This 1958 Pontiac Chieftain rolled off the line during the final season of a nameplate Pontiac had built since 1949, one year before an all-new Catalina made it obsolete. Under its restyled, honeycomb-grille body sat an air suspension and tri-power V8 borrowed from Pontiac’s priciest engineering ideas. Only a few thousand were built this way. Here’s what made the last Chieftain worth a second look.
Pontiac produced the Chieftain beginning in 1949, and ending with the third generation in 1958-the only year for the G3. Longer and lower are the buzz words in 1958 and the new air suspension smooths out the ride. The  occupants could listen to a new and much more reliable transistorized AM radio, if it was checked on the order sheet. Under the hood the engine is the largest yet- this V8 is now 370 cubic inch (6.1 L) generating 240 hp (180 kW) or if the tri-power option is chosen the same engine puts out 270 hp (200 kW). You could either pick the tried and true “three on the tree” standard transmission or opt for the Super Hydra-matic.
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MCF thanks Gateway Classic Cars for the images provided here
By 1958, Pontiac’s Chieftain nameplate was living on borrowed time, though almost no one buying one that year seemed to know it. The car in these photos rolled off the line during what would turn out to be the final season of a design Pontiac had built since 1949, replaced the following year by an all-new Catalina. Under its lower, longer body sat one of the more quietly ambitious engineering packages Pontiac offered a mainstream buyer, borrowing ideas usually reserved for far pricier machinery. Few of the roughly seven thousand people who ordered this particular series realized they were driving out the last of a breed. What exactly did Pontiac cram into a car nobody expected to matter for very long?
The Last of a Nine-Year Run
Pontiac had been building Chieftains since 1949, and by 1958 the nameplate was entering its ninth and final season before being replaced entirely by the all-new Catalina for 1959. That final year brought a dramatic styling overhaul across the lineup: honeycomb grilles, quad headlamps and taillamps, and deeply sculpted, concave rear fenders gave the big Pontiac a completely different face than the cars that came before it. Pontiac also promoted the mid-range Super Chief to its own full model line for 1958, which left the standard Chieftain as the entry point of the brand rather than the volume leader it had been for most of the decade.
A Production Run Smaller Than the Ads Suggested
Despite the fanfare around the new styling and mechanical upgrades, Pontiac built only about 7,359 examples of this Series 25 Chieftain for 1958, a modest slice of the roughly 217,000 Pontiacs the division produced that year. A base Chieftain of this configuration listed for around $3,025, riding on a 122-inch wheelbase and stretching nearly 212 inches nose to tail — genuinely full-size dimensions by any era’s standard, and a reminder of just how much car a mid-tier Pontiac buyer got for the money before the muscle car era shrank everything that came after it.
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