Quick video comparison USA to Canada front end

davepl · Poncho Master!

Quick video comparison USA to Canada front end

seventy2plus2 · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

Same type of thing when looking at a 70 Catalina vs 70 Parisienne.

It'd be interesting to show the different bolt locations where the inner fender bolts to the fender, and also the dimension from the back of the front wheel opening to the body.

North · Guru

I compared my 2+2 and Cat (both 69's) and just about everything is different. Firewall, cowl, frame, rad support, inner fenders, hood, fenders, bumper brackets, wiper linkage, brakes, booster, suspension are completely different and not interchangeable. The only interchangeability i can see is the bumper and grille assembly looks interchangeable as does the front valence and parking lights (and this is just by looking, I didn't study mounting points to insure they were identical, just didn't see anything obvious)

davepl · Poncho Master!

You can imagine that when they did this whole adventure, they took a Catalina rear clip and plunked it on down on an Impala frame. They had to shove it a few inches back due to the wheelbase difference. Then they stuck a Catalina front bumper and nose out in space about where it should be and then made brackets to mount that to the Impala frame.

Those brackets are totally different than the ones in the US car, though. So up front it's really the bumper and grilles and nose. Not much else interchanges up front at all.

-- Edited by davepl on Saturday 21st of April 2018 09:54:26 AM

-- Edited by davepl on Saturday 21st of April 2018 09:54:45 AM

-- Edited by davepl on Saturday 21st of April 2018 09:55:07 AM

North · Guru

The entire lower body including cowl, firewall, floor pan, trunk pan etc is pure Impala and completely different than a US Pontiac. I'd describe the engineering project as:

Take a complete 69 Impala and remove the chevy fenders, doors, quarters, tailpanel, trunklid, front clip and dashpad. Figure out what changes if necessary (if any) are required to:

1... weld in the pontiac rear quarter skins and tailpanel (apparently quarters on US and Canadian ponchos are identical), they just modified the outer wheelhouses to join the misaligned wheel tub and the wheel opening on the quarter. A unique rear valence was needed due to rear frame interference.

2... design new bumper mounting brackets so US front and rear bumpers, grilles (and front valence) etc could be used as is

3... stamp a unique canadian fender to account for chevy rad support, chevy fender tubs and chevy cowl-firewall and the different chevy front axle to O-line dimension

4... stamp a modified hood to accommodate the different chevy parallel wipers rather than the Pontiac opposing wiper system

5...bolt in a pontiac dashboard

When you think of it is was a brilliant idea. You allow a low volume factory (two if you include the Quebec one) to produce an entire second car line that looks completely different than the chevy while only using maybe 10% different parts and having 90% of those different parts coming right out of the US model so only say 1% of the car required specifically designed parts.

Why not just build real Pontiacs in the Canadian plants? Simple, that would mean twice as many different frames, twice as many different engines, differentials, brakes, rad supports, air cleaners, exhaust manifolds, tailpipes, mufflers, brake lines, carburetors etc etc etc etc! All these extra parts would also have to be stocked by hundreds of dealers too. Just as importantly GM of Canada understood that Canadian buyers had lower disposable income than American buyers (higher taxes, lower wages etc) so they felt there was a niche just above chevy prices that American Pontiacs couldn't fill. As I mentioned before Canadian Pontiacs were much cheaper than American pontiacs at the low end, A Catalina with a stronger chassis and a standard 400 V8 cost hundreds more than a Strato-Laurentian with a much lighter frame and standard 6 or small V8 options.

GM of Canada nailed it, Canadian ponchos had nearly double the market share of their American cousins, actually outselling chevies a few times in the 60's