The Pontiac Sports Car That GM Killed to Protect the Corvette

Some of the most painful stories in American auto history aren't about cars that failed, they're about cars that never got a chance. Pontiac's XP-833, often called the Banshee, is a prime example. In the mid-1960s, while Chevrolet and Dodge were locked in their muscle car rivalry, Pontiac engineers quietly designed a lightweight, European-inspired sports car that could have changed the brand's entire trajectory.

General Motors, fearing it would overshadow the Corvette, strangled the project in the boardroom before the public ever saw it.

The XP-833 was the brainchild of John DeLorean, then Pontiac's chief engineer, and technical architect Bill Collins. They built two prototypes: a silver coupe with an overhead-cam six-cylinder engine, and a white V8 convertible. The car weighed just 2,200 pounds, nearly 800 pounds less than a Corvette, and used a fiberglass body over a steel frame.

Engineers borrowed suspension components from the Corvette and planned to offer Pontiac's 389 and 421 cubic-inch V8s, which could push the car well into Corvette performance territory. But that was exactly the problem: GM executives saw it as an internal threat to the Corvette's exclusive status, and they pulled the plug.

The two surviving prototypes were rescued from the crusher by the men who built them. Collins kept the silver coupe for decades, and fellow Pontiac employee Bill Killen took the white convertible. The XP-833's design DNA didn't die entirely, though. " Today, Opel GTs trade for an average of $15,000, making them a budget-friendly way to own a piece of Pontiac's lost sports car dream.

The spiritual successor finally arrived in 2005 with the Pontiac Solstice, a lightweight two-seater that echoed the Banshee's philosophy of accessible performance.