1975 Lil Wide Track Pontiac Astre on BAT

I actually looked at this exact car back around 2002 and passed on it for a few reasons, not its condition though. I didn't really need a 4th H-Body Pontiac, as I was still working on putting turning two 77 Formula Astre's into one decent car. And I thought the asking price of $5K was a bit high, I offered $3500 and the seller countered back with $5000 so that was about as far as the negotiations went. If it was an manual trans I might have been more interested. That and all my H-Body parts are for the later 76-79 Astre chassis so suspension and drivetrain parts would not work with what I had on hand.
I spoke to Jim Wangers about these before I looked at it, He said all the advertising stated they had 3000 orders, but he doesn't think they actually made 50 examples total. This is a very solid almost complete example of a rare and obscure 70's Pontiac.
The only other one I have ever seen in person belonged to a young lady I dated briefly in the early 1980's. By the time she bought it the original wheels had been replaced with Craigar's abd if I remember correctly it had a header installed on it. At the time I drove either a GTO or a T/A so I just thought it was an interesting if odd little Pontiac. The last picture is of her and her car from around 1982. I can't believe I still have that picture!

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1975-pontiac-astre/

 

I would bet you held on to the picture so that you could show your friends you had seen that type of Pontiac. If it were a prom picture it might have already gone

 

That's pretty neat.

 

60Mercman, you may have something there, I tend to keep all old pictures with cars and airplanes in them.

As I write this the bidding is up to $5252.00 with 4 hours to go. I will be interested in seeing if it reaches $8800. That would be the $5000 asking price in 2002 adjusted for inflation.

 

60Mercman, you may have something there, I tend to keep all old pictures with cars and airplanes in them.

As I write this the bidding is up to $5252.00 with 4 hours to go. I will be interested in seeing if it reaches $8800. That would be the $5000 asking price in 2002 adjusted for inflation.

 

Well it did do better than the $8800 bid to $10,050 reserve not met.

 

Well it did do better than the $8800 bid to $10,050 reserve not met.

 

That's interesting. I wonder what the seller had the reserve set at?

 

Who knows what people expect to get out of things these days. One of the main reasons I passed on it besides the asking price was that I probably would have put a Buick 215 V8 in the car. I didn't feel bad about swapping one into my 77 Formula Astre, as the original engine and trans were long gone when I bought it. Sure does make it more fun to drive than the original Iron Duke Automatic would have been! I owned one of those and its 18+ second 1/4 mile times were agony, but it was a great bracket racing combo! Very consistent but slow times, and induced about 40% red lights by my opponents. Even in Bracket 2 that was 13 seconds and slower at the time.

 

True, even with no limited slip there was no danger of spinning the "huge" 13" radials!

 

Fold-out small brochure on the special model:
https://www.oldcarbrochures.org/Uni...ntiac-Astre-Lil-Wide-Track-Foldout/index.html

 

I've always liked the look of these since seeing the Astre Wagon in my 1976 Pontiac wagon dealership brochure. The Astre wagon even came in a GT model. I don't think I've ever seen any Astre variant in the wild.

 

A family friend of ours had a Sunbird wagon which was a recycled version of the Astre/Vega. I think it was a '79, amazingly, and it was a nice shade of green. (I like green cars!)

 

Yup both Chevy and Pontiac kept the wagon body style in production for 78 & 79 until the new FWD X-Bodies came out. Chevy put a Monza coupe front clip on them and sold them as Monza Wagons, Pontiac basically just renamed the Astre wagon a Sunbird wagon.
But the big improvement was that a Buick 3.2 & 3.8 V6 was now available in them, along with a TH350 transmission. Even in stock form with the new drivetrains they were much better than the Vega 2.3L, or the 2.5L Iron Duke engines, and the TH350 was a much better trans than the M200.
I had my 78 Sunbird wagon running low 13 second 1/4 mile times by changing the rear gear ratio from 2.56 to 3.73, adding a 4bbl intake and carb, headers, duel exhaust, and some head porting. When I added a 2004R trans it became a very nice driver. It is still running well down in Texas with its new owner.
I probably should have kept that car, but I always move on to the next challenge.