Our First Cars Week (Week Two): 1967 Pontiac LeMans 2dr Hardtop

Dad's '67 LeMans wasn't the first car I actually owned, but it was the car I learned to drive in, and the car I had more or less unrestricted use of once the state of Ohio gave me permission to be out on the public roads without adult supervision.

Ours was a bronze-ish shade called "Coronado Gold," topped with a black vinyl roof, much like the one in the photo at right.  It had bucket seats and a console shifter for the automatic, and there was a V-8 under the hood, probably a 326, with a single carb. Even with steelies and hubcaps instead of mag wheels, and a mere AM radio with a single speaker in the dash, it seemed sporty enough to a 15-year old with a learner's permit and a burning desire to go faster than the law would allow as long as Mom and Dad weren't watching.

Truth be told, it wasn't all that great a car.

One of the first things I learned about this car as I went thundering through Mill Creek Park doing my best  impression of Sir Stirling Moss in the 1955 Mille Miglia was that it could be almost treacherously tail-happy on anything but the driest of dry pavement. There was a heavy V-8 up front, and nothing but a relatively long void space--the trunk--to balance it out in the back. I have been unable to find an exact number quoted anywhere, but it would not shock me to learn that the front-rear weight distribution was somewhere in the neighborhood of 65-35. On a wet road, or snow, anything more than a super-gradual application of power (requiring a level of precision that teenage boys are constitutionally incapable of) led to wheelslip, and braking on such a surface would, more often than not, cause the rear end to want to swap places with the front. This made driving during the winter of 1977-78 a far more interesting and memorable experience than a newbie driver like me was really equipped to handle.

To give the car credit where credit is due, I will say that driving it in snow was an effective method of learning how to steer out of a skid.

It had other problems: a tendency for the high-compression V-8 to diesel after being shut off, even though we were using gas of the correct octane rating; a starter solenoid that misbehaved at random intervals; and a series of steamy and thrilling misadventures with the cooling system. My parents got rid of it while I was off at school, and I can't say that I missed it after it was gone.

--Cookie the Dog's Owner

The photo of the Coronado Gold '67--almost exacly like ours, except for the wheels--came from vintagecarpictures.com.

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