Forty years with the 1956 Pontiac

SWEDEN. Anders “Billa” Billström from Harnosand was fifteen when he rented a tow company to haul the dinged Pontiac four hundred yards through the forest. The year was 1975 and everyone shook their heads at the young moped rider. Six years later, he won the prize with it, and forty years later he still shifts his Pathfinder with the three on the tree. by Lars Krantz.

Click the pics and enjoy.

The year is 1966. Lennart Moller, a truck driver in  Härnösand, deregister his 1956 Pontiac Pathfinder.

The ten year old north Sweden car was getting rusty and was done.  It passed the inspection last year, but you never know what those blue-gray old men with shiny badges and army caps can find on it. In addition, the wife drove into the gate post with it.  The hood and bumper got a ding in the front.Lennart starts the original truck six and puts it in first gear one last time. He takes it around the back of the house , down the slope and behind a barn as far as possible. He revs up a little and turns the key for the last time and the motor will never start again. Soon, he stands at the front of the farm where the new car’s shiny paint catches the sun. He likes what he sees. No old scrap around.License plate tagged car BD27437 dies September 1, 1966 when it is deleted from the register of reserves equal twentieth paragraph, paragraph 4, the Highway law regalement.

The years come and go  and alder forest behind the house rises. In the winter, the car is covered with snow and in the summer  it’s drown  in the foliage.

Frame rails and floor softens as the Pontiac drops in the moss. Little boys throwing stones through windows and break away badges and strips. The ceiling rot and fall down. Rumors circles around about the car among the car guys of town but … it’s just a Canadian four door with a six that also sits hopelessly overgrown.1975. New litters of motoring enthusiasts matures, however, every year. Fresh moped riders go on voyages of discovery when the snow melts. Anders older brother told him  about  the ingrown Pontiac and Anders “Billa” Billström encouraged the older Caj-Åke Hägglund to drive him in his red Volvo Amazon. In the car is also Lasse Andersson and Benka Olofsson. The quartet found  the car and the happiness is complete. They sit in it and look around.
-This we’ll wash off and go cruzin for girls  in the fall, says Caj-Åke.

Well Caj-Åke is not known as a great mechanic in town but Lasse Andersson can weld and Billa has a garage. Lasse nods and from there it is no turning back.

-I Will pull the Pontiac home, says Billa at the dinner table that night.
All shakes their heads at the lost moped rider with the hair on the shoulders except the father who calmly sucks on his pipe.

The Pontiac’s name is Pathfinder De Luxe and was built in Canada. In Canada they built the Pontiac on Chevrolet frames. Consequently, no Pathfinders have the cross section frame and length of 5.50 meters. The length is written to 5.05 meters and it’s a Bel Air frame that runs along the quarter panels insides. You could choose from the Chevrolet 265 V8 or the 261 straight so called truck six. Cast iron Powerglide or three-speed manual was sitting behind.

Billa hade talked to the owner and got the car for free on the promise to show up when finished.

The problem was the growth of large trees. He goes to Böhrlins salvage company and present a recovery plan.

There, he will not be dismissed. On the contrary, brothers Böhrlin take him seriously and also seems amused by the commission.

Billa and friends know shops and cuts trees, and at the agreed time the mighty ten ton truck slowly and carefully winches up the Pontiac on the road and drives it home to Billa’s parents’ lot in the middle of the town. On the clean gravel in front of the house, Mr and Mrs Billström now has a rusty junk  car with broken windows smelling ditch. The father calmly sucking on his pipe.

Fall comes but there will be no girl-pick-ups in the car and Caj-Åke and Benka find more attractive alternatives.

Lasse and Billa press on with the plumber firms gas welding equipment  all winter but when the summer of 1976 comes, the car is not even half finished.

Billa buys out Lasse. Now he owns the car. There will be the summer of 1977. The magazine SE sells single copies by stereotypical image of the greasers.

In Härnösand, the gathering place for greasers’ are simply called The Meeting, a parking lot  in the middle of town but no Pontiac 56 shows up this  year either.

Billa goes into the service and get tips on where a parts car with nice windows  and front is resting in the grass.    It’s in  Hammarstrand about 100 miles away. He gets it for 350 crowns. (40 bucks).  An old tired tipper doing 40 m/h are used. The extended taxi is winched on the bed. Late home the driver only raises the bed and tippes it off with a bang on the slopes. The windows held.  After that  a slant six with manual gearbox out of a Chevrolet 55 is bought from neighbor city, Sundsvall.The Chevrolet 1955 in Sundsvall who was chopped and painted purple  donated the motor and box to Härnösand. Still spinning  without any work done to it.

At the Billströms the garage is still occupied. One year to go and driving license will come for Billa in 1978 as well as all sorts of Valiant cars  and Dodge Darts. The father notes and sucks on his pipe.
-One Valiant 1967 I had was so wasted that I always had two cleaned spark plugs in my pocket. I switched the spark plugs on cylinder one and five each morning, remembered the gear head.

