One interesting feature of the Holy Grail Pontiac is that the original owner, DaveK, is still alive… or at least he had been recently. He can’t be young. But I know he’s likely still out there because BillW, the fellow I bought the car from, said so. He told me he’d been in contact with him but he wasn’t really a car guy and hadn't been really interested in talking about the car. I would still love to find out a few basic facts, like whether he factory-ordered the car or found it at the dealership. How did it come to be so equipped? Why the delay between the April production and August delivery dates?
I learned Mr. K’s name from what is known as a Proteco plate. When you bought a car from GM in 1969 you received a little metal credit-card with your name and the car’s VIN and some other data embossed on it backward. When you brought the car in for service, the counterman (remember, it's 1969) could run the card through a machine with your paperwork to “stamp” it with your info, thereby speeding things along and preventing transcription errors.
My Dad received one when my parents bought our Laurentian coupe, but family legend held that he had crumpled it into a ball and tossed it back to the salesman as a dismissal of the warranty’s value when it would only cover the $0.78 rear end seal that had failed under warranty – and not the expensive brakes it takes with it when it goes. So I’ve only seen an imprint of my own Protecto plate, but BillW has the one for the Grail car, and I’ve got a photo of it. I loaded that photo into Paint Shop, mirrored it, and saved it. Then I started to decode it.
The data on the plate tells you a great deal about the car. In addition to the VIN, it lists the date of manufacture, color codes for interior and exterior, convertible top, engine casting code, axle code, and so on. Thus the plate itself confirms that the car is what it claims to be, because it includes the model (2+2) and body style (convertible) in the VIN. It also lists T122OLA, which decodes to “Tonawanda Engine Plant, Dec 20” and “1969 Chevrolet 427/390 Manual Trans High Perf”. Thus it establishes the special engine (427/490) and the manual transmission as well.
All of that information is embossed into the plate at the factory when the car is built. But the card includes the owner’s name, which was added by the dealer at the time of purchase using a backward label-maker! It stamps raised, reversed letters into the vinyl strip that will get transferred when run through the credit-card-machine-like device used by the service department.
I had my backwards photo and sure enough, it showed DaveK’s full name. It was four letters, punchy, and I’d never even heard of anyone with that name before – a dream if you’re searching using Google. In fact my search was over in seconds. My online hunt took me directly to the obituary for DaveK, Edmonton, aged 98. That was that.
But if Google results are anything, they’re voluminous, so I kept slogging through just in case. Eventually, buried in the contact information for the Elk’s club, was another DaveK. Better yet, it had his email. And home phone number. And cell number for good measure! But was this the DaveK I was looking for? I shot off a brief email and a day or two later got back a “Yes, that’s me, I owned the car” confirmation. Pay dirt at last.
I’m no social engineer, let alone a salesman, but I know enough not to overwhelm people you don’t know, especially elderly folks. And because some people prey on the elderly I assume they’re a little more cautious about people coming out of the woodwork about a car they bought literally fifty years ago. So I just asked two or three brief questions and included a couple of photos of my 2+2 coupe restoration as an indication of what I hoped to achieve with his old car. There was no response. I waited a month and sent a “If you sent a response I missed it…” email, but no response. I waited a few more months, tried again. Nothing.
I’m not a phone guy. I mean that in the sense that if you could reliably email 911, that’d be my preference. So now I have conundrum – I don’t want to phone this guy and maybe he doesn’t want me to phone him either. Maybe I’ve spooked him. I understand that as fascinated as I am by this car, not everyone is “into” cars. If you pestered me about a washing machine I owned decades ago, I’d get spooked too. It’s not a phone call I want to make.
So I don’t make it. For weeks, actually. But then I muster the courage it requires (!) and I make the call. I get an answering machine. I leave a message with my contact info, reiterating that I’m not looking for anything other than to research the car’s history. As you can guess, I do not hear back.
Now what? Well, I’ve come this far, and the guy on the voicemail didn’t sound that scary. So I tried again and again. It's like exposure thereapy, and it gets a little easier to make the call each time (especially because so far, he's never there). But I ultimately caught him at home! I spoke to him carefully, like the skittish deer I now assumed him to be.
He could tell. Then I forget precisely what he said, but he set me at ease that it was OK to bend his ear about the car, which made it a lot easier for me. We talked for about 20 minutes, I took a lot of notes, and I thanked him for his time!
It turns out he bought the car new right off the showroom floor. He was 25 years old and out and about, looking to purchase a Corvette or a convertible of some kind. He walked into the Northgate dealership and there it was. How he came to afford such a car (I’ve just decoded the factory option prices and the car had an MSRP of around $5500, which is $40,000.00 in today’s dollars) I wasn’t bold enough to ask, but it was a pricey car for its day! It was, in fact, Corvette money for a Corvette-powered Pontiac.
He told me that he loved the car and that it performed well. Other than some problems with the initial paint job fading, the car was problem-free. He said everyone at the time was buying Chevelles and Camaros, and I got the impression he liked being a little different. It was a big plus that the Corvette’s 427 wasn’t even available in the Chevelle or Camaro, which were limited by GM corporate mandate to the 396 at that time (COPOs aside). I would imagine that the four-speed limited the car’s audience a bit, but he enjoyed it.
He recalled the car as not having any significant mileage on it when he bought it. I’d always wondered if the dealership bought this car for the sales manager or dealership owner to enjoy for the summer, but if there were no miles on it then it would appear the car served as a “halo” car to bring people into the showroom for a look. Maybe the red 2+2 convertible hooks your attention and you go home with a brown four-door Strato-Chief.
