Pontiac Safari Wagon 1955 images

Inspired by the same Motorama concept that spawned the Chevy Nomad, Pontiac’s 1955 Safari carried the brand’s highest price tag and its lowest production numbers, just 3,760 built. Find out how a flagship wagon became one of the rarest Pontiacs of its era, and what made its shared Nomad tooling such a bold move for GM.

The Safari wagon was introduced for the 1954 model year and to save tooling costs the wagon shares body components with Chevy’s Nomad wagon. The uptown trimmed Safari was the lowest production vehicle in the Pontiac lineupÂ in ’55 with 3,760 units produced

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GM’s Motorama show cars usually stayed exactly that – showpieces that toured the country, wowed crowds, and then quietly disappeared. The Safari broke that pattern. Inspired directly by the Chevrolet Corvette Nomad concept that dazzled the very same Motorama circuit, Pontiac and Chevrolet split the tooling costs and actually put a two-door hardtop wagon into production for 1955, a genuinely bold move for a company not exactly known for taking risks. It launched on January 31, 1955, wearing Pontiac’s most expensive price tag as the brand’s flagship wagon. Despite that lofty positioning, or maybe because of it, this ended up being the rarest Pontiac built that entire model year. How does a flagship model become the lowest-production car in the whole lineup?

From Motorama Dream to Showroom Reality

The story starts with the Chevrolet Corvette Nomad concept, a two-door wagon so striking that GM decided it deserved a production life, and rather than build the tooling twice from scratch, Pontiac and Chevy shared it to justify the cost, resulting in both the Chevy Nomad and Pontiac Safari launching essentially side by side. Pontiac’s version rode on the 122-inch wheelbase shared with the full Chieftain lineup and borrowed Star Chief rear fenders and luxury-grade interior trim to set it apart from anything else on a Chevy lot.

Rare by Design, Not by Accident

At $2,962, the Safari carried Pontiac’s highest price tag for 1955, appropriate for a flagship, but it also meant most buyers walked past it toward cheaper sedans and coupes. The result: just 3,760 Safaris were built that year, making it the lowest-production Pontiac of the entire model year. Under the hood sat a 287-cubic-inch V8 offered in two states of tune, 180 horsepower with a two-barrel carburetor or 200 horsepower with a four-barrel, plenty for a wagon that was as much about style as substance, with its slanted tailgate and side-to-side grooved roofline making it instantly recognizable at any car show today.

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