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(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 |
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(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. |
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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 |
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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 |
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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. |
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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!) |
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"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. |
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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. |
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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! |
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(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. |
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(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! |
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Road Test magazine that gives a pretty decent review of the '77.
See what kind of fun stuff you can find on e-bay! |
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 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. |
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 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 :-) |
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.