Forgotten Idea: Pontiac Phantom | The Each day Drive
Legendary Normal Motors designer goes out with a thud.
That is an installment in a collection of posts trying again on present vehicles that we really feel deserved just a little extra consideration than they received. When you have a suggestion for a Forgotten Idea matter, please shoot us a line or go away a remark under.
Pontiac Phantom
First Proven: Normal Motors Milford Proving Grounds in 1977
Description: Giant 2-passenger luxurious coupe
Gross sales Pitch: “An expression of private style, with out regard for division, or present client traits.”
Extra Forgotten Ideas
Particulars:
First seen on the Normal Motors Milford Proving Grounds in 1977, the Pontiac Phantom (company inner code identify “Madame X”) was the creation of firm design chief Invoice Mitchell. Mitchell created the automotive as a retirement present to himself, and conceived it as, “…an expression of private style, with out regard for (company) division, or present client traits.” Certainly, the Pontiac moniker was dropped from the automobile’s identify sooner or later in its improvement.
Improvement of the Phantom was halted when then GM Vice President of Product Planning Howard Kehrl noticed the idea and demanded that it’s instantly faraway from the Milford facility. The Phantom was thus by no means fitted with an operational drivetrain.
Mitchell, who had been liable for such legendary GM designs as the primary Buick Riviera and Oldsmobile Toronado, in addition to the 1963 and 1968 Corvettes, had grown despondent as GM tailored to rising gasoline prices and altering purchaser tastes by downsizing its product line. Mitchell had described designing downsized vehicles as, “tailoring a swimsuit for a dwarf.”
Deemed by GM administration to be wildly out of step with the altering instances, the Phantom was by no means seen on the auto-show circuit, nor publicly displayed in any manner. The automobile was preserved, nonetheless, and is a part of GM’s company automobile assortment.
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CG Says:
Invoice Mitchell crafted among the best-looking vehicles of the Sixties and Seventies, so it’s painful to think about him as in-decline and out of favor at long-time house Normal Motors. Nonetheless, the Phantom is hard to have a look at, figuring out how extremely tone deaf the design was.
By 1977, Normal Motors had redesigned its full-size B-Physique sedans and coupes, and the consequence was a collection of vehicles that had been trim, crisply rendered, and spot-on excellent for the instances. Mitchell’s lengthy, heavy-looking, and thickly sculpted Phantom appeared extra a product of 1967, not ’77, and had no place within the trendy GM lineup. Even the Deco-inspired wheel covers on the idea automotive appeared curiously from a unique period, if not epoch.
I’ll at all times be curious concerning the rectangular headlamps, that are the one aspect of the Phantom Idea which seem up to date—and in addition appear in any other case at odds with the automotive’s total design.
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Pontiac Phantom Idea Gallery
(Click on under for enlarged photos)
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