The New, Newer Project: Part Tres...

[StealthBird]

What's not shown or mentioned in the article (I met Ben Harrison in Dayton a couple years ago) is that the wheel he's holding in the photo has a "1" (in a circle) on the bottom spoke. I mentioned to him that this was the Momo F1 wheel (in his seminar, he could not recall the manufacturer) which was used extensively on F1 cars in the 60's, then popular on European cars. Then as we were talking, I noticed that the other two spokes had extra material that extended from the rim onto the spokes about 1.5 inches, but the bottom spoke did not, so that Momo could display the "1" down there. He then remembered that the interior department covered up that "1" to match the the other two spokes. They wanted Momo to supply the wheel, but there was no way they could rely on a low volume European company to supply potentially tens of thousands of steering wheels for a GM assembly line, so they copied the wheel.

What Ben Harrison brought to the table was the idea to use this wheel (which he loved) on an American car, and it turned out to be an iconic steering wheel.

As for Pontiac nameplates, anything after Lynn Myers arrived in 1999 as president of Pontiac didn't quite work out. She loved the Aztek, and it was her first major product release. Soon the old nameplates that had been around for decades began to fall away, like Firebird, Trans Am, Grand Am, Grand Prix, Bonneville, to be replaced with names like Vibe, Torrent, G3, G5, G6, and G8.