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One of just 302 four-speed 428 SJs out of 112,486 Grand Prix built in 1969, this survivor sat on jack stands for 27 years with about 13,000 miles before Jay Leno got behind the wheel. Here is why the SJ is the rarest and most rewarding form of Pontiac’s personal luxury muscle car, and what to check before you buy one.
The 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix wore its performance quietly, hiding a fresh 400 cubic inch V8 under a personal luxury car’s restrained styling. A GM-wide ban on multi-carburetor setups forced Pontiac’s engineers to rethink how they built horsepower that year, and the result was a car that looked like a boulevard cruiser but drove like something with real teeth. It was also the only year buyers could get a Grand Prix as a true convertible.
Pontiac built three distinct versions of the same basic V8 for the 1970 Grand Prix, aimed at three different kinds of buyers — including one specifically detuned for people worried about their insurance bill. Total production that year fell more than 40 percent from the previous model year. Here’s how the Grand Prix lineup tried to serve very different priorities at once.
A red Plymouth Belvedere and a silver Pontiac Grand Prix face off in this shot, representing two completely different takes on 1965 performance — one a street-brawler mid-size that could be ordered with a 365-horsepower 426, the other a personal luxury coupe riding high off Pontiac’s Car of the Year sweep. Which one you’d have picked in period probably says a lot about whether you wanted raw displacement or chrome-trimmed comfort. Here’s how the Belvedere and Grand Prix actually stack up, spec for spec.
A red Plymouth Belvedere and a silver Pontiac Grand Prix sit side by side in this 1965 photo, representing two completely different ideas of what a great car should be that year. This piece breaks down the wedge V8 hiding under the Belvedere’s plain sheet metal, the restyled Grand Prix’s bid for personal-luxury prestige, and how rare and valuable each has become today.