I’ve talked about the Pontiac Parisienne before, mostly in the contexts of how it’s not Parisienne-ish at all, and has almost nothing to do with Paris or France or anything Gallic at all. But this time I noticed something new about the Parisienne I’d missed before: the ornate hood ornament design that somehow makes me feel uneasy.
I mean, I think it’s just some sort of flower, right? The flower I’d associate with Paris is, of course, the wildly French fleur-de-lis (or lily), and I don’t think the flower shown on that hood ornament is a lily? It certainly doesn’t look like a traditional fleur-de-lis.
Let’s look at this thing close up:
It’s radially symmetrical, and while I suspect it’s floral, has what appears to be lots of appendages and tentacles and even some hand-like parts and a central cyclopean eye.
This is a big departure from the usual Pontiac hood ornaments of the era, which tended to just feature the Pontiac arrowhead badge:
I don’t know why they set the arrowhead in an octagon, but this was 1970s GM, they were capable of nearly any atrocity, don’t forget. But let’s get back to the Parisienne’s specific hood ornament.
I get that it’s likely a flower of some sort, but it just looks so damn…menacing? It feels less like a flower to me and more like some tentacled Lovecraftian monster, awoken from some deep undersea tomb, ready to squelchily drag itself out of the sea and crawl onto land, to start methodically harvesting our souls en masse.
There’s just too many little tendrils, all twisting about, or something like that. Maybe it’s the monochromatic rendering on the hood ornament that pushes it this way, but I can’t get it out of my head.
Is this the hidden message of the Pontiac Parisienne? It sure as hell wasn’t about Paris, so perhaps it really was a message to the coming of the Old Ones like shuma-gorath, and Pontiac is trying to position themselves as the ideal car to serve our new overlords and masters?
Typical GM.
My 1982 Grand Prix in the 90’s had a similar hood ornament design, except it didn’t have the 2nd metal outline perimeter. It didn’t live on the car long once I owned the car,.hood ornaments and hubcaps went missing anytime you went to the mall – cost of doing business back then. 🙂
“I’ve talked about the Pontiac Parisienne before, mostly in the contexts of how it’s not Parisienne-ish at all, and has almost nothing to do with Paris or France or anything Gallic at all.”
That’s because its named for the ladies of Paris Kentucky/Texas/Alabama/Tennessee etc. not France.
I know what they’re getting at with “formal sedan” but what’s a casual sedan? Does something over-the-top from the late 50s count as formal? is a 4dr coupe casual? interesting implications for a term that really means “car with opera windows”
Looks like something by Ernst Haeckel
It is a Globe Thistle flower, native to Provence, France. This was likely chosen because full size Pontiac owners suffered from Buick-envy and were therefore known for being prickly.
Leave it to Malaise Era GM execs to reject reality and substitute their own, in which Paris is in Provence.
Since I made all that up I suppose I have something in common with GM executives. And Adam Savage.
Just because you made it up yesterday doesn’t mean an infinite number of GM execs couldn’t have come up with the same idea four or five decades ago.
See Infinite Monkey Theorem:
https://fourweekmba.com/infinite-monkey-theorem/
That makes more sense than what I was thinking: that it might have something to do with Louis XIV, the Sun King.
This hood ornament started with the Grand Ville. In 1971 there were no hood ornaments on the Grand Ville, but the badge was placed on the front of the C pillar. Not sure what year is became the hood ornament. The Grand Ville in 1971 supplanted the Bonneville atop the Pontiac line. They combined the Grand from Grand Prix with the ville from Bonneville. In 1976 they got rid of the Grand Ville, and put the Bonneville at the top with the Bonneville Brougham as the ultimate full size Pontiac. The Bonneville inherited this badge/hood ornament from the Grand Ville!
Huh. You’re right. Looks even more menacing on the badge.
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ltoAAOSwttNlfxjU/s-l1200.jpg
Write in the brochure that the ski pass through can also accommodate baguettes. Boom, GM made it French enough to call it Parisienne.
Being a Canada-only nameplate for all but the last few years, Pontiac should’ve called it the Montrealais.
Wouldn’t the Laurentian cover that ground?
It does look like some kind of carnivorous plant where you would lean forward to smell the flower only to have it latch on to your face and pull you in.
