Over the course of American auto design history, John DeLorean has contributed some of the market’s most off-the-wall designs. During his time with GM, he was able to foresee some of the styling cues that would inevitably become part of the GM “flavor” while trying to establish for Pontiac a two-seat sports market that would never be realized for the automaker.
While it was true that Pontiac readily outsold Buick and Oldsmobile during the early ’60s, the company still had no equivalent to the Corvette. DeLorean thus presented the Banshee concept, known by GM as Project XP-833, as a mid model between the Vette and the Camaro.
Aside from presenting itself as Pontiac’s first true sportster, the Banshee was also a pioneer in that it introduced for the automaker a state-of-the-art 6-cylinder with a cross-flow head, single overhead cam and a block based on the then redesigned Chevy engine block.
As with other performance and sports models from the General, the Banshee had to “tip-toe” around the Corvette, and as the concept itself was seen to be too close in resemblance to the Vette GM bosses asked DeLorean that he cease further development of the XP-833.
The Banshee thus never became a production reality for John DeLorean and Pontiac, but it’s cooling intakes under the car’s nose, as well as short decklid, raked windshield and other styling cues blatantly hinted at those that became very real for the Corvette, Firebird and other GM makes.
Whether or not the Banshee would have ever outsold the Corvette will never be seen, and so we’ll never know if it would have paved a way for GM’s sports car market, but Barrett-Jackson offered this only-existing coupe variant at their Scottsdale auction.
DeLorean and Pete Estes only built this and one other Banshee, a convertible, and the two prototypes are the only real manifestations of what was John DeLorean’s vision for a new sports car milestone for GM!
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