Before the muscle car heyday of the mid- to late 1960’s came about, there was this car, the Pontiac Bonneville X-400, a factory-built super-machine dreamed up in the back hallways of Pontiac’s headquarters. Why is it a supercar, you ask?

Well, the first clue is that it’s one of one ever constructed, and even today nobody knows how it really got out of the Pontiac skunkworks. A first glance at the car reveals the  “Supercharged” badges that adorn each front fender, just behind the headlights, and that’s your real clue that what’s under the hood of this machine is no standard Pontiac engine like your father used to drive.

The engine is a 389-based mill featuring an axial-flow Latham positive-displacement Supercharger fed by a quartet of Carter sidedraft carburetors featured prominently, with a pair on each side of the supercharger. Many body modifications including shorter Catalina fenders and a staggering array of chrome pieces also adorned the sweet convertible chassis and interior, but the fun doesn’t stop there.

The chassis was brought up to spec with a number of NASCAR-derived pieces designed to help the big beast handle as well as it looked. The engine transmitted the raw power through a Corvette-spec four-speed transmission, and it also included a lever in the center console for a set of factory-installed exhaust cutouts.

Remember, these were the days when the catalytic converter was just a dream in some DC politician’s mind, and there won’t ever be a factory-built machine like this again. It even had an unheard-of 160 MPH speedometer and vacuum/boost gauge to keep tabs on the engine’s performance – as if the supercharger whine wasn’t enough. Simply a gorgeous machine, and it’s nice to see that it’s not only survived the crusher, but been kept up in pristine condition so that gearheads of all ages can enjoy its raw display of American power and prestige.