1965 Pontiac 2+2

By Jay Hirsch

The Pontiac 2+2 made from 1964 to 1967 was a Catalina with special exterior and interior features. The interior was more like the top-of-the-line Bonneville.

What really separated the 2+2 from the standard Catalina, which had a 121-inch wheelbase and a length of 214 inches, was the 421-cid V-8/6.9-liter engine under the hood. Where the Catalina had the 389-cid V-8, the 2+2 had the 421 V-8, which was an option on the other full-sized Pontiacs.  Due to a GM policy at the time that prohibited intermediates such as the Tempest GTO from having an engine larger than 400 cid, the Catalina 2+2 became a 376-horsepower luxury car. The 1964 GTO was the brainchild of John DeLorean. Since GM would not allow DeLorean to install a 421 V-8 in the Tempest/GTO body, he created the Pontiac 2+2, which was more of a luxury-touring-muscle-car.

That 421 V-8 came standard with a 4-bbls carburetor. Three dual-barrel-carburetors were a $307 option! The three dual-barrel set-up is more commonly called three-deuces or tri-power.

pontiac22intIn 1965 Pontiac received a new body style with the two-door hardtop’s being a fastback in look, but not as radical as the fastbacks of GM cars in the late 1940s.  The 1965 Pontiac has what some refer to as “the Coke bottle look.” Where the 1961–1964 Pontiacs were squarish, the 1965 and later full-size Pontiacs were curvaceous and smooth.

The interior of the 2+2 had bucket seats and a center console that housed the shifter, whether a three-speed manual, four-speed Muncie or the Turbo Hydra-Matic. Underneath the car had heavy-duty coil springs and shocks, and dual exhausts. The car also rode on the new thin-red-stripe-wall tire of the time, the tire size being 8.25 x 14. The dash had a tachometer and vacuum gauge in addition to temperature, oil, amp. meter and of course fuel gauge.

In December 1964, when ordering the 2+2 pictured here, the original owners did not want power windows, as the wife had “a distrust for electric windows” since a friend with a 1959 Pontiac had experienced a problem with the driver’s door window due to a cracked wire. The window was in the down position when then this happened, and it started to rain.

The current owner, Charles Anastasio, owns several cars, from a 1937 Cord to this 1965 Pontiac 2+2. This particular 2+2 is a relatively low-mileage car, having gone just 79,000 miles. It was bought by a couple to be used primarily by the wife, who taught math in a school one mile from where they lived near Allentown, Pa. As long as the weather was good — no rain and no snow — she would walk the mile to school for exercise. When it did snow, her husband would take her in his GMC pickup, and she always managed to get a ride back home with a teacher who lived nearby.  She did occasionally drive this car to school, in the spring or early fall, and when she did, all the students thought she was the “coolest teacher” there, as she told Charles.

In 2011 a friend of the couple who knew Charles told him that, now being grandparents, they had decided to downsize and sell a few of their by now “collector cars,” including this nice 1965 Pontiac 2+2. Charles went to look at the car and decided “he had to buy it!” Except for the faded paint, which was not uncommon to GM cars of 1963–1966, the car was in excellent condition. The car even had the Tri-power option, as the husband knew that when driving around town only the middle carburetor was in use. The outer two only came into play when putting the pedal to the metal.

Charles took all the trim off the car and had the original Montero Red color sanded smooth to be used as a “base primer” for the new coat of Montero Red that was applied. Charles has learned from having a few cars painted in the past that as long as the body is perfect — no dings or rust — it is best to leave the original paint on, block sand as smooth as possible and then apply primer tinted the same color as the paint before spraying the new paint. The result can be seen in how the car now looks. The chrome  “just needed a good buffing out,”  as Charles told me.

While the seats were in great condition, the carpet in the front had seen better days, so Charles got the same color carpet in the same weave from a supplier in Oregon.  The white rubber mats came with the car when new, and the owners never used them, preferring to use black carpet mats they bought at Sears.

The exterior of the 2+2 differed from the standard Catalina with the addition of rear fender skirts, the word “421” on the front fenders, and “2+2” on the passenger side of the trunk and at the end of each rear fender.

For modern-day riding, Charles had radial red-stripe 225/75 x 14 tires installed with the correct 3/8-of-an-inch red stripe.  This makes for “a great riding and handling car.” What separates a car from the 1960s from cars made after 1975 is the radial tire.  Suspensions aside, it is the radial tire that changed the ride and handling of cars.

Pontiac hoped that the 2+2 would perk up the Catalina line, much as the GTO had done for the Tempest, but despite its best efforts, the 2+2 never reached the sales prominence of the GTO. While Pontiac’s hype for the 2+2 was better orchestrated than the GTO’s, the efforts did not bear much fruit. Just 11,521 2+2s were sold in 1965, with 6,383 selling in 1966, while the GTO sold 96,000 models in 1966.  In 1967 GM eased its restriction on engine size for their intermediate size cars, so 1967 would be the last year for the 2+2.  •pontiac22int