My take away on the 1962 Pontiac Tempest is: why did the Pontiac GTO not come along until 1964 or 1965? Much has been written about how the smart guys at Pontiac started the whole “muscle” car era in North American car design by putting the 389 cubic inch engine first as an option in the 1964 Pontiac Tempest thereby leading to the creation of the great Pontiac GTO car. Today’s car advertisments provide far less hard information about the automobiles.įrom This View The 195 Cubic Inch Four-Cylinder Pontiac Engine Looks Like a V8 Engineįrom This View It Can Be Seen That Their Are No Cylinders On This Side Of The Engine This advertisement is also interesting as it provides real information about the car. The following advertisement shows the engine and transmission availability for the 1962 Pontiac Tempest.Īdvertisement For The 1962 Pontiac Tempest There was a low compression, single-barrel carburetor version that 110 horsepower and the 4 cyclinder engines went up to a high-compression four-barrel carburetor version that produced 166 horsepower. In the 1962 Pontiac Tempest the 195 cubic inch 4-cylinder engine came in five power levels. At first this does not sound particularly interesting, but actually the engine is one-half of the 389 cubic inch V8 engine that was used in the full-sized Pontiac cars at the time. One of the interesting things with this car was the 195 cubic inch four-cylinder engine. This 1962 Pontiac Tempest Was the LeMans Model I think that the best analogy for this arrangement is that the flexible drive worked much like a speedometer cable. Therefore the front engine and the rear transaxle required a long, gently curving small bar within a steel case joining the engine with the transmission.
![1962 pontiac tempest 1962 pontiac tempest](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/gZMAAOSwbR1hkcmA/s-l500.jpg)
The car also had a unique rear transaxle. The 1962 Pontiac Tempest had a monocoque design which is also often referred to as a unibody design. At that time GM was introducing some smaller size cars, but GM had not settled on the design characteristics.
![1962 pontiac tempest 1962 pontiac tempest](http://smclassiccars.com/uploads/postfotos/1962-pontiac-tempest-lemans-convertible-no-reserve-7.jpg)
At that time, in the early 1960s, General (Government) Motors was trying some new concepts at that time and the Pontiac Tempest was one of those innovative designs. The early Pontiac Tempest models were very interesting cars.