Sometime in the sixties I found a dark green car just like this 1949 Pontiac in a barn on a friend’s farm where it had been sitting for years. His parents told the typical story: it was grandpa’s car and they just left it in the barn after he died. My friend’s parents said he could drive it if we could get it running. We tried jump starting it with a tractor and got it started and running. We did a tuneup and oil change, as well as scrubbed lots of pigeon poop off it and it turned out to be a great car. This 1949 Pontiac also shows lots of potential and it even seems reasonably priced, with an asking price of $5500. The car was stored in a dry building, so hopefully there’s not much rust. It’s definitely a different look than most cars of the era. I can just imagine someone chopping and dropping this on bags, which would be sad in my opinion. Wouldn’t it be great to just clean this up, do the mechanical necessities and drive it? Those flathead eights and automatic transmissions were very dependable. Perhaps as money becomes available, do some interior work, then possibly a little body work. What would you do with Pontiac? It’s listed here on craigslist in Dumont, New Jersey.
Do all the mechanical things necessary to make it run reliably , then do interior repairs or redo . The last thing is to work your way out to the body and paint job . Do not let anyone talk you into altering it’s silhouette , which is classic beyond any knuckle head dream of chopping and cutting it and destroy it’s natural beauty .
listing is down. does look good in the one photo. i too am for making it safe, keeping it as near to stock as you can and have fun driving it.
My first car was a ’46 Pontiac torpedo back “streamliner” three on the column. Auto tranny’s didn’t come out till ’47, then Olds was the first to get them I think. That car cost me a whopping 200.00 of my summer work money. Rust was never a problem in New York State, it came free with the car.
I think the comparable Chevy looked better, ’49 -’51, but they didn’t sell well since everyone else (including Chevy and Pontiac) also offered a notch back which was more “modern” than the fastback. In ’49 and maybe ’50 there was a 4 door fastback as well. BUT you could, and still can drive the Pontiac 8, with overdrive, at 75 mph all day, the Chevy 6, with splash lube would burn up at sustained speeds over 55, with overdrive, you could do 65. Chevy wised up in ’54 and after that the 6 was good for extended high speed use. So this Pontiac would be a good thing to drive to meets and on tours.
I had a 49 Chevy fleetline like this. Would really like to have this. I actually like this body style better than the coupe.
My uncle had one of these back in the early 50’s when I was a kid. So I have a soft spot for the old Pontiacs, I wish GM had dumped the Buick and kept the Pontiac.
Well, I didn’t have the experience of not getting proper lube at sustained speeds over 55 and I had a ’50 Fleetline 4 dr. fastback that I finally rebuilt, put Fenton headers on and a couple of MG mufflers. Loudest car in York Pa. at the time. Took several vacations before the baby came and traveled many miles well over 55 mph, and once pulling a tandem axle u-haul when I went back to college. Never any lube problems. The only time lube problems occurred was if you got the cups on backwards, or let the oil level drop too much. You still had a pressure pump, the cups were just an augmenter for the bottom end.