Preserving a piece of Parisienne history

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This article was published 12/05/2022 (1421 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jim Schultz is no stranger to owning rare vehicles in Westman.

Next year will mark 20 years since a piece of Pontiac history caught his eye, prompting him to acquire and restore a 1958 Pontiac Parisienne.

“The thing I’ve noticed over the last few years as I’m getting older is that a ’58 still drives like a ’58, it’s not the modern stuff,” Schultz, 79, said as he laughed.

“You get used to the modern cars, and when you go back to one of those, they are a lot of fun, but they don’t handle and perform like a new car does.”

Years ago, the Brandon resident, who has lived off and on in the city since 1968, headed out to Nanaimo, B.C., for a trip where a 1958 Pontiac Laurentian on display in a shopping mall got his attention.

After doing some research into the Parisienne, a similar model, Schultz was convinced it was the next car of his to set his ambitions on restoring should he find one.

“I was just really taken with it — the chrome, the dash. To me the car personified the cars of the ’50s.”

That goal became a reality in 2003, when Schultz came across a two-tone black and white Parisienne that had been left to rust out beside a shed at a Virden concrete business.

He said the fellow from Virden who ran the business had full intentions of restoring the vehicle, but sold it to him for $1,500 as he was battling Parkinson’s disease. At the time, the vehicle had 83,000 miles on the odometer.

“It was a basket case. It was pretty badly rusted in the floor,” he said.

“The rear quarters were bad and the bottom of the trunk area was non-existent. It had been cut out already — it was just a hole in the body.”

Schultz said the existing engine was already out of the car when he bought it, and there were no fenders or hood. Through all the work that was required to get the vehicle in driveable condition, he said he has dismantled five parts cars to get enough pieces to restore the ’58 Parisienne. The original colour received a much-needed paint job, changing the two-tone colour scheme to teal and cream.

He said the V8 engine and 305 700R4 transmission have been taken out of a 1983 Chevy half-ton, and can get close to 26 miles per gallon, which he enjoys for a car that size.

After rounding up a parts car that had the fenders he needed, Schultz chuckled as he recalled learning that the man he bought the car from had the original missing fenders hidden behind his barn.

Picking up a couple of extras never hurt.

Restoring the car took several years and since then, Schultz said he has had the car on the road for the last decade and has added an extra 15,000 miles to the vehicle.

Sitting inside the Pontiac, the passenger can get a sense of the scale and effort that went into making vehicles of that stature in the height of American exceptionalism.

From its two-tone interior and smooth bench seating, Schultz smiled when he noted the extra accessories that went into 1950s vehicles, including a functional cigarette lighter and separate ashtrays built into the dash.

He would still like to restore the Wonder Bar radio under the dash and has the parts to fix it after purchasing a replacement model down in Florida.

He said his Parisienne is pretty rare in nature for Westman and made reference to the car not becoming a stand-alone model for Pontiac until 1959, one year after his was manufactured.

In 1958, the Parisienne was manufactured as the variation of the Laurentian, and he figures there were only 1,226 of the V8 hardtop models ever produced.

“They look a lot like the American Pontiac Bonneville, but the drivetrain is totally different.”

He said Canadian models — known as the Parisienne — were based on a Chevrolet chassis and drivetrain. In the United States, the American model — known as the Bonneville — was based on a older-style chassis four inches longer.

“It’s a 10-to-one ratio in terms of the Parisienne to the Bonnevilles. They made a lot more Bonnevilles than they did Parisiennes, so it’s a fairly rare car,” he said.

“It goes along the road real nice. It’s a big car — that’s the only complaint I have about it. It’s been a long haul.”

As he approaches turning 80, Schultz said owning and restoring vehicles has been in his nature for decades. At one point in time, he has owned a 1956 Thunderbird, 1962 Triumph TR3, a 1964 Chevrolet Corvette and a 1966 MGB Roadster.

Originally, his first dream growing up was to own a Model A Coupe. Unfortunately, that dream didn’t live up to his expectations.

“I finally got one and when I got it on the road, I hated driving it,” he said as he laughed.

“You could hardly keep it between the ditches. It was a horrible thing to drive. I lost my interest in that real quick.”

He said he recently had one more ambitious project he hoped to restore in the form of a 1935 Plymouth Business Coupe. In what he described as a last hurrah, Schultz said he hung on to the vehicle for almost 15 years, started to do some work on it in his garage, but ultimately sold it to a man from Red Deer, Alta.

“I’m 79 years old, and I had to take a real hard look at what I’m doing, what I’m capable of doing and just kind of a realistic look, I guess.

“The effort to install suspension, drivetrain, it’s a tremendous amount of work involved in that, and I didn’t want to start the project where I couldn’t finish it.”

When he’s not driving the Parisienne in the summertime, Schultz sticks with his family’s 2012 Toyota Camry and an older 2003 Chevy half-ton.

He has had a chance over the last decade to show off the Parisienne at a number of cars shows in Manitoba and North Dakota, bringing the vehicle down to Minot, N.D., and a lengthy trip to Dryden, Ont., where they still have relatives.

This year, they are looking forward to bringing the Parisienne to Super Run in July and getting back to those enjoyable memories of a cruise night downtown.

“That’s what I liked about the Pontiac. You’re not going to meet another one coming down the road because there’s so few of them,” he said.

“It would go wherever you wanted it to go. You feel good about driving a car like that.”

» jbernacki@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @JosephBernacki