1979 is here. At The Meeting  people are talking about the cars of the city.
No, it was apparently never anything with that Pontiac.

It was a crazy idea from the start, they discussed.

Maybe turn to bet a fiver that  it never again will roll on the street. A year later, in 1980, meat the undersigned Anders “Billa” Billström for the first time. He sat in a white, stylish, two-door Valiant with red interior and chrome rims.

1981 came and the alarm goes through open car windows on The Meeting. The city’s hot rod painter number one, Calle Lundkvist, have the car out there with him!
– Gosh.  The crashed, rusty car had been aligned, welded and striped down to the bare metal by Billström. Many drive out to the painting garage to see for themselves.

In late winter of 1981 a shiny blue and white car is picked up from paintwork. The father sucking on his pipe, and indeed appears there a little smile.

In the summer of 1981, the car wins first prize in an exhibition in the  home town.
-Nahh, It was just because Aberg was the judge and he likes the fifties cars, apologizes the restorer 30 years later.

We roll the streets on stock rims with quiet diagonals. It smells great in the old car. The “lost item”  neals quietly in the transition between the gravel road and asphalt. The three-speed box gets the car to accelerate by the leisurely dignity that only the really big Americans can muster.

The record player plays Louie Louie by the Kingsmen. Outside the whitewalls  are dancing one elbow length from the aged curbs.

Inside the sun is playing  in the  chromed spokes of the steering wheel. We sit quietly  just feeling the spirit and Billa wink’s  at me. We’re 18 again.

He remembers the winter of 1981. The car had just come from the paint and got the moldings  mounted. Billa had his TV-puck jacket on. He played elite hockey for junior players in the team Ångermanland.I lean back and enjoy watching the drill where he takes the car around town. He has become one with it during the lifelong ownership. Quietly I  scribble down as he sums up: Today this is a mediocre renovation. Everything can be done better. We welded with dads gas welding. We were 15, 16 years old. Now the car has been in service for 33 years.

Some years it’s been  60 miles, others  3000 miles. I’ve had to replace a quarter panel. The interior is what it is, but we did what we could in 1981.

It’s been like this and will remain so and it’s in harmony with the licence plate.

I thank him for the ride  and step out in 2014. Back home, I look at the pictures. The eyes fall on the tag DUG. The translated message of  the cut of northern Swedish way to address  words is : “Good enoug’  “

Bonus material. Things that never fit in a paper mag.  but Worldkustom has space! This would have been lost if published in a wooden magazine.

Anders “Billa” Billström pasting the first modern tax sticker on the new plates in 1981. The car is resurrected.  Summer of 1981. Last baggage in place prior to the vacation trip to Denmark.

Sixties. Do you remember the doll that could blink? The author had a similar one. Liquid crystals were space technology in the early sixties. It hung there when they found the car in the woods. It was decided immediately that it would remain as it matched the body type.

In Karlstad they ended up by chance at the Pontiac Oakland Meet. There was two other 1956 cars  from Norway. The three crews bailed out how ever on the serious and certainly well executed meeting and went to the lake to swim instead. Glorious youth.

The city name  sticker were sold at the OK gas station in 1982, and they dared pasting it on the car. The greaser fights between cites back  from the fifties and  sixties in Sweden were over. One advantage of vinyl was that everyone had something to do. -Hey you guys. What’s it go’na be? Michael Landon or Bobby Vinton?

 

Door insides still  from the fifties, a belt of the child seat from the time it was needed, roof of the eighties and seventies speakers in tacky plastic with terrible sound. Please don’t touch anything Billström! These are golden memorys.

 

Sold in Sweden would my old boss Magnus Karlsson at Bilsport Classic say.
Truck owner, Knut Jönsson in Råneå became the first owner of 7/8 in 1956. The car was out of Norrland Motors in Lulea autumn of 1958 where the new owner became lumber meter Carl-Bertil Levin in Jokkmokk. On 5 March 1962 the car came to Norrland Motors again before Runehammar Branch in Gällivare bought on 22 March. April 17 became Knut Emmoth, Gällivare owner and May 23, 1962, he sold to Lennart Moller, Gällivare who took it to Härnösand and used it until 1966, a total for the car ….  only ten years.

The Canada cars were not as fine looked upon  as the US-built cars, but even here there were distinctions. Laurentian was luxurious. Pathfinder was cheaper. Today we appreciate Pontiac’s Canadian twist and also they were made in smaller series making them rare. 

What fifteen year old ashore a six-year renovation? Anders Billström also kept his promise and showed it to Lennart. His wife, who drove into the post, did not recognize the car. -It was a black car, she said.

The door inside survived several years of rain in the forest with shattered glass.

“The first wash ” rote the 15 year old in his album back in 1975. 

Anders Billström from Harnosand dragged home, at the age of fifteen, a wreck from the forest. The young gun kept focused during six long years of restoring and still has the car.  This year, 2015 they  celebrate 40 years together.