The black 15вЂі front steel wheels wear Pirelli Cinturato tires, and the yellow deep dish rear wheels are mounted with 30Г—16.0-15 Goodyear Eagle Dragway Special slicks. The paintwork and exterior trim are shown up close in the photo gallery below. Other equipment includes a hood scoop, headlight block-off panels, and silver-painted bumpers. The car is said to have received its yellow, blue, and red livery in the late 1980s and features вЂњSuper ChiefвЂќ and Tyree Headers lettering as well as various decals on both sides. This Le Mans drag car is now offered with a clean Texas title in the sellerвЂ™s name. The seller acquired the car out of storage in 2019, and work since then has reportedly included replacing the fuel lines and rebuilding the carburetor, fuel pump, and motor for the electric water pump. Equipment includes a narrowed rear axle with coilover suspension, a tubbed rear end, staggered-width wheels, a chromoly roll cage, a bucket seat with a five-point harness, a Hurst shifter, and a fuel cell. Finished in yellow and blue with red accents and lighter blue lettering, the car is powered by a 468ci Pontiac V8 paired with a two-speed automatic transmission. It was a great way to improve balance with the 4 cylinder cars, but this V8 generates more power than I would want to push through the tired old rope driveline and transaxle.This 1963 Pontiac Tempest Le Mans was converted to a drag car in the late 1980s and is said to have raced until 2006, after which it was placed in storage. The transaxle is a very novel idea, but I think I would rather have a traditional transmission upfront and solid driveshaft in the middle. These early вЂ™60s Pontiacs have really been growing on me lately. If that is correct, that this car just got a lot more interesting! The jump in horsepower wouldnвЂ™t put it on par with the late вЂ™60s GTO, but it gets itвЂ™s real close. They provide photos of the engine numbers and of documentation showing that the car was ordered with the 4 barrel 326 H.O. engine, if thatвЂ™s the case than it is a very rare car. This seller claims that this car has an H.O. In вЂ™64, the 326 became an actual 326 and a new high output version was introduced withВ more horsepower. They had plenty of mechanical issues though and handling suffered from all the added weight of the overbuilt engine block. Especially a car with a rope type drive line and a transaxle! They proved to be extremely quick cars and Pontiac went on to sale quite a few of them. By late вЂ™60s standards, 352 foot pounds wasnвЂ™t all that impressive, but for вЂ™63 that was a brutal amount of grunt for a mid sized car. While this new 326 didnвЂ™t have big horsepower numbers, it made up for it withВ torque. Since it was said to be one cubic inch smaller than the 327, GM Brass let it through. So they took one of their existing big block engines and hadВ the cylinders bored to a smaller diameter, they called it a 326, but it was really a 336.

The story goes that no GM brand could build a sporty car with an engine larger than the CorvetteвЂ™s 327. John DeLorean and his team at Pontiac knew the young people were looking for something fast and affordable to drive, but GM had put strict rules on building performance cars at the time. The story of how the Le Mans 326 came to be is a good one. You can find this Le Mans project here on eBay inВ Cullman, Alabama with an opening bid of $3,500. ItвЂ™s high compression engine might have said 326 cui, but it was actually a 336 that churned out 260 horsepower and an impressive 352 pounds of torque! While these werenвЂ™t quite as powerful or fast as the GTO that was to come, they were still impressive machines with an interesting history.

Just one year beforeВ Pontiac released the GTO, they built a high performance version ofВ the Le Mans.

63 pontiac tempest