California Catalina

When I was looking for a ride to call my own after I retired from the Air Force my brother came across a nice and restorable 59 Catalina.  After 3 years of learning and working on the Cat....we have her on the road.

Still getting out the kinks....having horn issues and looking for interior window trim...
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Very sweet ride! Is the paint the origonal color because that looks like the spring 58 Orchid color that is fairly rare. Thanks for sharing!

My understanding is that the spring 1958 colors shown on the 59 paint chip chart are just that, additional 1958 Pontiac colors introduced mid way through the 1958 model year. They would not have been available for use on 1959 Pontiacs and are not included in the 1959 Pontiac dealer showroom albums or other reference materials. The only reason these 1958 spring colors were included on the 1959 paint chip chart was for reference by the auto paint shops when ordering colors for 1958 Pontiacs that were ordered in the second half of the model year.

I'm not so sure about that Don. I've seen a lot of references on this site and others by people who think they have Sunrise Coral paint on their car and promotional 59 production models from 1959 in Sunrise Coral. The promotional models might have used 58 colors and if you have a car with Sunset Glow that's pretty faded I suppose it could "look" like Sunrise Coral. I'd love to hear from Clemmarrero on whether or not this was the original color...

Regardless... its a sweet ride!

Hi Michayos,   First I totally agree that the 59 Catalina is a very nice looking car.   However, I am positive that Sunrise Coral or any of the other Spring 58 Pontiac colors were never used on production 1959 Pontiacs.   I have an extensive collection of 59 Pontiac memorabilia including a set of all fifteen 2"x6" factory paint panels from Dupont.   Also the 59 dealer showroom album and all sales literature only reference the fifteen known colors.  In addition I have one of the backlight boxes that the salesman used to show the various body and top color combinations. The colors were changed by turning separate wheels to change the top or body color. Again only the fifteen published 59 Pontiac colors are displayed. The spring 58 colors on the paint chip chart were just that, 58 Pontiac colors....period.  Also I have a complete set of 59 Pontiac AMT promo models in all fifteen colors and have never seen any 59 dealer promo models in any other colors.  I have no idea what dealer promo models in other colors you are talking about?   With all due respect, if you can provide any historical documentation that shows any colors other that the fifteen in the showroom album and elsewhere,  I would really love to see it.

I guess I could've posted more info.

The color is original GM Evening Orchid for 1966. The color was green when I first got it. We painted the car as a tribute to our grandmothers hot rod 66 Impala SS. It was a sleeper without any badges....it had the whole SS package...just no badges. Caught quite a few by surprise when she blew their doors off.....


Sorry to the purist but we shaved the door handles, as you can tell we painted it a different color than original, removed the rear view mirrors, it has bellflowers out back, took all the badges and lettering that showed what the Cat is. It does have the original 389....I have a complete tri-power set up on my bench that will go in this winter.


The Catalina has been a ton of fun building and putting back on the road.