DaveK owned the car for about three or four years before selling it to a friend, Wally, and the car would have at least one more owner after that before arriving at the doorstep of Bill’s car lot.
And then there was me. If all goes according to plan, I’ll join DaveK as one of the only people to ever drive this car when it was “new”.
I learned Mr. K’s name from what is known as a Proteco plate. When you bought a car from GM in 1969 you received a little metal credit-card with your name and the car’s VIN and some other data embossed on it backward. When you brought the car in for service, the counterman (remember, it's 1969) could run the card through a machine with your paperwork to “stamp” it with your info, thereby speeding things along and preventing transcription errors.
 |
| The Protecto Plate |
My Dad received one when my parents bought our Laurentian coupe, but family legend held that he had crumpled it into a ball and tossed it back to the salesman as a dismissal of the warranty’s value when it would only cover the $0.78 rear end seal that had failed under warranty – and not the expensive brakes it takes with it when it goes. So I’ve only seen an imprint of my own Protecto plate, but BillW has the one for the Grail car, and I’ve got a photo of it. I loaded that photo into Paint Shop, mirrored it, and saved it. Then I started to decode it.
The data on the plate tells you a great deal about the car. In addition to the VIN, it lists the date of manufacture, color codes for interior and exterior, convertible top, engine casting code, axle code, and so on. Thus the plate itself confirms that the car is what it claims to be, because it includes the model (2+2) and body style (convertible) in the VIN. It also lists T122OLA, which decodes to “Tonawanda Engine Plant, Dec 20” and “1969 Chevrolet 427/390 Manual Trans High Perf”. Thus it establishes the special engine (427/490) and the manual transmission as well.
All of that information is embossed into the plate at the factory when the car is built. But the card includes the owner’s name, which was added by the dealer at the time of purchase using a backward label-maker! It stamps raised, reversed letters into the vinyl strip that will get transferred when run through the credit-card-machine-like device used by the service department.
I had my backwards photo and sure enough, it showed DaveK’s full name. It was four letters, punchy, and I’d never even heard of anyone with that name before – a dream if you’re searching using Google. In fact my search was over in seconds. My online hunt took me directly to the obituary for DaveK, Edmonton, aged 98. That was that.
But if Google results are anything, they’re voluminous, so I kept slogging through just in case. Eventually, buried in the contact information for the Elk’s club, was another DaveK. Better yet, it had his email. And home phone number. And cell number for good measure! But was this the DaveK I was looking for? I shot off a brief email and a day or two later got back a “Yes, that’s me, I owned the car” confirmation. Pay dirt at last.
I’m no social engineer, let alone a salesman, but I know enough not to overwhelm people you don’t know, especially elderly folks. And because some people prey on the elderly I assume they’re a little more cautious about people coming out of the woodwork about a car they bought literally fifty years ago. So I just asked two or three brief questions and included a couple of photos of my 2+2 coupe restoration as an indication of what I hoped to achieve with his old car. There was no response. I waited a month and sent a “If you sent a response I missed it…” email, but no response. I waited a few more months, tried again. Nothing.
I’m not a phone guy. I mean that in the sense that if you could reliably email 911, that’d be my preference. So now I have conundrum – I don’t want to phone this guy and maybe he doesn’t want me to phone him either. Maybe I’ve spooked him. I understand that as fascinated as I am by this car, not everyone is “into” cars. If you pestered me about a washing machine I owned decades ago, I’d get spooked too. It’s not a phone call I want to make.
So I don’t make it. For weeks, actually. But then I muster the courage it requires (!) and I make the call. I get an answering machine. I leave a message with my contact info, reiterating that I’m not looking for anything other than to research the car’s history. As you can guess, I do not hear back.
Now what? Well, I’ve come this far, and the guy on the voicemail didn’t sound that scary. So I tried again and again. It's like exposure thereapy, and it gets a little easier to make the call each time (especially because so far, he's never there). But I ultimately caught him at home! I spoke to him carefully, like the skittish deer I now assumed him to be.
He could tell. Then I forget precisely what he said, but he set me at ease that it was OK to bend his ear about the car, which made it a lot easier for me. We talked for about 20 minutes, I took a lot of notes, and I thanked him for his time!
It turns out he bought the car new right off the showroom floor. He was 25 years old and out and about, looking to purchase a Corvette or a convertible of some kind. He walked into the Northgate dealership and there it was. How he came to afford such a car (I’ve just decoded the factory option prices and the car had an MSRP of around $5500, which is $40,000.00 in today’s dollars) I wasn’t bold enough to ask, but it was a pricey car for its day! It was, in fact, Corvette money for a Corvette-powered Pontiac.
He told me that he loved the car and that it performed well. Other than some problems with the initial paint job fading, the car was problem-free. He said everyone at the time was buying Chevelles and Camaros, and I got the impression he liked being a little different. It was a big plus that the Corvette’s 427 wasn’t even available in the Chevelle or Camaro, which were limited by GM corporate mandate to the 396 at that time (COPOs aside). I would imagine that the four-speed limited the car’s audience a bit, but he enjoyed it.
He recalled the car as not having any significant mileage on it when he bought it. I’d always wondered if the dealership bought this car for the sales manager or dealership owner to enjoy for the summer, but if there were no miles on it then it would appear the car served as a “halo” car to bring people into the showroom for a look. Maybe the red 2+2 convertible hooks your attention and you go home with a brown four-door Strato-Chief.
DaveK owned the car for about three or four years before selling it to a friend, Wally, and the car would have at least one more owner after that before arriving at the doorstep of Bill’s car lot.
And then there was me. If all goes according to plan, I’ll join DaveK as one of the only people to ever drive this car when it was “new”.
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