[davepl1969-2+2]

Title says it all. After 15-20 years of pestering the owner, I've finally pulled my 1969 Pontiac 427/390 Four Speed M21 Convertible barn find (which was actually inside a truck body on a farm, not a barn) apart!

This car has EVERY top performance option and nothing to add weight. It's the L36 427, the M20 four speed, G80 posi, even F41 (not just F40) suspension. In fact it's the only 1969 F41 car I've ever heard of. And it's all still there fortunately.

Finding this car is a long story. I'll post it below, but you can find the blog post here:

http://1969pontiac.blogspot.com

Pic of GM doc attached. According to them, there were:

632 Convertible 2+2s built
12 427 cars total with four speeds
10 of those four speed cars are known as coupes
Leaving 1-2 convertibles

When they went at it the other direction he said one of one but he'd have to do it by exclusion to claim it on paper and it's $400 per hour. So I might do it, but for now I'll just claim "one of one (or two)". BTW I see I said M21 in the title, now that I think about it, it's actually the M20 (which I prefer on the street anyway).

Here's the blog post of the car's discovery:

Back in the late 1960s if you wanted to buy a car in Canada, in most cases, it had to be built in Canada. This was before the NAFTA Free Trade agreement, and it's just the way it was. It would have been prohibitively expensive to build dedicated factories in Canada for every make, so companies like GM economized by building multiple vehicles on the same line. To make that feasible the cars would share chassis and powertrain, and even most of the interiors. Only the exterior sheet metal and the dashboard would be truly Pontiac, and the rest would be Chevrolet Impala. It was a forerunner in many ways for how marques share platforms today.

This means Pontiacs delivered in Canada during these years used Chevrolet Impala chassis and powertrain, and so any engine that could be had in the Impala could be ordered in the Canadian Pontiac. It also means that the top powertrain option, the L36 427 Cubic Inch, 390 Horsepower TurboJet, straight from the Corvette, would be available in the Pontiac. Except in the Pontiac, it would be badged as the 427/390 Pontiac AstroJet. According to the assembly manual, there was supposed to be an additional displacement sticker covering the Tonawanda Chevrolet powertrain logo, but it was usually omitted and is rarely seen. Thus a 427 of this vintage often has the Pontiac crest on the air cleaner and a Chevrolet bowtie on the valve cover.

The Pontiac 2+2 was a model (some years it was merely a trim level) that ended production in 1967 in the United States, but for whatever reason, it continued on in Canada through 1970. Ordering the 2+2 brought mandatory buckets and console (even with the base three-on-the-tree transmission, though I have no idea if any were actually built that way). The 250 horsepower 350 was the base engine in the 2+2, and this model roughly tracked the Impala SS equipment package in the US. The Canadian Pontiac is also lighter and shorter than it's US counterpart.

Cars in Canada from this era, particularly on the prairies where I grew up, were notoriously poorly equipped. No one had "top of the line" cars, and such cars as they did have were not equipped with many options. As a result, by the time I'd reached adulthood I'd seen a grand total of two 427 equipped 1969 Pontiacs across the entire country. They were not common.

Even less common were convertibles, in part due to their price and in part due to their limited practicality in the climate there. And the least common of all could be the Muncie M20 four-speed transmission. And yet, for some reason (one I hope to determine) one person did step up and order the 427/390 Corvette engine backed by the M20 four-speed transmission in a convertible 2+2, making what is without a doubt the penultimate full-size performance Pontiac built that year. According to General Motor's records, the car was a one-of-one.

The car came off the production line on April 9th and eight days later shipped from Oshawa, Ontario west by train bound for Northgate Pontiac in Edmonton, Alberta. What happened to it over the next several months remains a mystery, as it did not sell to its original owner, DaveK, until August 6th. My speculation is that the car was ordered by the dealership principal to enjoy over the summer, and then the car was ultimately bought at summer's end by Mr. Krul. He still lives in Edmonton, and I've exchanged email with him but have since lost touch before answering that key question!

It's fate during those four months isn't relevant in light of the fact that I know nothing of the car's history or it's owners until one day in the 1990s. Never having heard of the car in question at this point I received a call from someone named Bill.

Bill claimed to be restoring a 1969 Pontiac 427. He was short a 2+2 emblem and wanted to know if I'd sell one. Since I ran the 1969Pontiac.com website I got the occasional inquiry like that. I couldn't put a price on one but decided if he really had the car, I'd just send him one of my spare emblems. That small bit of goodwill would pay dividends later!

As the years went by I kept trying to remember the details of the conversation. Had he really said it was a four speed? Or maybe it said M40, not M20, on the cowl tag, and he was confused. Was it a convertible too, did I hear that right?

I spent a lot of time trying to track him down again, but with no luck.

Then, about five years ago, I saw a post on an online forum from a "Bill" who mentioned that he was looking for parts to restore his 1969 Pontiac 427 2+2 convertible, which, by the way, just happened to have a four-speed. But he never replied back to the thread again. But now I was hooked. Sending a message through the forum went nowhere. I had no email... yet. But a little social engineering allowed me to figure out the email address behind the account.

