Any discussion of iconic American automotive performance brands has to include Hurst alongside all-time all-timers like STP and Champion. The famous provider of aftermarket gear selectors made a name for itself by partnering with various muscle car brands to supply shifters, wheels, and other products for their option lists. Hurst also made numerous limited-edition cars, customized in their signature colors and with their latest goodies. Over the years, Hurst has collaborated with Pontiac on some exciting and gloriously flashy special versions of their performance coupes.
Oddly enough, at one point Hurst even made at least one bespoke Pontiac station wagon and, decades later, they even made a “station wagon” out of a car that was never, ever intended for such duty. Let’s explore some Pontiac Hurst products and the elusive Hurst Haulers.
As Inconspicuous As A Parade Float
Hurst’s association with General Motors is usually thought to be an Oldsmobile thing. Hearing the words “Hurst Edition” almost always makes you think of stripes and two-tone paint jobs on Cutlass 442 models from the sixties all the way up through the early eighties. All of them featured whatever the latest shifter technology that the transmission selector firm wanted to showcase, like the misogynistically-named “His and Hers” Dual Gate shifter.
Later, it was the bizarre “Lightning Rods” selector with three separate handles. Jason has written about these before, but the sticks were shifted sequentially to engage second, third, and fourth gear.
Still, Pontiac products were offered with some of these unique shifters as well, even though the gilded “special editions” were not as well know. One of the most famous might have been the 1965 GeeTO, made for a contest created by Pontiac, advertising agent Jim Wangers, Royal Pontiac of Royal Oak, Michigan and Hurst.
Of course, the car featured a Hurst shifter for the four-speed and was painted Hurst Gold with gold-finish Hurst wheels that, unfortunately, kind of set your teeth on edge since they don’t match the bodywork color (but maybe that’s just me).
Another Hurst Pontiac was based on the 1967 Grand Prix when that name was still placed on full-sized coupes. This year featured the awesome covered lights and slotted-pattern turn signals in the tops of the fenders. This looks like an early-run Hot Wheels car come to life.
Under the hood is a Pontiac 428 V8 pumping out 367 horsepower.
Three of these Grand Prix convertibles were built, all loaded to the gills with options including factory 8-track player and six window buttons on the driver’s door to even operate the vent wings. Check out the rear legroom on this aircraft carrier- I think an Accord or even a Civic is better.
Hurst used this and earlier examples of full-sized convertibles to showcase their shifters at race events; they mounted a platform on the trunk lid and installed a ten-foot-tall shift lever that famous Hurst spokesmodel Linda Vaughn grabbed on to for dear life as they drove around the track. I’m just making that up, right? Actually, no, I’m not:
A higher production run was done with the smaller 1970 to 1972 personal luxury coupe version of the Grand Prix. “Higher production” still meant rare, though: only 272 were made for 1970, with 157 for the next year and an unknown quantity for the final outing (estimated to be between 50 and 150).
This white-and-gold edition came with a power sunroof that Linda Vaughn is peering out of.
Yeah, it’s tacky, but that’s part of the appeal. I could do without that landau vinyl roof, but that’s a minor quibble. A Pontaic 400 V8 was standard; the top performance choice was the 455 cubic-inch HO V8 with 370 horsepower.
What? No Hurst shifter inside? Looks like a “Hurst” button on top, but probably the console shape wouldn’t accommodate one.
These were certainly cool cars to rival the best Oldsmobile Hurst products, but there’s nothing here so far that’s particularly unique compared to a Cutlass 442. You want something completely different? Here you go.
Hauling In More Ways Than One
You would never equate the concept of Hurst customization with station wagons, but in a very few cases, the firm did just that. The Cutlass 442 bits were put onto a small number of Cutlass Vista Cruisers in 1972, but a full-sized station wagon? There’s no record of that happening to any Oldsmobiles, but there is such a Pontiac: the large “Hurst Hauler”.
Exactly how the first “Hurst Hauler” came into existence is not entirely clear, but most accounts say that the company needed to transport its display items and other paraphernalia to various car shows and race events. Vans or pickups were considered workaday items with zero glamour back then, so Hurst decided to trick out a full-sized 1966 Bonneville station wagon with custom paint and a lot of the components that they offered for very similar Grand Prix and Catalina models. Those wheels look so much better without the gold finish.
Like the Grand Prix convertibles, Hurst started with a fully loaded power-everything A/C equipped car, also purchased from the famous Royal Pontiac. A bench seat, but there’s still a genuine Hurst floor shifter on the tunnel. The 389 GTO V8 under the hood sounds nice, but it would have been a whole lot nicer with a tri-power 421.
There’s even a Pontiac tachometer, which I doubt any other wagons were specified with. Looks like the speedometer got stuck at 85mph on a run years ago.
This one has seen better days; there was apparently plenty of floor rust, but that’s to be expected for a sixty-year-old car that did hard work in the northeast. It appeared on eBay in 2011 for $12,750 and was last listed for sale in 2017 at Hemmings with an asking price of $22,500. I hope it got a new coat of gold paint and the vinyl roof it deserves.
Surprisingly, that wasn’t the end of Hurst Pontiac wagons; another one-off appeared at the SEMA show in 2001. It seems rather unfathomable that Pontiac would do such a thing then, particularly since they weren’t building any station wagons then and hadn’t since around a decade before. That didn’t stop them from taking a WS6 Firebird Trans Am and doing the “shooting brake” treatment to it.
Design-wise, I’d like to resolve the rear window a little better to get rid of the pickup-truck-cab vibes, but as a concept, it’s quite inspired. The motor received some massaging and reportedly produced around 370 horsepower, meaning that, unlike the 1966 car, this thing could legitimately “haul.”
There’s a now-pushing-60 Linda Vaughn posing with this odd “wagon.” Unlike the earlier Pontiac Trans Am wagon done in the late seventies that Mercedes Streeter reported on, this one does not have “gullwing” side glass; the entire shooting brake back opens like a hatch.
There are more pictures of this thing that show stickers indicating that it participated in a muscle car Power Tour. Some accounts say it was listed on eBay for $35,000 in 2012, but I can’t find its whereabouts today, or if there’s a fiberglass mold for that thing. If not, we need to make one – like right now.
Sadly, No Hurst Aztek
I saw one commenter in the listing for the first Hurst Hauler quip that it was “just a wagon painted by Hurst with a bunch of their parts stuck onto it.” This is exactly what it was, and what’s wrong with that? Somehow, silly as these Hurst editions can seem, they end up being more than a sum of their parts and transport you back to a time when the flourishing aftermarket could give you the cars of your dreams that the OEMs refused to build.
If your own dreams don’t include long-roofed Pontiacs with floor shifters and big V8s, maybe these Hurst specials will make you reconsider.
Pontiac Points (for either the 1966 or 2001 Hurst Haulers): 89/100
Verdict: Pontiac excitement isn’t reserved for sedans, as these odd but magnificent creations prove.
Top graphic image: Hurst/Pontiac
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