I think you just uncovered the true origin of the COVID virus.
The Caprice was already using the fleur-de-lis, so Pontiac had to come up with something else. Not sure where they came up with this crap.
I can definitely see this as the insignia of some evil space force wearing all-black.
It’s like a Kolvoord Starburst drawn by a ren-fair vendor.
…the banned shuttle manuever that got Cadet Not-Tom-Paris kicked out of Starfleet?
(Seriously, that’s all Google is showing me and I feel like I’m missing a trick, here.)
Yup.
Oh, I like you.
Nick Locarno was his name
I thought that it might be a reference to French King Louis XIV ” The Sun King” but his symbols don’t look like that either
Came to say the same thing.
Pontiac Parisianne: Hermaeus Mora’s first choice in automobiles
It’s a flower, the little hood ornament of horror. “Feed Me Jason”.
Pontiacthulu
Dammit. Pontiacthulhu
We knew what you meant.
In the spirit of Halloween, I’ve been reading a bunch of Stephen King short stories. Often, he includes a brief intro to the story explaining where he got the idea for it. This hood ornament looks like just like the sort of thing that would inspire him to write a story.
The one about the typewriter freaks me the fuck out.
What’s that one called? Wondering if I need to add it to my “to read” list! There’s one called Word Processor of the Gods but that’s not a typewriter of course. Or was it The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet?
WPOTG! I forgot it was a computer, haven’t read it in 30 years.
Oooh that’s a good one! My mother loves that story, (and others) which is crazy because she’s the last person you’d expect to find reading Stephen King.
This would be during the time when GM in its infinite marketing wisdom sold the same car on two different sides of Lake St Clair with two different names; Bonneville in the US and Parisienne in Canada. Both cars had the same “starburst”-ish hood ornament (the Catalina/Laurentian just got the arrowhead). https://www.lov2xlr8.no/brochures/pontiac/78ptia/bilder/13.jpg
The Bonneville name was moved to an unrelated midsize car for 1982, and Pontiac initially killed all full-size RWD sedans in the US after 1981. The Parisienne remained on sale in Canada to address the issues of Pontiac dealers in rural areas not necessarily being anywhere close to Chevrolet dealers, and so still needing something in the Caprice space to satisfy those customers, the US dealers bitched about it, and the Parisienne was sold in the US starting in the middle of the 1983 model year
I remember the Bonneville Model G – basically a Grand LeMans sedan in a “Nip/Tuck” crossover episode.
An MG octagon with an anus in the center.
I don’t believe it’s a flower.
It’s more likely a Sun.
Look at signias for the Sun King, Louis XIV – and you’ll find all kinds of interesting symbology within the rays.
Obviously Pontiac isn’t going to use the face of an old French King – nor would they use the hand or the fleur-de-lis, etc.
So they had a design made up that loosely referred to this iconography.
Was looking in the comments specifically for this take. My first thought was also “le roi soleil”
That may be the lukewarmest ad copy I’ve ever read. “Here is a car for your consideration. You might like it.” I guess by the time the Bonneville became the Parisienne, they had pretty much given up.
And using the tag “We build excitement” in an ad for a Parisienne seems… blasphemous? I guess that’s in keeping with the whole old gods on the hood ornament thing.
At the time, we used to say, “We build excrement.”
Pontiac was Chevrolet’s Mercury by this point in time, just a badge job on the parent’s favorite child.
Sad, because my bio-father had one of these, and his best friend had a same year Caprice. The Parisienne was so much nicer to be in. Super quiet(for those days), better over the bumps, and pillowtop cloth seats! Man I loved that thing. 1986, iirc.
I don’t think I’ve read the word “squelchily” since the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy trilogy referenced Sqornshellous Zeta, the swampy world inhabited by sentient mattresses.
It reminds me of the final boss in the NES game “Captain Skyhawk”
https://retroishgamingcritic.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/enemy-station-2.jpg
Oh hell yeah I loved Captain Skyhawk. Game was hard as hell though.
GM = Gods [and] Monsters
From a distance the hood ornament reminds me of the headpiece to the staff of Ra. Does it have markings on both sides?
The one on my bio-father’s 86 did. His was multi-colored, though. Silver and gold.
It’s the biblically accurate Pontiac emblem.