A 1964 Pontiac Banshee prototype designed by John DeLorean is for sale at Kia dealerships.

Posted on April 20, 2020
Concept cars
A 1964 Pontiac Banshee prototype designed by John DeLorean is for sale at Kia dealerships.

A unique concept car has ended up in an unlikely place. The only 1964 Pontiac Banshee Coupe concept car has been sitting in storage for decades. It's now sitting on a Naples Kia used car lot in Milford, Connecticut, priced at $750,000. Incidentally, that price includes a $3,950 rebate.

Motor1 first spotted this ad on Sunday.

The Banshee was one of General Motors' early concepts designed to compete with the Ford Mustang. Known as the XP-833, it was conceived by then-Pontiac executive John Z. DeLorean. Beneath the sleek fiberglass body, which foreshadowed the later C3 Corvette and Opel GT, was a modified Pontiac Tempest platform. The Tempest's Y-body platform housed a rear transmission driven by a flexible metal driveshaft, often referred to as "cable drive". The Tempest was offered in two variants: a silver coupe and a white convertible.

The coupe was a drivable car, with an inline six-cylinder engine under the hood mated to a four-speed manual transmission. According to listings, it had a range of only 1,498 miles.

GM never built the Banshee, fearing competition from the Corvette. Pontiac received a Mustang fighter in the form of the Firebird, which shared GM's F-body platform with the Chevrolet Camaro and used the Banshee's taillights. The two Banshee prototypes were hidden until GM employees were able to acquire them. The coupe remained with the previous owner until 2006, when it was sold at a Barrett-Jackson auction for $210,600.

The buyer was Len Napoli, a well-known Pontiac collector and owner of Napoli Kia in Milford, Connecticut. His father had opened a Pontiac dealership in 1958, and the family operated it until GM closed the car sales division. Over the years, Napoli has tried several times to sell the Banshee: it was listed on eBay in 2010, in 2011, and was auctioned off in 2015, but failed to sell on all three occasions.

This time, Naples prepared an unusual situation (and media coverage of it) to generate interest. While rare cars are often offered for sale online or at auction, putting a one-of-a-kind concept car up for sale in the midst of a pandemic of tire kicking at a used car store is not a common practice.

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