This 1947 Pontiac Streamliner Encapsulates the Style and Technology of World War II-era America
Forties cars deserve more love. They are representative of a tumultuous period that shaped the modern world and perfectly represent the technological level of the United States at the start of World War II. High-performance piston aircraft engines and their high-octane fuel, jet planes, rocket science, and the atomic bomb were all still in the future, but ’40s cars showcase the jumping off point for all that. It makes them simultaneously accessible in a way later cars (or any tech) are not, but historically significant in a huge way. They’re surprisingly inexpensive, too, probably because, as one writer put it “the rakish, utterly impractical expressions of wealth and power that had flourished a few years earlier and had made men’s pulses race had withered in the chill of the Depression, leaving only the hardiest family cars behind.”
Yet these were still incredibly stylish family cars, and their hardy design was welcomed during the wartime years when cars were out of production. They were welcomed in the DIY era that followed too, as the “nation of mechanics” that had weathered the Depression and won the war kept their can-do attitude going at home, performing their own auto maintenance and repairs, and often accessorizing thanks to myriad aftermarket suppliers eager to sell anything from steering wheel knobs to high-compression cylinder heads. The same holds true for today’s enthusiast—just ask the owner of this 1947 Streamliner Six turned Streamliner Eight, Jerry Plante of Candia, New Hampshire.
This 1947 Pontiac Streamliner Encapsulates the Style and Technology of World War II-era America
The historical aspect deserves more context. It’s fairly well known that the 1946-’49 period was a shift from carmakers issuing lightly restyled versions of their prewar models to entirely new designs. Studebaker was first with a new body in 1947; Hudson, Cadillac, and the senior Oldsmobiles followed in 1948; and essentially everyone else had a new-looking car for the 1949 model year featuring far more integrated fender shapes, or even a complete envelope body where the vestigial separate fenders had been banished entirely. Chrysler marques were the last to undergo a full restyle, wearing their 1942-style bodies part-way through the 1949 model year. Pontiac was among the 1949 group that went on sale late in 1948, making our subject car emblematic of the 1942-’48 cars as a whole and a good representative of Pontiac’s pre-1955 “flathead” era as well.
The retooling to make a new postwar car took a while because while America came out of World War II in better shape than most of the world, it was still a bumpy reentry to peacetime. Shifting the U.S. economy to a full wartime footing didn’t happen instantaneously on the Monday morning after the Pearl Harbor attack. It didn’t wind down instantly either. In the face of massive public resistance, an overhaul of the U.S. military had begun in 1938. As in 1917, the Federal government sought to retool America’s automotive industry to supply a modern fighting force.
By the time the 1941 cars went on sale in the autumn of 1940, the Detroit-centered Arsenal of Democracy was already supplying British forces fighting Germany and Italy overseas. This Lend-Lease production stimulated the economy, and at the same time a growing sense that war with the Axis powers was inevitable must have made Americans anxious about potential shortages. That made 1941 a banner sales year across the industry, particularly for Pontiac, which moved 330,061 units. It was the best sales year Pontiac would see between its 1926 debut and 1950, besting the previous 244,584-car record set in 1928.
For 1942, Pontiacs used the same body as in 1941, but the fenders and grille were restyled to look more massive, with a new emphasis on horizontal lines in the front-end design. They also sported extensions of the front fenders bolted onto the doors, thematically in line with the “Airfoil” fenders of the new-for-’42 Buick. All four fenders also wore speedlines, in keeping with the Streamline Moderne tastes of the day.
Pontiac by this time was heavily involved in defense work, earning the first Army-Navy “E” award for military production. Between the start of 1942-model production in the late summer of ’41 and the halt on February 10, production of Pontiac cars totaled 83,555. Those cars built after January 1, 1942, got so-called “blackout” trim where the bumpers were still chrome but other brightwork was painted. Despite the name, this had nothing to do with air raids or U-boats but was a way to save strategically critical chromium and nickel.