I fired off an email and hoped for the best. A few days later I got a cryptic reply:

>> hey dave dont use computer much still own car haven't done much for 5 years call me 780-xxx-xxxx

I gave him a call and we talked for a long time; sure enough, the car was legit, or at least everything he was telling me about the car lined up. For some reason, he would never send me a pic of the cowl tag, which would hopefully show the rarer options. So I really only had his word that this car even existed, let alone was equipped as I believed it was! There were photos, however, that showed it to be exactly as described, though very tired. The interior was still decent, in fact! In the photos that he sent me the Muncie shifter pokes up right where it's supposed to, and the "427 AstroJet 390 Horsepower" air cleaner is visible in the trunk. Even the rally wheel center caps are there.

I broached the subject of selling the car, but he wasn't interested. He was retired now, and he was going to restore it. I kept in occasional contact with him every year or two, hoping one day he'd relent.

Years went by, and then in 2016, he sounded like he might be interested. The farm where the car was stored belonged to his brother, and his brother had passed away, and so he had to get it out of there anyway. And he was 70 now. Was he really going to finish the car?

That brought up another interesting point - exactly what was the state of the car? It turns out the car had been acid dipped and the frame restored and detailed. The engine, transmission, and rear end had all been rebuilt. A very odd order to proceed in perhaps, but more troubling was that the car had been taken apart at some point to acid-dip the body. The fallout from this would only show itself later.

By fall we had agreed to a price and Bill was willing to sell me the car in principal. He gave me the VIN and I submitted it to GM Vintage Vehicle Services in Canada who (for a fee) will document everything about the car. It was all perfect. The car had a number of other great options like power disc brakes, electric power windows, and the uber-rare F41 Sports Suspension option. It even had those rally wheels listed as being original to the car.

But now it was snowed in. Inside a truck, deep on a farm north of Edmonton. So it wasn't going anywhere, and I couldn't really get to it in order to inspect it.

When spring came around I realized an old friend and neighbor of mine, Bruce, lived in Edmonton. Bruce moved in across the back alley from me when I was 16 and he was key in driving my love of all things cars and performance. We'd still meet up in Regina for a soda every year or two, as he traveled for the pipeline, but he spent most of his time in Edmonton. He agreed that when the weather permitted he would check out the car for me.

I got Bruce in contact with Bill and that summer they met up at the location of the car. Long story short, it wasn't good news. The car had been completely disassembled. Nothing was bagged or tagged, they just took the car apart, threw the bolts in coffee cans and piled the parts inside the car. It was a sad sight. The rust on the rear quarters was extensive and some poor repairs had been abortively attempted.

Unfortunately, the only thing worse than the condition of the car was the state of the mosquito infestation at the farm. The prairies are bad in an average year and this was a bad year. A very bad year, apparently. They couldn't stay long but did discover that the cowl tag and VIN tags had been removed for acid-dipping the steel body, which the tags would not survive. But they were nowhere to be found. Bill thought he might have them at home. Part of me wondered if they'd just dissolved in the acid tank and that was why they were missing. I was a bit deflated by all of the bad news.

And that's where the deal lingered for some time, as I tried to pester Bill into finding the tags. He wasn't able to, so in the fall Bruce kindly agreed to take a second, more prepared, run at digging through the truck body. Fortunately for everyone's sake, they popped up in the third box he checked.

I had a car, the tags, and factory proof of provenance. Now I just had to figure out how to get a basket case from the inside of a truck body on a farm north of Edmonton to my shop in Seattle!

The next chapter of the blog can be found at:

https://1969pontiac.blogspot.com/2017/12/

[johnta1]

Thanks!

[Stuart]

Great story! Keep us posted as progress is made.

[SD455DJ]

Dave - Very cool indeed. X2 on more progress pics!

Dennis

[Diego]

Awesome!

I looked at a '68 427 4-speed ragtop almost 20 years ago.

[The Boss]

MCACN is planning on doing a display this year for north of the boarder cars - this would be perfect. What condition is it in now?

[gtospieg]

cool car

[Ben M.]

This is cool. I hope you get it home and get it back together.

[chicagoland]

"Back in the late 1960s if you wanted to buy a car in Canada, in most cases, it had to be built in Canada. This was before the NAFTA Free Trade agreement,"

NAFTA was 1994. One could buy an import car well before the 1990's in CDN.
Here is information from https://www.hagerty.com/articles-vid...adian-Pontiacs

It wasn't NAFTA, it was the 1965 Automotive Products Trade Agreement (APTA) that started free trade between CDN and USA. After that, GM slowly started importing US built cars.

Quotes:
"The 1965 Auto Pact took effect within months, but eliminating tariffs on cars and auto parts exchanged between Canada and the U.S. didn’t put an immediate end to GM’s popular Canadian Pontiacs"
"It wasn’t until the 1970 model year, in fact, that senior Pontiacs shared the exact wheelbase and wore the same sheet metal as their U.S. cousins."
"Even then, Canadian-specific names, trim variations, and the use of Chevrolet engines continued for the next two decades..."

[davepl1969-2+2]

Originally Posted by chicagoland

"Back in the late 1960s if you wanted to buy a car in Canada, in most cases, it had to be built in Canada. This was before the NAFTA Free Trade agreement,"

NAFTA was 1994. One could buy an import car well before the 1990's in CDN.
Here is information from https://www.hagerty.com/articles-vid...adian-Pontiacs

It wasn't NAFTA,

Yes, that's why it says, if you read it, "this was before NAFTA". I don't think that's ambiguous or unclear in any way, really. I'm fully versed in APTA as signed by Johnson and Pearson in '65 but didn't think the specifics were of general interest to my readers.