1965 Pontiac Vivant

The 1965 “Pontiac” Vivant

The Vivant, a one-off prototype built by Herb Adams
and a trio of British panel beaters,
and it was making its first public showing in more than 40 years.

Herb Adams, the famed Pontiac engineer behind the Trans Am,
the GTO Judge and the Super Duty 455, designed the Vivant right out of college,
in about 1965, inspired by the Alfa Romeo B.A.T. concept cars
from more than a decade prior.

Though he worked for Pontiac at the time,
he pursued the Vivant as a side project,
without any assistance from Pontiac itself.

Drawing on his experience as a competitor
in the Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild contests, he built a model of his design.

That encouraged him to go ahead and build a chassis in his garage
using Pontiac parts sourced from a junkyard, including a Tempest transaxle,
full-size Pontiac eight-lug wheels, and a Pontiac 370-cu.in. V-8.

When it came time to build the complex body, he turned to a trio
of Englishmen he met - Jack Henser, Harry Kennedy, and John Glover,
collectively known as "The Beatles of Troy, Michigan"
- who had been building race cars for such quarter-mile notables
as the Ramchargers, Connie Kalitta, Don Garlits, and Tommy Ivo.

Adams said they agreed to build the Vivant's body out of aluminum as a calling card, and at a great discount versus what it would have cost to have gone through
the same fabricators that did prototype work for GM at the time.

They finished it around late 1965 or early 1966,
in time for it to appear at the Detroit Autorama,
but Adams was soon on to the next car and sold the Vivant
to settle some debts he incurred while racing in SCCA Trans-Am.

It then went into hiding for the next 40 or so years,
until a trio of investors in Ohio found it in storage.

Not knowing exactly what it was they found, they turned to
the Lost and Found column in Hemmings Classic Car,
where it initially ran in the March 2009 issue.

After a follow-up a few months later,
Lost and Found readers identified it as the Vivant
and put us in touch with Adams to get the whole story,
which appeared in the February 2010 issue.

Since then, collector and author Mark Brinker
bought the Vivant and has started planning a full restoration of the car.