Interestingly, by mid-1945, it had already been decided that wartime production could begin easing back into peacetime manufacture of consumer goods. The first postwar Pontiac (a Streamliner Sedan Coupe fastback like this one) was ready just 29 days after the Japanese surrender, on September 13. However, it took almost 9 months to achieve full production thanks in part to shortages and labor unrest. Pent-up demand meant that the 137,640 Pontiac build for 1946 sold quickly and often for more than sticker. The attitude among many car dealers was that wait lists were so long, it didn’t matter if the original buyer backed out of the sale. Similarly, deluxe models proliferated in this era because of their higher profit margins and the consumer’s willingness to buy whatever was available.
It’s perhaps for that reason that when Pontiac cars returned after World War II, it was the B-body Streamliner with a more-luxurious 122-inch wheelbase that entered production first. The A-body Torpedo model, with its 119-inch wheelbase, was the car that finally arrived in June. Either model could be had with a six- or an eight-cylinder engine. Both were flatheads and largely unchanged since 1941. The six-cylinder displaced 239-cu.in. and was rated at 90 hp with the standard 6.5:1 compression cylinder head. An optional head bumped that up to 7.5:1. The straight-eight made 103 hp from its 249-cu.in. with 6.5:1 compression; it too had an optional 7.5:1 cylinder head.
Throughout this period, Pontiacs—regardless of engine—used a column-shifted three-speed manual transmission, an open driveshaft, and a Hotchkiss-style rear end, plus GM’s second-generation IFS design developed in the late 1930s. Only in 1948 did the Hydra-Matic automatic appear as an option in Pontiacs. To make up for some of the parasitic loss inherent in early automatic designs, GM re-tuned the straight-eight to make 104 hp with standard compression and 106 hp in high-compression guise.
In the big picture, the venerable Pontiac straight-eight has its origins in 1933, when GM made the bold decision to drop the venerable split-head six that Pontiac had used since ’26 and replace it with a 223-cu.in., 77-hp flathead eight. It would grow and adapt to its surrounding chassis steadily until making its final appearance for ’54. Along with Packard, Pontiac would be the last American car to be offered with a straight-eight. Its lease on life was probably inadvertently extended by the untimely death of Pontiac General Manager Arnold Lenz in a railroad grade-crossing accident. Supposedly the ’53 Pontiac chassis was designed to accommodate the V-8 that was ultimately released in ’55, ending the flathead Pontiac era entirely, as the six-cylinder—itself a 1935 debutante—was also axed from the lineup with no replacement until the mid-1960s.
Stylistically, 1947 to 1948 marks a rather major if often-overlooked change in Pontiac. The grille and bumpers had been changed from 1942 to ’46, but other than those details, the majority of the 1946 and ’47 styling was still solidly in the 1942 vein. The 1948 cars used the same bodies but sloughed off most of the Streamline Moderne for trim that looked ahead to 1950s designs. The Silver Streak trim over the nose and trunk was revised and the iconic speedlines on the fenders were removed entirely, replaced with a simple chrome spear.
That makes our subject car a fitting representation of this era, showing Pontiac on the cusp of shedding the pre-war era in styling and design. It even showcases the technological evolution, as its 1948 straight-eight engine replaced a worn-out original 90-hp six-cylinder and its 104 hp even outdoes the rating of the 1947 eight. Jerry, however, wasn’t working to acquire a piece of history in quite so literal a way. Mostly, he wanted a Pontiac cruiser with a bit more room and a different ’47 had caught his eye.
“In early 2019, I went to a big flea market at the dragstrip near Auburn, Maine. I ran across a ’47 there on a trailer, for sale. I had been looking for something like that. I have a Solstice and two GTOs, but I wanted what I call a ‘big car.’ I was kind of looking for a Catalina or a Bonneville. Something big. My mother had a ’49 fastback. It was different from the ’47, but there were a lot of similarities. Hers was all-black and a three-speed on the column. The ’47 had nice styling, like an early GTO, and I thought it was cool when I saw it. I hadn’t really paid attention until I saw the car at the swap meet in the first place.”
