When Pontiac decided to name one of their models after Bonneville, the home of many a land speed attempt, you’d think they’d have kept the car true to its name. Still, Nice Price or Crack Pipe likes big-ass boats too. The General’s B-bodies began to suffer from hypothyroidism in the late 1960s, and while they claimed it was glandular, or that they were just “big boned”, there was no doubt that the top models from the General could be classified as full-figured. These aircraft carrier-sized cars allowed a broad canvas upon which GM’s designers brought seemingly annual reinterpretations of the brand’s visual identity. While the cars did express each divisions unique personality, sometimes the names affixed to them were at odds with their appearance. In the wild, Impalas are both quick and agile, but by the Nixon era, the Chevy Impala had grown to be more porcine than gracile. Buick’s LeSabre was now reminiscent of the axe wielded by a certain owner of a blue bull. And the Pontiac Bonneville – named after the venerated dry lake bed where for decades land speed records had been attempted, and men met their deaths in search of that elusive goal – had grown fat at the teat of corporate one-upsmanship. Especially by 1970, the Bonny engendered images of top-down trips to Vegas rather than a balls-out record run, cosmopolitan evenings on the town, instead of competition days under the brutal sun, and salt-rimmed margaritas, not salt-crusted tires, grilles and bodies. But it wasn’t always like that, and Pontiac earned the Bonneville name through its participation in runs at the Salt Flats, back in 1956. It was that year in which Salt Lake City mayor, and former Mormon Meteor driver Ab Jenkins, along with his son Marvin, shook the American unlimited and Class C stock car records with a 24-hour world speed record of 118.375 mph

Read the original here Jalopnik