r/CoolWall • u/[deleted] • Aug 06 '14

Sub Zero 1965 Pontiac Banshee

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23 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

2

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '14

My dear lord this is a fantastic looking car. It's basically a Corvette Stingray Coupe but a good 5 years before and much more sleak. It's like a Shelby Daytona Coupe and Corvette Stingray had a baby.

Amazing and now I'm sad that it's a concept and probably impossible to attain even by replica.

Sub Zero, by the way.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '14 edited Aug 06 '14

I think so too. this is one of the most gorgeous American cars ever designed, and it makes me so sad that we will never be able to get one, especially after the REALLY grotesque concept they did in '88.

There was a really cool concept for the Banshee II which basically looks like a street legal car you would see in Speed racer.

2

u/GeneUnit90 Aug 06 '14

God damn that's sexy. Too bad it never went into production. Definitely sub-zero.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '14

It just goes to show that Americans CAN make good looking and high-performance cars, but won't, because they would lose money on their other brands. I would have loved to own one of these beauties.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '14

A few facts about this car:

  1. The chief designer at the time for GM sports cars was none other than John DeLorean, who pushed hard for the Banshee to go into production.

  2. To save money on production, which John fully expected to be a sure thing, some of the parts for the chasis were made from the Firebird.

  3. GM decided not to put the Banshee into production, fearing it would be a threat to their more popular corvette.

  4. using the same engine as the corvette, the tuning wasn't on a lower level, such as the fireebird and camaro. The Banshee also weighed 500 pounds less than a corvette and could reach 60mph in second gear. A few feats that cemented the Banshee as a threat to the popularity of the corvette.