Bill Wertheim details his 1966 Acadian Canso

at the ACCCC Concours d’Elegance in Port Hope.

    A 1966 Acadian Canso is not a car you encounter at every show … but one sporting New York license plates?
    So when I saw the Canso sitting on the show field at this year’s 47th Concours d’Elegance staged by the Antique and Classic Car Club of Canada, I just had to check it out. With or without Empire State plates, this is a rare bird.
    Acadians were built by General Motors in Oshawa and sold only through Pontiac dealers in Canada from 1962-71. But calling these cars Pontiacs is incorrect, since the Acadian was a separate make, using Chevrolet engines, bodies and platforms, but with Pontiac design cues such as the famous split grille.
    The first Acadians all were based on the Chevy II and offered in three trim levels – base, Invader and top-of-the-line Beaumont. Buyers could chooose from 4-cylinder, 6-cylinder or V8 engines, 3- and 4-speed manual transmissions or the Powerglide automatic.
    For 1964 and 1965 the Beaumont grew, becoming a retrimmed version of the intermediate Chevy Chevelle. The name Canso then was applied to the top compact Acadian model, equivalent to the Chevrolet Nova, and was available as a 2-door coupe, 2- or 4-door sedan and 4-door wagon.
    From 1966-69 the Chevelle-based Beaumont became its own separate make, while  the Acadian continued using the Chevy II/Nova body through mid-1971.
    The Canso I spotted at the Concours is part of a collection of vintage Canadian vehicles belonging to Bill Wertheim of Clarence Centre, N.Y. He also owns three Beaumont convertibles – a 1967 and two 1968s.
    Bill found the Canso on Vancouver Island, where it had been a C-gas racer at the now defunct Van Isle Dragway, competing for its original owner as “The Canadian Acadian.” Bill says he was told that while the car was “a terror or the streets,” it wasn’t all that quick on the dragstrip because it never had the right tires. When its racing days were over, the owner was paranoid the car would be stolen. So he proceeded to disassemble it and scatter the parts around the countryside.
    When he travelled to B.C. to see the ca, Bill discovered the body – or what was left of it – literally entombed in a windowless storage structure that had been built around it.
    “The fenders were here, the doors were there and the engine was hidden in a 1957 Chev,” he recalls.
    Bill had all the pieces unearthed and shipped back to New York and has been working on it for four or five years. “I’ve redone every nut and bolt,” he says, “making sure everything was correct.” There are just 43,291 miles showing on the odometer.
    The 1966 Sport Coupe is one of only 63 built that year with the L79 option package which includes bucket seats, a 4-on-the-floor manual transmission and a 327 cubic inch V8 making 350 hp. Only a handful are known to have survived. Bill has a copy of the original bill of sale showing it cost $3,839.45 when new.
    In the short time it’s been finished the car has won Junior and Senior firsts from the Antique Automobile Club of America and scored 400 out of 400 points at the recent Pontiac Nationals. At the ACCCC Concours it scored 98.4 (984 out of 1,000 points) and earned another first-place award.
     Bill comes by his love of oddball cars naturally, growing up in a house where his dad favoured the products made by the Kaiser-Frazer Corp. (1946-1955). Among the vehicles he remembers as a kid are 1951 and ’53 Kaiser sedans. His dad’s name was Henry J., so naturally he also had one of those ill-fated 1951-53 compacts named after Henry J. Kaiser.
    As for his Canso, Bill has photos of what it looked like as “The Canadian Acadian” and is tempted to return it to the way it looked in its racing days. I hope he doesn’t. The car is gorgeous the way it is and a completely authentic bit of Canadiana – even if it now lives in the United States.

Write to Glen at glenwoodcock@canoemail.com

327 Chevy V8 produces 350 hp.

Canso has distinctive Acadian wheel covers.