The Forgotten Pontiac Concept Car That Still Looks Futuristic Today

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By Matt Salter/Oct. 23, 2022 5:55 pm EDT

The 1980s were a wild time for automotive experimentation. John DeLorean tried to reinvent the wheel — or, at least, the chassis, bodywork, and doors. Briggs and Stratton built a hybrid with six wheels, 10 batteries, and a two-cylinder lawnmower engine (via Hagerty). Italdesign went full Frankenstein on its Machimoto, welding a handful of motorcycles into a VW Golf to create a nine-person people mover barely recognizable as a car.

Lost in the madness were many concept cars that were, for lack of a better word, good. Some '80s concepts escaped the freakshow in favor of eye-catching aesthetics and solid engineering. A few even delivered on the concept-car promise of visualizing the future, anticipating real leaps forward in automotive technology. One such example was the 1987 Pontiac Pursuit, which delivered TRON-worthy '80s future aesthetics but, unlike similar peers, backed them up with a commitment to quality engineering and genuine innovations of design.

At first glance, the Pontiac Pursuit fits with other automotive fantasies of the 1980s. Swooping lines, narrow headlights, and wheels almost concealed behind the bodywork, the Pursuit looks less like a car than a white heely missing its pair or an oversized computer mouse. Under the hood, however, Pontiac kept things simple. The Pursuit ran off a 4-cylinder inline engine with a conventional turbocharger and a 5-speed manual -– no alternate design or alternative fuels (via GM Authority). Things got interesting elsewhere. Had it reached production, the Pontiac concept would have been one of the first vehicles ever with a steer-by-wire system: the steering wheel communicated with battery-powered gears that turned all four wheels. Modern Infinitis use the same setup. 

The Pursuit also predicted the future with its onboard tech; it had an infotainment system decades before they became common, complete with screens for the driver and rear seats. The driver screen monitored navigation, media, and climate control, all handled with buttons on the steering wheel. The next time you change songs or turn down the AC without taking your hands off the wheel, thank a Pontiac Pursuit. Obviously, this version of the Pursuit never reached the market. GM folded Pontiac in 2010 after years of declining sales. In a touch of irony, one of Pontiac's last new models was the G5, branded the Pontiac Pursuit and, later on, the G5 Pursuit in the Canadian market. Alas, that model — a rebadged Chevrolet Cobalt — was the furthest thing from its groundbreaking ancestor.