1961 Pontiac Tempest Wagon - Wake The Sleeper

Originality is a great thing when performance is part of the factory design. You wouldn't think of ditching a 455 H.O. or a 421 SD if it was originally installed in your prized Pontiac. But a 4-cylinder is a different story. Would the voice of the hobby cry "injustice" if you dumped the Indy-4 in your Tempest in lieu of a stump-pulling 455 graced with ultra-rare Ram Air V heads and intake? We didn't think so.

This is exactly what Jim Pickett of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, did to his '61 Tempest wagon that shipped way back in 1961 with the Pontiac 195ci Indy-4, a motor that is a Pontiac V-8 sliced in half. "The 4-cylinder had to go," Pickett told HPP. "We decided to do something a little different." Different meant that Pickett would lead himself down a path that would mate 303ci R/A-V heads to a 455 and then to a very unlikely recipient. "We built a '61 Tempest sedan first and had so much fun and it turned out so nicely that we said, 'Let's do a wagon.'"

Dropping a huge motor into an early '60s Tempest wagon is not a new idea. Pontiac built six wagons in 1963 with 421 SD engines. But these Tempest wagons featured a four-speed transaxle and did not require modification of the floor area to accommodate the drivetrain.

Building a Tempest wagon today forces a racer to go up against the forces of the Tempest's original sheetmetal design. Undoubtedly, the '61 Tempest's floorpan is unlike that of any traditional rear-wheel-drive Pontiac. Its flat floor accommodates the rope drive transaxle and gives passengers more legroom in a compact body, but it leaves no hump for a transmission and driveshaft. Dropping a hefty Pontiac V-8 and transmission into a '61 Tempest takes training in welding and fabrication. "These cars had a transaxle, torque tube, and flat floor," says Jim Pickett. "You've got to be skilled to do a proper conversion."

His plan was to replace the Tempest's floorpan and transmission tunnel. "A '69 Firebird floorpan and trans tunnel does nicely with a little massaging and welding," he says. Lucky Luciano of Lucky's Race Cars in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, cut the whole floor out and replaced it with Firebird metal. Then, as Pickett tells us, Lucky's "fabricated a straight rail frame with custom transmission crossmember and ladder bar suspension, and coil-over shocks" that attach to a 9-inch Ford rear with a Detroit locker and 4.30 gears. Up front, Pickett retained the Tempest's original subframe and suspension right down to the 9.5-inch drum brakes-11-inchers came with the 9-inch rear end.

With the metal work completed, Pickett set forth to change the Tempest's exterior and interior color combo. If he thought the 195 ci Indy-4 engine was unacceptable, the Fernando Beige (code R) with Fawn vinyl (code 274) this California Tempest wagon was built with didn't fare much better. "I love the color blue," he says. "The interior became a great-looking blue vinyl and the exterior came right from the Pontiac color charts, Lucerne Blue (code 26) from the '70 GTO and Firebirds."

Pickett's Poncho features a 455 4-bolt main block orphaned by a '70 Bonneville and bored 0.030 over to produce a 4.180x4.250 bore/stroke and 467 ci. Its rotating assembly was prepared by Nunzi's Automotive of Brooklyn, New York, and features a crankshaft that was offset ground to get the 4.250-inch stroke, pumping billet Crower rods and Ross dished forged aluminum pistons. It also has Nunzi steel 4-bolt main caps, a blueprinted 60 psi oil pump with custom pickup, a special aluminum oil pan with 4-inch kickouts, NHRA-approved balancer and an SFI-approved flexplate.