1967 Pontiac LeMans Sprint Overhead Cam Six OHC 6 4 Speed in Red on My Car Story with Lou Costabile

Hi, I'm Lew with another episode of My Car Story. Today we're at the greatest muscle car show on the planet, the Muscle Car and Corvette National, and it's in Rosemont, Illinois. In the description of this video you can check it out and make sure you come to one of these great shows. I've got Jim Black with me and he's got an interesting car. Jim, what year make and model is this one? Oh, this is a 1967 Pontiac Le Mans Sprint. Let's take a look at that. We're going to find out all about the Sprint. So, Jim, come on back with me. You have this car, and what's the special feature of this car? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, are you the president or the registrar? How's this work? Actually, I'm the president of the Overhead Cammer's Club, a club devoted strictly to the overhead cam six engine made by Pontiac from 1966 to 1969. Now, did you find, I want to show it from the side for a second, there's the marker or the badge, the Overhead Cam Six Sprint. We've got Sprint here. Come on back with me. So, did you find that there were other people that had them? How'd you kind of develop the club? Well, I knew there were some people out there that were interested, so about 25 years ago I started a registry and soon had over a hundred people around the country that had these cars. And then we decided to go ahead and start a specialty club within Pontiac Oakland International. And the specialty club was devoted strictly to the engine. So, in fact, it's one of the few clubs around that has a club devoted strictly to an engine rather than a make and model, which is very, very unique. So, and we have around 250 members in that club right now. That's amazing. And we are celebrating our 25th anniversary this year with a display of the Overhead Cammer's. As you see there. Yeah, we're just getting set up right now. That's super cool. The Le Mans and the gas tank is behind the right here. Yeah, you bet. There we go. The Pontiac. Let's pop that trunk. We've got a little special trunk of treat for them. Well, it's cool that you saw the interest. Wow, your car looks like it's showroom condition. How long did it take you to restore it? Oh, I think probably the first, I got, I finished it in 95. It took me probably about three or four years to get it done. And what year did you buy it? In 1982. Wow. I had it for quite a while as a driver before I started to restore it. Wow. I don't let people pause on that. Yeah, and this ad was kind of neat because it basically is the same color combination. What's the color on the car? Regimental red is the official color. Regimental red. Those of us in the business know that there's lots and lots of different color reds. Right. With an Overhead Cam, six like this, who needs an eight? That is great. All right, we'll close that. Featured on that. May I open it? All right. Yeah, the Le Mans was the high end of the intermediates, the Tempest, then Tempest Custom, then the Le Mans. And then, of course, the GTO had its own model in 1966. And in 64, it was an option. Yeah, it was an option in 64 and 5. And in 1966, it became its own model. Like the wood grain wheel. Yeah, this is really well appointed, better than a lot of GTOs. Console, four speed bucket seats with the wood wheel and the rally, well, the rally instrumentation. The right amount of pedals. Yeah, right. Three pedals. Yeah, the wood console, really nice. I see your clocks working. Yeah, and you had the option to have either an in-dash tech or I like the Pontiacs because they had the hood tech, which is what we have. And you were sharing that they have the hood tech too. Yeah, yeah. Hood tech was an option starting in, I guess as a dealer option in late 66. And then in 67, it became a hard option. This particular hood tech has a redline of 6,500 RPM, which is the high revving capability of the overhead cam six, the V8s would redline at 5,500. Interesting. Let's pop the hood, shall we? There's the single overhead cam engine that started the whole thing. So how did you know about putting like the CD there and all of the pieces? I'm looking at this little badge right there. Oh, there's a lot of the stuff that I found out through the GTO guide and online looking at other, they had sticker packages you could purchase like 3M's performance and you could look at other cars and find out where stuff went. Some of the color markings, some stuff I found in the restoration, like the ZR code on the firewall, which was the engine code. Where's the firewall tag? Right there. Okay, ZR right there. There's the firewall tag over there. But you couldn't tell from the firewall tag or the VIN, whether it was equipped with a sprint engine or not. You had to get that through Pontiac Historical Services, who would go ahead and decode the build sheet. Wow. That's great. But the engine was an inline overhead cam six. The cam set on top. It was belt driven. Very, very unique for American cars at that time. The basic engine came with the one barrel, which produced 165 horsepower. But if you got the one with the four barrel quadra jet, and incidentally, the overhead cam six was the first car to ever have the quadra jet four barrel. They didn't use those on the GTO's until 1967. But they had them on the overhead cam sixes in 66. With that four barrel on the high compression, 10.5 to one compression, they put out 215 horsepower in 1967. I think they started out at a little less than that in 1966. Let's fire it up, shall we? We'll step on the brakes. Go for a second. Can you step on the brakes for a second? Caretaker not only exciting stuff to have all these cars here. Yes. Thanks so much for coming to the muscle car show and connecting this all up and doing this show. I'm excited to see what the people around the world think about your car. All right. Thanks a lot. You're welcome. Appreciate it. Bye-bye.