The car appears to have a Winnipeg Motor Products dealer emblem on the rear panel which amazes me. Growing up in Canada at that time I can never recall seeing a little LeMans/Tempest US Model like this. I have only ever seen one in person and it was only in the past few years attending Autofest in Oshawa.

The car looks to be in remarkable condition. 

Believe it or not, GM's "senior compacts" share much with the Corvair unibody. In the case of the Tempest they also got the transaxle with swing arm suspension.

Those slant fours were rough running, as inline 4s have a natural vibration period at 4000 rpm due to the 180* firing (TDC while opposite cylinder is at BDC). On the bright side a Pontiac V8 would fit beautifully. Was it Arnie Beswick that ran a Tempest wagon with a 421 and an experimental beefed up transaxle?

I don't recall any Tempests in Canada back then either, though a customer could order one and pay a tariff (that blows away the economy aspect of an economy car).

Olds didn't have the slant 4, they had an aluminum V8 and a conventional transmission & rear end arrangement, while Buick had a cast iron V6 or a nail valve version of the aluminum V8. There was a 62 Olds F85 in my neighborhood back in the 1960s, plus a friend of mine has a rodded 62 F85 that originally belonged to Mrs. Seagrams of distillery fame in Kitchener.

Brother built a buggy from his Tempest back in the 70s. It was a 4 cyl 4bbl 3-sp manual. It was a very solid more door. Would love to have it today.

If you ever get a chance, look under the rear of these early Tempests, and you can see the torque convertor spinning in the breeze at the rear. As mentioned, these were built upon rear engine Corvair architecture, and in a Corvair, the engine would cover the torque convertor. Tempests, with the front mounted engine and rear transaxle, used a flexible driveshaft, often nicknamed "rope drive". The Super Duty Tempests had a 4 speed automatic transaxle, called Power Shift, which was a couple of two speed transaxles grafted together and apparently worked pretty good.

Thanks
Randy

here's a picture of one in Barrie that I hadn't seen until a couple months ago...

It's a convertible, I think a '63 - looks like a pretty nice car. This is just a crappy drive by picture I grabbed the other day after the post appeared.

A few pictures of an original auto with torque converter and a super duty auto with flywheel/clutch and hydraulicly operated throw out bearing assembly.