Friday Rides - The Good - The Bad - And The Ugly

1968 Pontiac LeMans Safari Pickup

The 1968 Pontiac LeMans Safari Pickup was a one-off combination of a 1968 Tempest Cameo Ivory four-door sedan and a 1968 Chevrolet Butternut Yellow El Camino that when successfully ‘bred’ together were painted Mayfair Maize.

(Fun Fact:The LeMans name came from the French city of Le Mans, the site of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world's oldest active sports car endurance race that was first held in 1923.)

Gordon Theisen, the owner of Adirondack Auto Sales, a World War II veteran, industrial arts teacher, and real estate developer, had a knack for sales and believed that the Pontiac lineup, which he dealt, lacked a vehicle that his customers would buy. He tried appealing to Pontiac, but they cold-shouldered him BUT they told him if he wanted to spend his time and money building a proof of concept and present it to them, he had their permission.
So Theisen bought both cars showroom new and told his staff to bring him one car.
Both the Tempest and the El Camino rode on 116-inch wheelbases, so it was a simple matter for the Adirondack Auto Sales staff to remove the El Camino body from its frame and mount it to the Pontiac frame. The entire Pontiac drivetrain (two-barrel 350 V-8, automatic transmission) and suspension remained with the Tempest frame, and the Tempest interior, down to the dashboard and steering column, made its way into the El Camino's cab. Adapting the Pontiac's front sheetmetal proved a little more involved than simply bolting it to the El Camino's cowl: The fenders required some metal massaging to line up with the Chevrolet body lines, as did the tops of the doors.
Theisen finished the Pontiac-with-a-bed by that October and sent it to Pontiac's engineering office in New York for evaluation. Again, Pontiac officials told him it just wouldn't work badged as a Pontiac, Pontiac's franchise dealers weren't set up to sell trucks. GMC's franchise dealers, however, were set up to sell trucks (and were largely paired with Pontiac franchises), so according to Brady, Theisen's pitch eventually developed into the GMC Sprint, which debuted for the 1971 model year.
(Of note: Pontiac's engineering department in Michigan had previously built a Pontiac-nosed El Camino in 1959 and would do so again in 1978. Neither effort resulted in a production vehicle, but at least one example from each of those efforts still exists.)
While the leftover parts from the conversion eventually made their way through the Adirondack Auto Sales parts and service department, the pickup remained the dealership's shop truck for decades afterward. Jim Brady, a restorer who at one point owned the vehicle, said the family pressed it into boat and trailer towing duties and it often hauled snowmobile's for the family's Ski-Doo dealership.
By the time Brady bought it from the original family following a Carlisle auction in 2012 (Theisen had died in 2001 at the age of 75), the Pontiac had just 34,000 miles on it but had already been repainted once and fitted with a black vinyl roof. He then spent the next year stripping the body to bare metal, repainting it in Mayfair Maize, reproducing the custom lower trim pieces, and cleaning the mostly original interior before selling it at Mecum's Kissimmee auction in 2014 for $38,000.