In the 1950s, Americans were fascinated by the future. Newspapers and magazines were full of stories about futuristic technology, rocket ships, jet airplanes, and even television. The science fiction genre exploded with books, movies, television shows and radio programs devoted to alien invasions and tributes to the future. Below, James Arness as "The Thing."

Car companies capitalized on the trend offering  futuristic show cars, some of which toured with the annual GM Motorama car show. During  Motorama, GM cars were shipped from one city to another and people would line up around the block for a glimpse of the latest chromed and finned creation.

One of these special cars was the Pontiac Bonneville Special by GM designer Harley Earl, who had been inspired by a trip to the Bonneville salt flats. The car was never intended for production; the idea was to show the public that Pontiac was leading the industry in innovative thinking. Designed as Pontiac's answer to the Chevrolet Corvette, the  1954 Bonneville Special conveyed  a look of speed. Following the trend of jet age styling, the Bonneville featured a distinctive aircraft style Plexiglas bubble top with gull wing glass door tops (like the Mercedes 300SL) over the cockpit and the world's most radical looking continental kit, designed to look like a jet turbine.

The Bonneville name first entered the Pontiac lineup as the Star Chief Custom Bonneville, which was a high performance, fuel injected luxury convertible.  

Factory Base Price: $5,782  
Shipping Weight: 4,285 lbs. 
Production Total: 630 cars,  9 with factory air conditioning
Engine: 347 ci, 315 horsepower 
Transmission: HydraMatic Automatic 
Carburetion: Rochester mechanical fuel injection. 

Each dealer in the US got one of the 630 produced.  They were all fuel injected, all convertibles, either white with Missile Red or  Fountain Blue side spear accents with a few "special" order colors. I've seen red, black, and a salmon colored car in my travels.

When introduced on January 11th of 1957, the Bonneville was the fastest Pontiac ever produced. Zero to sixty took just 8.1 seconds.  The  fuel injected V8 engine changed the image of the Pontiac nameplate into one that was backed by performance. Pontiac did not release ratings at first, but later info shows the new engine produced 310 bhp at 4,800 rpm and a healthy 400 pound feet of torque at 3,400 rpm. Available only with "Strato-Flight" HydraMatic automatic transmission and a 3.23:1 final drive gear, Motor Trend found that at 8.1 seconds, a fuelie Pontiac was just one tenth of a second quicker to 60 mph than one with the 290 horsepower triple carbureted engine, and it was more than a second slower in the quarter mile. In the Bonneville's defense, as a well equipped convertible with the requisite extra body bracing, it was Pontiac's heaviest  model at 4,285 pounds.

Semon "Bunkie" Knudsen, who had come on as Pontiac Division General Manager, knew which direction to take in 1957. Knudsen, who had said, "You can sell a young car to old people, but you can't sell an old car to young people." Knudsen turned Pontiac's image into that of a car for young people, starting Pontiac down a performance path  that it  used successfully for decades.

In September 1956, two other young men came aboard: Elliot "Pete" Estes, who later became GM President, and John DeLorean, father of the GTO and the executive who engineered the "Wide Track" Pontiacs of the 1960s. He also engineered cocaine sales later in his life, but that had little to do with the GTO. 

On December 2, 1956, Pontiac introduced the 1957 Pontiac Bonneville convertible,  built on the 124 inch Star Chief frame. Officially known as style #2867SDX, the 1957 Star Chief Custom Bonneville convertible coupe was a special, one to a dealer car with  630 units produced. Most of them were painted from the factory in the same color; Kenya Ivory, a shade of white, with Fountain Blue or Bonneville Red Missile shaped side spears. 

The 1957 Bonneville came from the factory  powered by a 347 cubic inch motor with a bore and stroke of 3.94 x 3.56 and a 10.5:1 compression ratio. Additionally, all cars came with Rochester fuel injection, Hydramatic transmission, power brakes, eight way power seat, electric wipers with windshield washers, oil bath air cleaner, full flow oil filter, dual exhaust, full wheel covers and four ply whitewall tires. That was well equipped for the time, but add in a Wonderbar radio with electric antenna, underseat heater and defroster, rear view tilting mirror, outside rear view mirror and a leather interior, and this was a level of equipment rarely seen in cars at any price level. 

Only nine cars were equipped with air conditioning, the only available factory option. The price new was a staggering $5,782; for comparison, the next most expensive model had a base price of $3,636.

Below are pix of Bonneville number P857H31975 owned as of 1994 by Charles Berg of Wisconsin. He claims this is the way he purchased the car in 1987, and that it is a prototype model with 1958 features. It was built June 20, 1957.