Thanks Grant - let me give a little of the back story.
The original owner ordered the Grand Prix SJ in April of 1968 with Eastside Pontiac. He wanted all the options listed including gold leather and the HO option in a 4spd. Due to wanting the A/C and a 4spd the HO was nixed. According to letters back and forth with Pontiac there was a back order - some problem/delay in obtaining the gold leather.
Bob was an attorney at the time and had another fairly new Pontiac he was trading along with a check for $2910 to obtain the new model GP. Being an attorney, he had no issue writing back and forth to Eastside Pontiac, the Zone office and corporate headquarters raising H--- why the delay in obtaining his new car. He always paid his cars outright and was not pleased but the car was finally built the 1st week of November and he titled the car on December 11th 1968. I can only assume that due to the delays & his dealing with Pontiac they did not charge him for the leather interior thus not showing on his invoice.
Starting in January of 69 he took the car in with a "punch list" of numerous issues which included carburetors issues each month which plagued it thru November of 1971. I know this due to the letter by the zone office offering to replace his distributer as another coarse of action to his ongoing carb problems. Finally he must have had enough and had the engine rebuilt/replaced to what he believed "HO" specs and better in the early 1972. At that time he paid a small fortune and even had a new 66 tripower installed. From what I can put together the car had hardly any miles on it. I say believed "Ho" due to using an incorrect 1968 auto block and heads as well as no long branch exhaust manifolds.
Its unfortunate that he passed with no relatives nor anyone that knew his full story. His best friend was in charge of the estate but knew very little of his cars and their history.
The car has a little over 40k miles on it, was repainted in 1990 and in pretty good shape. Bob was removing the dash to replace the non working clock with a NOS unit at the time he passed.
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