Golden Generation - 1951 Pontiac Chieftain Streamliner Deluxe

If you love the fins of the later Fifties, sleek and superbly usable cars like this 1951 Pontiac Streamliner Deluxe are waiting to convert you to the previous generation.

- Nigel Boothman

“The garage door came up, I saw that sloping tail and I thought ‘that’ll do for me!’” It’s not the best starting point to drive a hard bargain, but we’ve all been there. You go to look at a car with your sensible head-on, prepared to ask all the right questions and walk away if you don’t get the right answers. And then you see it in the flesh and it’s even better than it looked in the pictures, and all reason goes out of the window. Sometimes this leads to disaster, but fate can land you with a wonderful result too, like this 1951 Pontiac Eight that Barry Dunwoodie fell for. “I saw it advertised in Classic American and it was local-ish to where I live in Dorset, so I thought I should give it a try. And you know the rest…”

When you see the car for yourself, either in person or in Jonny Fleetwood’s superb pictures, you can understand Barry’s reaction. Pontiac had been offering aero-inspired shapes since the Streamliner name appeared in 1941, and especially with their Sedan Coupe models from 1946. An update with higher and longer rear wings meant that Fisher Body gave us the most satisfying version of this shape from 1949 to ’51.

By the time this car left the factory in Pontiac, Michigan, the last of the Streamliners were still using engines familiar to those who bought the first models in ’41. Though Cadillac and Oldsmobile had moved on to V8s in 1949 and Buick favoured brawny overhead-valve straight eights, Pontiac remained lower in the pecking order with flathead straight-sixes and eights. But as Barry describes, the eight-cylinder version suits the car very well.