1977 Pontiac Ventura                     page 2

          home    1    2   3                      Left click on thumbnails to enlarge

 (L) Here's the MPC interpretation of the '77 Ventura.  Maybe we're lucky this odd creature was never built!  It's a face only a mother could love...

 (R) An image from one of the galleries at the Russian site http://www.ural.ru/gallery/index/92-Auto/Pontiac?pn=12

 (L) Another image from the Russian site above.

 (R) Some slick '77s.  The car in the upper left has a cool spoiler on the trunk lid.

 Demo-derby fun!  Some images from the French-Canadian site http://pages.infinit.net/martisab/24ventura.html     Who else but pontiacventura.com would dive 40 pages into Google to find fun stuff like this??? 

Sad to see another Ventura bite the dust, but at least they seem to have saved some of the rare trim parts.      

“Si vous avez des comentaires ou des questions n'ésitez pas a me contacter a”: boucanerie@videotron.ca

 A shining new '77 out of Georgia.  You should be hearing more about this car in the future.  (Yup.  This car is being restored as the "pontiacventura.com promo car"; it's shown here about two weeks after it was purchased by the original owner.)

 A beautiful image from www.mclellansautomotive.com , but wait...isn't that a doggone grocery cart in the background?  Maybe that's where the grocery-getter legend got applied to this car...egad. :-p

 If you think this car looks suspiciously like the Georgia car above, you're right...that's where it was purchased by the original owner.  After many years, many miles, and many memories, he reluctantly decided to part with the car.  Thus, pontiacventura.com was able to inherit this 1-owner vehicle, and will begin a mild restoration that you'll be able to follow on this site. 
Many, many thanks to Richard Edmonds for making this vehicle available to the site!  These are a few shots from the trip from LA to Seattle.
 I hope to type up the story of the car's retrieval and journey to Seattle, but one thing that really stood out was the scenery in parts of southern Oregon.  It was like driving through a fairy-tale landscape.  The car made the trip without a hitch, and even averaged 26 mpg (at 70 mph and thru all those mountain passes!)

 "This space
left intentionally
blank"

 You can see why the owner wanted to find a better home for the car...the acidic salt fog was starting to eat thru the clear coat, seen peeling off here.  As the car dried after its first wash, I actually had salt crystals re-form on top of the hood and roof!  I think our Northwest climate will rinse all those ills away.
 This car has a Buick 231 cu. in. (3.8L) V-6, which will remain in the car for the near future, being rebuilt about 50K miles ago.  This motor does have some interesting possibilities (think Buick Grand National) but first efforts will focus on the chassis and sheetmetal.  The complete high-end polygraphite front end rebuild kit and 1-1/4" heavy-duty sway bar have been received from PST ($480). 
The interior is still very nice; I removed the dash cover for this photo.  Seats, carpet, headliner and plastic moldings were redone not many years ago, and it shows.
Tee Gorr sent a few initial photos of his new project car (he was told it was a '76, but it is clearly wearing the grille and front quarter panels of a '77).  He's going to have to deal with some rust here, you can see.  (update, spring 2005): " The Ventura is going through a little maintenance right now because of the great Canadian winters. A new head gasket was just put on, and heads shaved to bring back that 105hp. She will now bench sideways off the start, something it never did before. New back springs were installed so I could carry around four 12inch subwoofers, 300watts apiece, that sound amazing in the hatch back. Hoping to have the car painted this summer! Only 95000 original miles on the car, that my grandfather bought brand new and left to me! I will send more pictures of the car after the snow melts. And maybe even some photos of the old girl's new stereo system. HOLD ONTO YOUR HATCH LOCK.....BASSSSSSSS!" tgorr@sympatico.ca

 Bill (master of the '75 Nova SS site in our links section) contacted pv.com and offered images from his site.  This new one that he had was eye-catching, so many thanks to him for finding this image of the rare '77 Sprint!

(L) Car Craft possessed a '77 Ventura 'back in the day', and one of their first projects was to drop a 400 into it (and a 455 would have been just as easy).  This is just a teaser of what can be found in the step-by-step article (alas, there were no external car photos) but the article implies that the car was to be kept around for a bit.  Maybe some Car Craft veterans have access to follow-on articles on this project car...?  Contact this site at the address below if you'd like to share any new pics/info.  Thanks!

(R) The '77 can torch it's tires like all the rest, given enough encouragement.  Enjoy these performance cars we dug up from the Internet.

(L) Canadian Ventura fan Adrien Tanguay captured a rare '77 sedan parked around town.

(R) This excerpt from the '77 Pontiac Service manual shows how the "Special Appearance Group" striping is to be applied to the car.  The actual sketch shows a '76, but this is indeed from my '77 manual.  To date, I have yet to hear of, or see, a '77 wearing the old "Sprint" stripes.  Very rare indeed!

Road Test magazine that gives a pretty decent review of the '77.  See what kind of fun stuff you can find on e-bay!
  The engine displacement given is 302, but it is sure to be the Pontiac 301 that is powering the car.  You can also see that this (early production?) car has some unusual badging on the front quarter panel, under the Ventura script.
    Click on photo for link to this gal's cool site.  Lots of (copyrighted) images.  Her car is a Ventura/Phoenix mix (she leans toward '77 Ventura).  But only PHS could tell you for sure :-)

We'd be happy to display any '77 Ventura photos that you might have, even if you no longer own the car.  Just e-mail them to Roland at  pontiacv@pontiacventura.com .  "You are not alone"