When you talk of popular cars of the late '50s to early '60s, the most popular cars seem to be the '59 Caddys, '62 Bel Airs, or '64 Impalas. Jim Schmidt takes the road less traveled with this '60 Bonneville sport coupe.
For those in the car hobby, the automobile is more than just transportation. It is a means of expressing oneself artistically, and a way of enjoying the union of man and machine. They often hold sentimental value in some fashion, whether it was your first car, your father's favorite or any other reason that would cause you to spend money on this modern luxury that many who don't understand consider to only be a source of road rage.
For Jim Schmidt, many of the automobiles he has collected over the years have significant meaning to him, so it should be no surprise that he is attached to this '60 Bonneville sports coupe.
Jim was a big fan of the '60 model when it first came out, and when his father entrusted him to find his mother a new car, he knew just the Pontiac for her. The barely used B'ville was prepared in Coronado Red, and the interior was a vivid Tri-Tone red to match.
Once again we have tapped into the vast car collection of National Parts Depot president, Jim Schmidt, to bring you another low-mileage blast from the past. With '60 Bonnevilles being a rather scare commodity these days, Jim has decided to keep the convertible and the coupe that he found en route to buying the one pictured here. He and his son, Rick, also searched various swap meets and bought just about every NOS part they could find for the Pontiac.
The young Schmidt had truly picked a winner as the Pontiac served dutifully for over 250,000 miles with general maintenance and new shock absorbers being the only mechanical work performed on it. "I don't think my mom ever got out of the car," said Jim. His father, knowing that they were pushing the limits at 250K, decided to trade the Pontiac in on a '65 Ford LTD. "To this day, my father claims that he traded even for the coupe, but I still find it hard to believe," noted Schmidt. Rumor has it that the coupe was sold to a nearby resident, and that they continued to drive it past the 400K mark.
Many years would pass before Jim would even see another sport coupe, and when he started collecting cars in the early '80s, it would take him 10 years to find what he was looking for.
His search led him to a top-notch '60 convertible Bonneville, and the pristine, unrestored Shoreline Gold '60 coupe that followed was a step in the right direction, but the colors were wrong. "We could always paint the outside; the hard part was finding the right color Tri-Tone interior," Jim lamented. A frequent reader of the Hemmings Motor News, he found an original, 42,000-mile sport coupe for sale near Pittsburgh in 1996. His good friend, Don McCullen, happened to be traveling in the area and was more than happy to check the Pontiac out for him. The old Poncho had been put out in a barn in the rural outskirts of the steel capital, but the owner took it out every now and then to keep all the moving parts operating properly.
The clean threads inside of the Poncho were really what sealed the deal on the purchase. Jim had found others with the Tri-Tone Red interior, but most were not up to his standards. "The interior was so nice. There wasn't a thread loose on the carpet," said Jim.
What's far more amazing is that despite the dirt roads on which it traveled, the interior was immaculate. And it was Tri-Tone Red. Don had told Jim that the Pontiac was a little rough around the edges, but that he wouldn't believe the interior. "There wasn't a scratch, nick or cut anywhere. It was like brand new," noted Jim's son Rick. In fact, every piece of the interior that you see pictured is completely original.
As mentioned before, the body would need a little work, and although the roof was painted Coronado Red, the body was white, and something that Jim would have to change. Jim and Rick picked the Pontiac up on the way to the Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) meet in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and set off on "the biggest '60 Bonneville parts quest ever known to mankind."
Schmidt's Bonneville was to be restored to better than new condition, so that meant that every piece of trim and chrome, no matter how minute the imperfection, would be replaced with only the best quality parts. This entailed hunting for new old stock (NOS) mostly, something that didn't come easily when looking for '60 Bonneville parts.