Unfortunately, the time involved in getting his wife on board with the purchase meant Jerry was the second buyer and didn’t manage to nab that ’47, though he subsequently became friends with the buyer. Thankfully, fate intervened to find him another.
“I was at the directors’ meeting of the car club I belong to. We were looking for a new GTO for a member and then came across this ’47 at a car lot in Auburn, Maine. I gave him a deposit over the phone. My birthday was coming up on July 2, so I asked my wife if she wanted to go look at the car. She didn’t know I already had a deposit on it, but since she’d already agreed to the other car, I figured I was grandfathered in.”
What they found was not perfect but promising to a mechanically handy guy like Jerry. “There were no brakes, but it started and ran, so I came back a few days later with a trailer and picked it up.” Perhaps the best part? The non-working brakes were because someone had gone to the trouble of installing all new parts on the backing plates but failed to adjust them. “I took the ’47 over to a guy I know here in town to look at the brakes. I figured it was a burst brake line but all he had to do was go around and tighten them up and they worked fine. I was happy with that!”
Once the car was safe, Jerry took to driving it around immediately, taking the time to replace the tires after a persistent shake cropped up around 35 mph. The engine, however, would never run to his satisfaction.
“I spent the better part of the year trying to tune it up. The timing on these cars is on the flywheel and I could never really find it or get it set properly.” A trip to an expert revealed that two cylinders were simply dead and that the only fix was to rebuild the engine—the approximately $5,000 cost of which Jerry found unpalatable, so he began to explore other possibilities. His later-model Pontiac proclivities made him consider adapting something newer into the 1947, perhaps a 1966-1969 Pontiac SOHC six-cylinder.
“I found an OHC six in Massachusetts that had just been pulled from a ’68 Pontiac. It spun over nicely, and it was complete with starter, distributor, and carburetor. All it needed was a flywheel. I figured it was still a Pontiac six cylinder, but the more I looked into it, by the time you bought a hydraulic clutch, did the fabrication for the transmission and motor mounts, and built a driveshaft—it was going to be close to $5,000. The other part of switching to the OHC six would have required that I would have to convert to a 12-volt electrical system.”
Stymied, Jerry did nothing for a while, in which time a solution presented itself.
“I found a ’48 two-door sedan for sale in Egg Harbor, New Jersey. The seller, then in his 80s, had been going around flea markets for 30 years buying parts for his ’48. The body was stripped down, in primer, and he’d amassed a lot of NOS parts for it, and he was asking $3,000. It occurred to me that was the smart move. I told my wife I had to go to New Jersey to buy the motor and when I got back, I said ‘I’m sorry, the car came with the motor.’”
Domestic tranquility assured; Jerry set to work transferring the fresh straight-eight to the tired Streamliner Six. It was a straightforward job with all the correct parts on hand and in good shape already.
“The deal with the ’47s and ’48s is that everything fits,” Jerry explains. “The frame is already drilled. Except for the exhaust pipe, which is a different length. And the fan shroud is too big for a six versus an eight.” The work, now completed, is almost undetectable. “When you look at the data tag on the firewall, it tells you it’s a P6—a six-cylinder. I don’t claim it’s the original engine, but that it’s a year newer. Unless you’re an expert or I tell you, you don’t pick up on it. At the Pontiac-Oakland Club International conventions, obviously they figure it out.”
Jerry has no regrets. His $3,000 engine has proved an excellent investment, and he’s got no plans to go back. “It runs fabulous now. I couldn’t get over how well it ran. You’re never sure with an engine you didn’t rebuild, there was no paperwork, and the seller had passed away. I gave the six-cylinder away. I didn’t want to look at it. I kept only the spare generator and the air cleaner.”
With it running so nicely, Jerry says he drives the car constantly, and he’s started to pick away at re-doing parts of the interior that have decayed past the point of preservation. It’s all part of the joy of driving and maintaining one of those amazing ’40s cars.
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