GTO's on exhibit

1964 Pontiac GTO

1965 Pontiac GTO

1966 Pontiac GTO

1967 Pontiac GTO

1968 Pontiac GTO

1969 Pontiac GTO

1970 Pontiac GTO "The Judge"

1971 Pontiac GTO

1972 Pontiac GTO

1973 Pontiac GTO

1974 Pontiac GTO "Custom w/ Tent"

2004 Pontiac GTO

Back in the early 1960’s, Pontiac General Manager, John Z. DeLorean, and Public Relations ace, Jim Wangers, came up with a big idea to boost sales. Ignoring an internal General Motors edict on engine displacement for mid-sized cars (the limit was 330-cid), DeLorean boldly gave the go-ahead and Pontiac’s engineers shoehorned a powerful 389-cid V-8 into a lowly Tempest Le Mans, then offered it as an option package to circumvent the rules. Virtually overnight, the term “muscle car” was coined.

Earlier efforts, like Chevy’s famed 409, were full-sized cars; The Tempest GTO, a new-for-1964 option, packed plenty of punch in a relatively lightweight, A-body platform. Sales took off with a screech of rubber.

Standard Tempests came with a 250-bhp, 326-cid V-8; the GTO added a 325-bhp engine with 10.75:1 C.R. and a 4-bbl. You could also opt for the 3-carburetor, Tri-Power package -- 348-bhp at 4900 rpm with 428 lbs/ft of torque at 3600 rpm. The GTO was available as a hardtop, a sports coupe or a convertible. “Three-on-the-tree” was standard; Hydra-Matic was optional. The hot tranny was a close-ratio Muncie M-21 4-speed floorshift with Hurst linkage. Optional twin-pipe “exhaust splitters” exited just behind the rear wheels.

The hot new model inspired Wangers to create a rock group called Ronnie & the Daytonas. Their subsequent Top 40 tune, “Little G.T.O.,” was a big hit. The lyrics trilled: “Little Gee Tee Ohhhhh, you know you look so fine. Three deuces and a four-speed, and a three-eighty-nine!”

All over America, kids who didn’t even know how to drive sang: “Watch her tachin’ up now, gonna hear her whi-i-ine, I’m gonna turn it on, rev it up, blow it out, Gee Teee Ohhhhhhhhh!!!”

Other hot options like metallic brakes, a 3.90 ratio limited slip diff, a heavy-duty radiator and quicker steering (along with a custom sport steering wheel) were usually ordered. Pontiac ads crowed that the option list was “...as long as your arm and twice as hairy.” A fully loaded GTO was about $3,800, approximately $1,300 over a standard Tempest Le Mans.

The GTO’s debut was overshadowed a bit by Ford’s new Mustang, but after Car & Driver road-tested a highly-tuned “Bobcat” GTO (prepared by Ace Wilson’s Royal Pontiac in Royal Oak, Michigan) and called it, “the best American car we’ve ever driven,” the cat was literally out of the bag. CD’s then-controversial cover showed a mythical match of a Pontiac GTO up against a Ferrari GTO. Running on Sunoco 260 Premium (102 octane) CD blazed a 4.6-second, 0-60 time on stock tires.

Wrote Editor David E. Davis, Jr. “...when you’re driving a Tempest GTO with the right options...you’re driving a real automobile. Can Pontiac help it if they’re too dumb to know that a car can’t go that fast without a prancing horse decal?” (Today, David E. thinks the Royal Pontiac test GTO was definitely a ringer, but even a stock Tri-Power was a very quick car in its day).

Import fans, especially Ferrari owners, were outraged, but that article jump-started GTO sales. By model year’s end, some 32,450 units had been sold; over half were hardtops. Pontiac had scooped the competition.

It didn’t take long for the word to get out. The December 1963 issue of Hot Rod, aka “Everybody’s Automotive Magazine,” sported a cover blurb that trumpeted: PONTIAC THRILLER 389 TEMPEST GTO. A Pontiac ad in that issue headlined: “For the man who wouldn’t mind riding a tiger if someone’d (sic) only put wheels on it: Pontiac GTO. This piece of machinery,” the ad copy crowed, “is something our engineering department slipped a motherly big Pontiac 389-incher into and named the GTO.” After listing the car’s impressive specs, ad copy urged readers to “Give yourself a blast of tonic. Sample one of these here (sic) big pussycats.”

HRM’s Ray Brock authored a detailed new model analysis that borrowed beaucoup photos and diagrams from the GTO press kit. Ray ran the car hard at GM’s Milford Proving Ground and said “…we even reached the point where we deliberately ‘threw’ the car into sharp, off-camber corners, trying to get the GTO ‘out of shape.’ Even though we succeeded in getting plenty of oversteer … a correction of the front wheels and an application of power would bring the car right back in line. The ’64 Tempest,” he raved, “is in no way similar to ’63 and earlier Tempests in the handling department.” Limited by a tester with a mushy two-speed automatic, Brock still got it up to a speed where it “fairly flew.” Ray predicted the GTO with a four-speed stick would be “a winner.”

He was right.