Saving Pontiac: The Birth of "Wide-Track"

Pontiac was in deep trouble in the early 1950s. With its trademark Silver Streaks on the hood and an aging flathead engine underneath, critics called the Pontiac "granny's car."

Fast action was needed.

GM installed Bunkie Knudson, son of another GM executive, Big Bill Knudson, as Pontiac General Manager in 1956. Bunkie's first action was to get the Silver Streaks (or suspenders, as he called them) off the hood of the '57 weeks before production started.

Knudson said, famously, "You can sell a young man's car to an old man but you can't sell an old man's car to a young man."

Knudson then went to work on the upcoming, all-new 1959 Pontiac. Seeing the big new car in the Design Studio, Knudson told his staff, "It looks like a football player in ballerina slippers. Fix it."

The engineers widened the track, moving the wheels out closer to the edge of the fender wells. The effect was dramatic.

Pontiac's ad agency dubbed the new car with the tough stance, "the Wide-Track Pontiac."

The '59 was also the first Pontiac with a split grille design, a styling trademark still going strong nearly 40 years later.

For Pontiac, it all came together in 1959. Wide-Track, split grille, and a big 389 cubic-inch V8 under the hood. Sales soared and Pontiac grabbed the coveted "third place" sales ranking, holding it all the way through the 1960s.

Bunkie Knudson's Wide Track had saved Pontiac.

Back to Articles