1956 Pontiac "Club Bonneville" LSR Car

1956 Pontiac “Club Bonneville” Experimental Land Speed Record Car

Some of the following is fiction.

In 1955 the Pontiac division of General Motors was struggling with its image. The next step up from GM price leader Chevrolet, Pontiac was trying to decide how to stand out from in-house competitors like Buick and Oldsmobile. It was decided that it needed to emphasize both Style and Performance. For the 1956 Motorama season they would debut a radical new show car, the Club de Mer. Incredibly low and sleek at standing barely 38” high, it not only was a style leader but it featured Pontiac’s hot new Strato-Streak V8, a radical stainless steel monocoque chassis, and a sports-car inspired de Dion rear suspension.

During the car’s development the design team found itself heavily influenced by European racing cars, in particular the D-Type Jaguar and the Alfa Romeo Disco Volante. As a result a group of Pontiac engineers stylists and marketing types began lobbying heavily to create a racing car based on the basic styling cues of the Club de Mer. The success Zora Arkus-Duntov was having with Corvette over at Chevrolet made it an easy sell.

Two racers were planned, a road racing machine they hoped could be campaigned in Europe, and a record speed car built for Bonneville. A fiberglass mold was pulled of the Club de Mer body which was modified for racing purposes. The fin was removed from the center of the rear deck and, in a bid for sty6ling continuity, molded to the driver’s headrest.

The Bonneville car was the simpler of the two. A basic, lightweight tubular perimeter frame and solid axle front and rear suspension was all that was required for straightline racing. Since the goal was to clear 200 MPH low weight, good aerodynamics and big horsepower were what was needed. In a harbinger of things to come Pontiac farmed out the motor to Mickey Thompson whop came up with a Potvin blown nitro-powered firebreather tickling 500 BHP. It was immediately dubbed “Strato-Charged”.

The road racer would take more work. The monocoque would have to be re-engineered in aluminum to bring the car down to race weight. A season of U.S. based racing in 1956 was planned before facing the challenge of Le Mans in 1957.

Then disaster struck when a horrific fiery crash at Le Mans in June of 1955, killing Mercedes driver Pierre Levegh and 83 spectators, created a world-wide reaction against motor sport. The senior brass at Pontiac decided to pull the plug on the racing project. The Bonneville car had been completed but was never run in anger. The sports racer never got past the design stage.

After its huge success in the 1956 Motorama the Club de Mer was eventually scrapped as were so many GM Motorama dream machines. It was long thought the fiberglass “Club Bonneville” had been destroyed at the same time. But recently the LSR car was found along with a show engine intended for Motorama display.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

Turned out pretty good there Bernard, interesting story too.

Great model and story!

that is so very cool !!