The Pontiac Bonneville Special is a 2-door canopy coupé from Pontiac, built from 1954, at the height of the post-war boom. Under the bonnet: 268 cid "Special"-8 I8.
How it came about
The Pontiac Bonneville Special is a concept car unveiled at the General Motors Motorama in 1954, the first two-seat sports car prototype the division had ever produced. Conceived by designer Harley J. Earl and hand-built by Homer C. LaGassey Jr.
and Paul Gillan, the Special is a grand touring sport coupé that incorporated innovative styling like a Plexiglas canopy with gull-wing windows on a sleek fiberglass body. The name "Bonneville" was meant to convey high performance, inspired by a trip Earl had taken to Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to observe speed trials there. It was the first GM vehicle to carry the name, subsequently given to the Division's full-size performance car, the Bonneville, which carried it for 47 years. Two "Special" prototypes, one painted metallic bronze and one emerald green, were built in order to unveil them simultaneously at the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf in New York and the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1954.
The hardware
Power comes from 268 cid "Special"-8 I8. It shifts through a 4-speed Hydramatic automatic. The wheelbase is 100.001 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: its successor was the Pontiac Strato-Streak. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, the Chevrolet Corvette — show what else the money bought that year. Its Pontiac stablemates include the Pontiac 2+2 and the Pontiac 6.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Pontiac Bonneville Special — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.
Pontiac1926
Pontiac Bonneville 
Pontiac Bonneville (1965–1970)