S car added to the Break Away Squad
 

This car did get mentioned on the thread of SD455DJ's sweet 350 HO Custom S 4 door sedan but I figured I should give it it's own thread here.

In August or so I picked up this 69 Custom S 2dr hardtop. Nothing special option wise (350 2bbl, th400, AC, p.s., manual drums, radio and clock etc) but it's a real survivor. 32k original miles, original paint and interior, zero rust and really clean in and out. Full documentation from new. needs a going through mechanically and a nice original style exhaust (single) which I already received but have yet to install.

It had white letter tires which did nothing for me so I bought some radial equivalent stock sized (215/75/14) radial white line tires. Unfortunately I'm waiting for a well driller at my storage building so it still is running bluewalls!

Super dry car as attested by the factory trunk speckle. Major bummer is roof and trunk paint are heat damaged. Car was in a storage unit that had a fire a few units down. No metal or interior damage and surprisingly no smoke smell inside but car cover kind of sank into paint and messed it up enough that it will need paint one day. If it had had a repaint I'd probably be able to polish out things but factory paint is so thin any buffing or sanding will penetrate before it can smooth the surface.

Attachment 643581

A nice touch last month was replacing the original 350 emblems on the rockers with NOS units. Just a bit of sneaky resto! The bottom of the fenders are absolutely rust free, a darn rare sight on original paint fenders and also nice was the aluminum (factory on very late production 69 A bodies) rocker moldings were really nice too, they usually sand blast way faster than the earlier stainless moldings.

Sorry about the upside down pic!

As always John, these low mileage survivor cars find you and extremely clean.

Neat car and congrats on the new find which will have some great company.

The obvious remainders needed in the collection are a Tempest 2 or 4 door sedan (this is the only model name I’m missing). Something with a RAIV, something with a 3 on the tree

Very nice Custom S John! You have the most amazing '69 Pontiac lineup there is. Can you post the PHS, build sheet or window sticker? I'd love to see one of those, or all...lol! What dealership? Assembly plant...Trim tag?

Dennis

Expresso Brown, best color on 69 Lemans/ GTO.

It’s a beautiful color but like the burgundy, silver and gold they didn’t hold up well if they weren’t hyper maintained so by the early 70’s most of those Expresso cars looked like brown primer.

Btw, I’m sure Expresso was expressly (pardon the pun) selected by GM in 69 to copy a nearly identical and popular mid to late 60’s Mercedes color called Havana Brown.

Great find, North. Big Expresso fan here.

Willy Wonka and his Chocolate Break Away factory.

My old two barrel Expresso car. I bought it from the original owner and it was loaded with options.

I corrected a factory error on my Custom S, car was built with a wood grained dash bezel which was not available on a Custom S (standard on GTO and LeMans Safari, optional on LeMans, not available on Custom S or Tempest). I found NOS non woodgrain dash bezels and installed them on the Custom S. This worked out great because my low mile survivor LeMans ragtop needed a woodgrained radio bezel and I didn't want a repro one on such an original car. The one off the Custom S looks NOS (The Custom S only has 30k miles).

The non-woodgrain bezels have the ribbed area painted silver, looks like the same silver you see on grilles etc

Nice !!!

Interesting to see the lower AC duct painted the dash color (looks good!). For some reason I thought they were all black in 70... but yard work in this heat probably did some damage.

Mike

in 69 the big underdash plenums are all dash colored. Some (but not all) 69's including this one, have the flexible duct that goes under the column to the left duct dash colored too. It is molded in gold, not sure why they did it since you can't see it.

Thanks north!

That tidbit about a non-visible duct molded in color is an interesting contrast to a lot of modern cost-focused decisions. Lots of overhead in sourcing, inventory, manufacturing, and field support to make that happen for what is honestly a pretty small number of parts. The priorities were different then...

Were these one-year-only parts? If not, one-year-only colors?

i love your e brown cars. always liked that color. a friend had a 69 ra4 gto that color. i got rid of one that would have been totally killer for your collection. it was a e brown 69 bonneville with a 3 speed manual transmission on the column. i gave it to a friend for hauling some cars for me. he might still have it.

I think the lower AC ducting is functionally the same 69-72. I've only ever seen one 3 on the tree big 69, it was a surprisingly otherwise well-equipped bonneville convertible in upstate New York but with Cali tags.

the one i had was pretty loaded and a brougham to boot and had bucket seats. kinda weird with the 3 on the column and no console.