1975 Pontiac Grand Safari

$3500.


Many more pics please!!!!!!!

http://springfield.craigslist.org/cto/4876487298.html

 

Looks a bit rough, I won't be surprised how many people would think "Derby fodder if a little cheaper" but it does have potential for restoration, IMHO.

Here's what I can tell this car has, so far:

Passenger-Side Mirror (Was that an option? My 1984 Caprice doesn't have one.)
Roof-Rack
Automatic Tailgate

As for whether it has a trailer hitch or not, can you tell given this photo?

 

Yes I think that they all have potential to be restored, but some will need to be sacrificed to be a parts or donor car along the way. This is what I see in this one. It really needs to be a bit cheaper though.

 

Also has electric rear window defroster (which rare for 1975 may indicate good level of interior options), factory bumper guards and rub strips.



Don't even think scrapping this Pontiac - sacrilege!


It's weathered but all there! Worth saving! Let's see interior pics!

 

Hmm I am not so sure, every pic is of half the car and taken from behind. Why even include this pic?

 

Come to think of it, with all shots taken from the rear, not one even shows the passenger stop tail light :confused:

 

Definitely not a $3500 wagon!

 

This car was on here last year for sale. An elderly gentleman owned the car and had it at his beach home. He used ot for towing his boat to the lake. I talked to him and his wife and I believe it sold for $2,200 then.

 

You can't really assume things like this for cars from this era, and my own wagon was a perfect example. It was low-optioned (no power windows, power locks, or cruise control and only the base AM radio), but it had a rear defogger. People picked and chose back then. Some might have gotten every option or nearly every option, but others had a more limited budget and only got the options they thought they needed.


As presented, this is a $1500 car, tops. The woodgrain isn't just faded, but it has this weird chromatography effect like you sometimes see on your trousers near the bottoms of your pant legs if you've been walking in snow or slush where salt has been used. It almost looks like this car was immersed in water up to the point of that white-ish stripe that runs about 6 inches up from the bottom of the woodgrain the entire length of the car.





He needs a lot more photos and a much better description of the car, including the mileage, if he wants anything like his asking price. The fact that the mileage is not listed is usually an indication that it nothing to brag about. Probably more than 150,000. The gap between the top inside edge of the rear bumper and the tailgate in the photo above isn't a good sign, either.


One positive is that the tailgate looks nice and tight to the top of the window and is even all the way across. No sign of sagging.

 

Do you see rust around the rear windows? I don't.

 

Very much so. My '73 CC had one.

By '75, the passenger-side mirror could have been had with a remote control. It was the same kind of cable arrangement that controls the driver's side mirror before the days of electric motors. The remote control was mounted in the center of the dash so the driver could reach it.


Here's a page out of the '75 Pontiac Accessories brochure. Note the upper right. Remote-controlled passenger-side mirror available in all models except Astre, Ventura, and Firebird.

 

I don't as well. There's still that gap between the rear bumper and the tailgate, though, but the lack of rust is a positive.

I'd sure like to know the story behind the faded woodgrain. We've seen faded woodgrain many times on cars this old, and it's to be expected. But the fading and discoloration of the woodgrain on this car is much worse that we typically see and has that weird pattern to it. Woodgrain usually fades because of exposure to the sun, so any fading of the paint or woodgrain is usually more prominent on the upper surfaces of the car (roof, hood) and the upper edges of the woodgrain. This car's woodgrain is in worse shape on the lower edges.

The car is currently in Arizona, but he doesn't say if it's always been an Arizona car.

 

I suspect the lower woodgrain has been damaged by driving it mostly on Dirt/gravel roads. I have seen that type of damage before.

 

Possibly, but the deterioration looks too even for this. If the damage is due to stuff being kicked by the tires, I'd expect it to be heavier immediately behind the front and rear wheel openings and less so in areas away from those locations, such as the bottom of the passenger door. But the damage is very even all the way across, and it creeps up a bit at joints, such as where the front and rear doors meet, where the front door meets the front fender, and where the rear door meets the rear fender, none of which you would expect if the damage were due to road debris.

I'm not saying you're not correct. I'm just saying that road debris wouldn't have been my first guess as to the cause.


I notice that the discoloration does not extend over either wheel opening, which you would expect if the damage were due to the sun, and we can't tell if it extends forward of the front wheel. But the more I look at this car, the more I wonder if it didn't spend some time partly submerged, perhaps in a wintertime flood where the flood water could have had salt dissolved in it. That could also explain the loss of the filler material behind the tailgate ahead of the top of the rear bumper.





I'd want to do a very thorough inspection of the underside of this car before anything else.

 

Look at the driver's side quarter at the bottom. It's all bubbled up and will need replacing or patching. Looks like the lower edges of the rear windows have some bubbling too but it's really hard to tell with such lousy pictures.

And yes, that woodgrain looks damaged due to submersion in water or something similar. Not necessarily salt, but usually sun damaged woodgrain looks bad from the top down.

When I see photos of cars taken on the other side of fences or from 20 feet away at 1 or 2 angles I always laugh and think they are taking pictures of some random car and they don't even own it ;-)