Pontiac 1963

il s'est révélé que cette voiture était l'une des six 1963 Pontiac LeMans Tempest Super Duty Coupés construite au monde, la transformant ainsi en une pièce de collection très rare et donc très convoitée.

Pontiac engineers grabbed 12 1963 Tempests--six four-door station wagons and six Le Mans two-door coupes--and spent their 1962 Christmas break preparing all 12 cars for drag race duty.

"The engineers pretty much knew that the (January 1963) racing ban was coming down from GM, so they wanted to build as many race cars as they could before it did," said Pontiac historian Don Keefe. "The Catalina was just too heavy and the 'Swiss cheese' frame broke all the time, so they figured they'd do a lightweight job on the Tempest and use the benefit of the rear-mounted transaxle to get as much weight over the rear tires as possible."

Pontiac had already made extensive changes to the Tempest for the 1963 model year. They chucked the Buick 215 and added the two-barrel 260hp 326-cu.in. Pontiac V-8 to the option sheet. To beef the chassis in anticipation of the 326, Pontiac strengthened the axles, gears and transaxle case; increased the diameter of the drive shaft by ¾ inch; redesigned the rear suspension's control arms; made standard the previously optional handling package of heavy-duty springs and shocks; and introduced a new, stiffer optional handling package.

To prep the Tempests for race duty, Pontiac's engineers first replaced the 326 with the notoriously underrated 405hp Super Duty version of the 421, complete with forged internals, 980 cylinder heads, an 859 medium-riser dual-quad intake manifold (many, if not all of the Tempests later ran the over-the-counter "bathtub" tunnel-ram dual-quad intake), a McKellar No. 10 camshaft (again, many later received the Isky 505 camshaft) and a 12.0:1 compression ratio, though with a few modifications.