1972 Pontiac Catalina

Welcome to the first official post of A Car A Day. I've given a lot of thought to what car should be my first post, without much luck. Should it be something personally important to me, the actual 'first' car that I shot for this blog, or just one carefully selected from my inventory?

As it turns out, the first A Car A Day happens to be one of my personal favorites that I've spotted thus far: 1972 Pontiac Catalina two door hardtop, sitting on Main Street in Providence in a rainstorm. I drove past this car on my lunch-break, and decided that it was such a beautiful machine in all it's 70's glory that I had to circle back around and photograph it in the pouring rain. 

I have to give the designers of the early 70's credit for trying to make cars interesting. The grille on this Pontiac is similar to many others in that it continues below the bumper. The biggest change from '72 was the bumper extending across the grill itself. This would continue further as the Federally mandated impact-bumpers grew bulkier and more visually distracting. For '72 Pontiac managed to integrate the Fed bumper quite nicely. Anything below the bumper quickly became irrelevant and typically just a body colored panel. Several other makes (Pontiac, Lincoln, Ford) had this same motif, and I find it visually interesting.

For 1972, your Pontiac 400 in a Catalina was rated at 175 bhp, not a tremendously huge increase over the standard 350, but when moving 4,000 pounds of metal, every extra horse helped. Sources indicate that a larger 400 may have been available, putting out 250 bhp, which would have helped the situation even further.

The two door hardtop coupe sold reasonably well for '72, with over 60,000 moving off the showroom floor. This made it the third most popular Pontiac model for the year. 

From this angle, you'd be hard pressed to tell if this was a Buick Centurion, Oldsmobile Delta 88 or Pontiac Catalina. The giveaway is the kick-up near the trailing end of the rear window.  

The compound curves of this hood are an amazing sight to behold, as are the neatly tucked away windshield wipers.

Pontiac Motor Division, a title that actually meant something in '72, long before true badge engineering came into style.

This generation of Catalina rode on a 123.5" wheelbase, shared with the other GM B-bodies. 

Anyone have any memories of these beasts? They were before my time, but still roamed the earth as every-day cars when I was a small kid. By the time I started driving legally on the road, the next generation B-bodies were what I piloted (an '81 Caprice two door and a '77 Catalina, and my first girlfriend drove a '82 Catalina) which felt gargantuan by mid-90's standards. Driving this '72 today wouldn't seem quite as bad, with the quantity of SUV's out there.