Nine days ago we told you that I’d be making a trip north to Sacramento to pick up a ’65 Pontiac wagon that our friend Todd at MSD had scored sight-unseen on eBay. I came home from the trip last night at midnight.

As it turns out, the car is a Tempest and not a LeMans as previously presumed, but who cares? It’s a creampuff, the sort of totally rust-free California car that you Rust-Belters envy. It is powered by a bone-stock 326 and someone swapped in a 200R-4 auto overdrive trans. The car has one-finger power steering, power drum brakes, and no a/c. It’s had a 15-footer paintjob, and the interior is all original except the front seat that’s been recovered. The floor covering is the original rubber mat, but it’s a cool aqua-colored mat with Pontiac logos in it, not the black pebble-grain stuff we’re used to seeing.

The 400-mile trip home proved uneventful. Here are a few photos and captions of the mini-adventure.

Todd flew me to Sacramento, which has a really nice airport. I dug these cool columns of luggage in the baggage claim area.

Here’s the ’65 Tempest with its gennie black-and-yellow plates. It’s super straight.

The rear window has the typical scratch right down the middle, but the car came with a spare

The 326 is said to have been rebuilt. The wheels are 15-inchers.

 
My first stop was in Stockton, California, where I met up with Dave Wallace and his cool ’61 Plymouth. It’s a Slant Six, radio- and heater-delete car.

Here’s D2 himself in all his Hall of Famer goodness. We bench raced for 4 hours about my new/old gig at Hot Rod and other such industry gossip. See Dave at www.hotrodnostalgia.com.
 

The next stop was at Steve Dulcich’s place where I toured his collection of junk Mopars. 

Somewhere on the Grapevine the car rolled 66666.6 miles. The trip home was almost exactly 400 miles.

I had no issues with the car whatsoever. With the overdrive trans, it got about 17 mpg at 70 mph.