysler Canada.
Stew Low and John Healy have been with GM of Canada since the early 1970s and 1960s respectively. Low is director of public relations for the Canadian car builder and Healy is director of engineering.
“Canada has a different dealer channel system from what you know in the U.S.,” Low said. “In Canada, General Motors dealerships break down by Chevy/Oldsmobile and Buick/Pontiac/GMC trucks. That’s a hard and fast rule.
“We tend to view our franchises differently. We like to have enough sales volume spread across our portfolios to keep everyone healthy and happy. To use your example of the Beaumont, if a local Chevrolet dealer offered [U.S.] Chevelles in 1967, then what about his Pontiac counterpart across town? What similar model could he offer Pontiac buyers? When Detroit neglected to give a clear choice, we came up with our own. In this case, I’m speaking of the Pontiac Beaumont that came out of our Chevy plant in Oshawa [Ontario].”
Close cousins
The Beaumont was nearly identical to Chevelle.
A two-door hard top retailed for $3,413 (Canadian dollars) in 1967, and the same year Chevelle went for $3,353 Canadian. Canadians still see the Beaumont SD (Super Duty) as a fire-breather.
“Canadian racers much preferred the Beaumont to Chevelle,” said Frank Agueci, chief archivist at Vintage Vehicle Services in Ontario, who is assigned to the GM of Canada account. “They both came with the same 396 engine, but Beaumont was a tougher car. The only problem with owning a Beaumont today is replacement body and trim parts. They’re impossible to find.”
“We didn’t do all of the consumer research one might associate with introducing a new model,” said Healy, part of the 35-member engineering team that created the Beaumont, and its front- and rear-end treatments, in 1964.
“The team looked at where Pontiac and Chevrolet seemed to be heading,” he said. “We needed a Pontiac answer to the Chevelle that could be built on the same A-Car platform. Except for the front clip and rear end, everything had to be off-the-shelf. Parts and trim readily available from Chevy or Pontiac stock. We worked with the design studio in Detroit to come up with a reasonable look, and I think the Beaumont holds up. The kick for me is pointing to a certain section of the car and saying, `That’s mine. I did this chunk right here.'”
Other examples of Canadian ingenuity included the 1961-64 Pontiac StratoChief built on the Chevy Biscayne platform, 1961-64 Pontiac Laurentian from the Chevy Bel Air and Parisienne from the Impala.
Canadian restorer and automotive writer Aubrey Bruneau calls the 1964 Parisienne Custom Sport (an Impala SS underneath) a Canadian muscle car.
In his story “Pontiacs in the Great White North” for Canadian Classics Magazine, Bruneau estimates that fewer than 600 of Pontiac 409s were built. The 409 was a Pontiac Parisienne, built on a U.S. Chevy Impala platform, in 1963 and 1964.
Bruneau says collectors interested in Canadian Pontiacs are primarily Chevy enthusiasts looking for something different. His best bets for Canada-only cars that will appreciate in value include the 1946-48 Canadian Mercury Business Coupe with the 114-inch wheelbase and “any Meteor made up to 1959, especially the Canada version of the 1956 Crown Victoria. They only made 212 of those.”
Bruneau also recommends the 1961 and 1962 Pontiac Laurentian and Parisienne Sport Coupes, as well as the 1966 Pontiac Acadian Canso (a Chevy II) that came with an optional 350-h.p. 327 and four-speed manual.
“The Acadian Canso is an excellent choice,” he said. “Our problem is that most of our cars didn’t survive in the `salt province’ [Ontario], and, unfortunately, that’s where most of our car nuts are located. And what do they own? Virtually every one of them has a U.S. collector car!”
Sales volume for Canada-only cars was minuscule by U.S. standards. Bruneau said 8 to 9 percent of U.S. totals for corresponding years would be a fair guess.
Zavitz said the 1960 Mercury Frontenac sold 9,536 units. GM’s full-size Laurentian and Parisienne lines peaked in 1965 with just over 101,000 in total unit sales–in a year that Chevrolet sold 1.1 million copies of the counterpart, the Impala, in the U.S., according to auto.com The Pontiac Acadian moved 7,071 cars that year, and Beaumont did 10,638, compared with 130,000 U.S. sales of the Chevrolet Chevelle and Malibu.
“Canadian sales figures are deceptive,” said Stu Chapman, former public relations director with long-defunct Studebaker of Canada. “You need to remember that Canada has one-tenth the population of the States. We have somewhere around 30 million people, and you’re around 280 or 290 million? Naturally we’re not going to sell as many cars here.”
Studebaker went north
Canada-only cars of the early and mid-1960s included several Studebakers built at the company’s Hamilton, Ontario, plant. After closing operations at South Bend, Ind., in December 1963, Studebaker eliminated Avanti, GT Hawk and various truck models, while keeping the compact Lark, Cruiser sedan and Wagonaire utility vehicle for Canada. The Daytona (a Lark) for 1964 retained a Studebaker engine, but by 1965 came with Chevy power from GM’s McKinnon Engine Plant in St. Catharine’s, Ontario.
“Those weren’t Chevy automobile engines,” Chapman said. “That’s incorrect. We were primarily buying the 194-cubic-inch, V-6 truck engine for Cruiser and Daytona, along with a few 230-cubic-inch 6s and 283 V-8s.”
Chapman, who was president of the 13,000-member Studebaker Drivers Club, owns a 1964 Daytona with fewer than 23,000 miles. He says the company’s best years in Canada were the early 1950s, with sales of around 25,000.
He also says Studebaker might have been saved in Canada beyond March 1966, had a proposed deal to import early Isuzus and Toyotas worked.
“We had Isuzus badges as the Studebaker Bellett and ready to go,” Chapman said. He blames Richard Nixon, one of the lawers representing Studebaker, with offending the Japanese and ruining the deal.
“After that, senior management chickened out,” he said. “There was no effort to resurrect the deal and the last Studebaker, a four-door Timberline Cruiser, rolled off the assembly line at 8:11 a.m. on St. Patrick’s Day in 1966. Your readers can find that car at the Studebaker Museum in South Bend.”
After the early 1970s, Canadian builders pretty much stopped engineering and producing Canada-only cars. Instead, the Canadians would take a U.S. model and hang another name on the hood. This was done, as Low has suggested, to balance product lines. When Chevrolet sent Geo Metros north of the border, a certain number were sold as the Pontiac Firefly, because Pontiac had no obvious answer for the Metro.
“The need for badging no longer exists,” said Low. “Our individual product lines are too well defined, too strong.
“Let me give the Pontiac Firefly as an example of why we did badging. The Geo Metro became a strong seller in Canada. Making a business case for selling several thousand more Metros badged as Buicks was not terribly hard, and the Firefly was a success. To badge another car now, we would have to make a similar case that it would add significant sales. Enough to warrant engineering costs, even if those costs only involved adding a Chevrolet bow tie or Pontiac dart to an existing model,” he said.
“Looking across our lines, and the lines of other car companies, you won’t see the need. GMC Trucks offer the Sierra Denali and Chevy has the Avalanche [in the same market segment]. Chevy sells Impala and Buick has Century and Regal. They’re comparable models that give the consumer a choice. There is no void to be filled by badging another vehicle.
“I won’t say we’ll never do badging again. You never say never in this business. But I don’t see it happening any time soon.”
