Our roving, Acura-loving writer Tyson Hugie posted a story yesterday on a 1975 Pontiac LeMans Sport Coupe that’s sitting at Desert Valley Auto Parts, the renown Arizona junkyard that’s Valhalla for residents of the Rust Belt. Notable to this car is that it lacked the louvered rear side window that was a nice feature of Colonnade coupes. Why did this LeMans sport a different C-pillar design?
The LeMans series started with the base LeMans, which was available as two- and four-door Colonnade Hardtops (no need to tell Pontiac’s marketing department they’re not hardtops). The two-door in particular (sometimes called the LeMans Coupe in literature) featured a rear side window that was exposed.
Step up to the LeMans Sport Coupe and you’d get the louvered rear side window. Though the Sport Coupe came standard with a 250ci inline-six with a three-speed on the column, it imparted sportiness thanks to the louvers, Radial Tuned Suspension (with radial tires, naturally), and the choice of bucket seats or full-width notchback bench with center armrest.
So why does the car that Tyson wrote about feature a rear side window that was smaller and devoid of louvers? Because, as a delete option, a buyer could specify AB8 “rear side quarter parallelogram window” and have the more formal look of the Grand LeMans or Grand Prix with a smaller opera window. “How do you like to look when travelling,” asked Pontiac in the brochure.
If you wanted something that drove sportier, you could opt for the GT package for either the LeMans Coupe or Sport Coupe. It included lower-body vinyl stripes, blacked-out grille, NASA hood scoops, Rally II wheels (sans trim rings, like the 1969-71 GTO Judge), GR70 x 15 radials, and Sport Mirrors on both sides.
This rear side window treatment was also available on the Grand Am two-door Colonnade Hardtop. Records from the GM Heritage Center show that 19,512 people specified this interesting variation for both the two-door LeMans Sport Coupe and Grand Am, though there is no breakdown between the two models.
