If you're a regular subscriber or newsstand-buyer of High Performance Pontiac, you've likely read about factory freaks before. They're the Pontiacs that were produced with unusual engine, option, or color combinations-some were high-performance motors put in unlikely bodies for professional racers, race teams, or street racers; others were regular-production options mixed in such an odd way that we've never seen a combination identical to it before. Still others may have exterior and interior color combinations that were not recommended by the factory, but were given the "green light" and built to make a dealer or customer happy.
The factory-freak era likely began in the '50s when GM's car-ordering system allowed customers to select car options one at a time based upon their unique criteria of likes and dislikes, needs, and budget. Its heyday was the '60s when ordering a new Pontiac meant going into your dealership, looking at the sales brochure and option list, and checking off the exact ones you wanted. In fact, choosing your options and waiting for your "special" Pontiac to be built was often as much fun as owning and driving the car itself.
Pontiac's desire to please every customer under John DeLorean's direction and leadership was so central to the Division's sales strategy that customers could even order any paint color they wanted-Playboy Pink, Mercedes Blue, or Ferrari Red are some actual examples-and the factory would create for you a "special paint" car, permanently designated by three dashes (---), "SPEC", some other symbol-or lack thereof-on the body tag.
Jim Mattison, president of PHS Automotive Services, sees the buildsheets of the surviving factory freaks when their current owners send him requests for their cars' billing histories. "I'm not totally sure why some of these factory freaks exist or ever got built," Mattison says. "However, one of my several guesses would be that many of these Pontiacs were actually ordering mistakes done by the dealer, when ordering cars blindly early in the model year. My other suspected hunch is that, for whatever reason, the customer wanted something really different and went out of his or her way to order a combination that no one else would have.
"One such factory freak comes to mind-a particularly special '63 Catalina three-seat wagon. I can only assume that this car purchase was a result of the meeting of the minds between a husband who wanted a stealth hotrod and a wife who felt they needed a big car for their large and growing family. We received an inquiry to supply information on this car, only to find the wagon was built with a 421 H.O. Tri-Power engine, a four-speed transmission, 3.90:1 Safe-T-Track differential, eight-lug wheels ... and nothing else."
According to Mattison, by the mid-'80s, the factory-freak era was over due to the introduction of option groups designed to take the place of individual options in the GM car-ordering system. Though GM's rationale was that option groups were more profitable than individual options, easier to manage, and kept the factory assembly line moving faster, customers no longer could order a car that was truly unique. It explains why every Pontiac today looks homogonous to each other in colors, interiors, and options.
In his editorial (Full Throttle, HPP, Aug. '09), Editor Thomas A. DeMauro sent out the call for readers to send in stories and photos of their factory freaks. That's what you'll find in this feature: an assortment of freaky Pontiacs that beat the system, got built, and survived to tell their tale. We're sure there are hundreds more factory-freaks still in existence, but we'll have to save some of them for a future feature. Right now it's time to meet the cars.