Vehicle Description
1957 Pontiac Super Chief Custom Safari - Classic 4 Door Wagon -
White over Red - 347ci V8 - Automatic Transmission (Please note: If
you happen to be viewing this 1957 Pontiac Super Chief Custom
Safari on a website other than our Garage Kept Motors site, it's
possible that you've only seen some of our many photographs of the
car due to third-party website limitations. To be sure you access
all the more than 150 photographs, as well as a short start-up and
walk-around video, please go to our main website: Garage Kept
Motors.) For the family that wanted a hardtop but needed a station
wagon, the 1955 Pontiac Safari offered the best of both worlds
-Hemmings, April 2006 For the first 20 years after the end of World
War II, luxury and sportiness went together. The ideal of the
casual yet comfortable lifestyle was found in everything from
vacation advertising to clothing to architecture, and particularly
in the automobile. Nearly every body style was revamped between
1949 and 1957 to reflect that uniquely '50s American paradigm of
sporty luxury--roadsters returned as sports cars, coupes became
hardtops, sedans spawned four-door hardtops, pickup trucks turned
into coupe utilities and, perhaps most shockingly, the workaday
station wagon was reworked into the sport wagon. General Motors'
Pontiac Division was heartily in need of its own reinvention by the
early 1950s. The conservative, semi-formal image of Pontiac's cars
was mired in the division's prewar niche between basic Chevrolet
and slightly more formal Oldsmobile. But Oldsmobile had undergone
its own sporty rework with the introduction of the V-8-powered
Rocket 88 for 1949, and Pontiac was looking increasingly stodgy and
out of place. The Pontiac Safari, like its corporate cousin the
Chevrolet Nomad, had its origins with the 1954 Motorama Nomad,
which was a fantasy Corvette-based two-door station wagon. While
the Motorama Nomad was never intended for production, it was teased
in order to whet the public's appetite for something more than the
four-door family haulers that were the standard station wagon
offerings up to then. Both the Safari and the Nomad were envisioned
as a marriage between the good looks of a pillarless hardtop and
the utility of a station wagon. Offered here is a 1957 Pontiac
Super Chief Custom Safari, the highest-spec station-wagon offering
then available from GM's Pontiac Division. This beautifully
maintained, red-and-white-over-red wagon currently shows 69,648
miles on its odometer, or fewer than 1,100 miles per-year on
average since new. The properly refreshed exterior white paint
retains excellent gloss overall. The color nicely complements the
car's Motorama-Novad-inspired design, notably on the sloped rear.
The flash of red on the car's flanks adds flair, and the three star
emblems adjacent to the Safari script told gawkers that this was
indeed the top-of-the-line Pontiac 4-door wagon. The body sheet
metal is free of dents, dings, or other damage. (To best assess the
quality of the paint and trim finishes, please be sure to view the
close-up photographs of the car in the accompanying gallery.)
Delightfully unapologetic chrome trim, notably on the front grille,
both front and rear bumper (the latter with through-the-bumper
exhaust outlets (only one in use for the single-exhaust system),
window surrounds, body-side panels, and taillights, is all in
excellent condition with only minor patina from age on the side
mirror and door handles. Cabin glass and lighting lenses are clear
and undamaged. All factory badging-including the hood ornament,
Super Chief-script fender badges, Safari-script rear badges,
P-O-N-T-I-A-C tailgate chrome letters and rear stylized emblem-- is
all properly in place. Red-painted steel wheels with full,
brushed-metal wheel covers are mounted with period-correct
wide-whitewall tires. Inside, the exuberant optimism of the
mid-Fifties is on full display in both design and color scheme; the
look is an extrovert'
