Goat

Reminded

Recently June told me about the tan Pontiac GTO hardtop Bill had back in -- he likely was 18 so it would have been 1966, maybe a '67 model car.

GTO is for Italian Gran Turismo Omologato, technically, a tourer certified specked out for racing. At

least some early GTOs had engines larger than GM policy allowed for that smaller size car. John DeLorean, gutsy GM exec of all time, took a Pontiac Tempest, removed the 4-cylinder engine, dropped in a huge Bonneville V8, and call it a GTO. It was flaming hot. Bubba avoids trendy words, otherwise, the word was awesome.

Awesome, both GTO and Pontiac. The GTO today is a cult car beyond imagining. It all reminded me of --- well, it reminded me. We never had a GTO but Walt had a 1964 GTO convertible, blue with four-speed stick. Excellent car, and seems to me it was light blue

not the medium blue.

Hearing that Bill had his GTO up to 90 on Hwy 77 reminded me of the day in 1978 I rode a Greyhound bus from Harrisburg to someplace over near Pittsburgh to pick up our new Chevrolet Camaro Berlinetta,

black with a red stripe, red piping inside.

Driving home to Harrisburg I had it up to a hundred, including through tunnels on the turnpike. A car probably should't be driven out of the showroom and run a hundred miles an hour, but that one was.

Joe liked that car, one dark night hit a major pothole and damaged it, but the world kept on turning. The Berlinetta had a 350 V8 and was the hot one. It was Linda’s car, because she chose black over the gold 1978 Pontiac Firebird we had at the same time.

The Firebird was nice, an Esprit model, but only had the 301 V8 and was neither as hot as the Camaro nor as cool. Buying the Firebird, I’d wanted a gold or black TransAm with the 455 V8, but TransAms were hard to get, premium priced, not discounted, and Bubba was cheap then too.

At the time I had a sideline car business of my own and couldn’t get a TransAm, so took a plain one. It was just as well, because my chief memory of the Pontiac Firebird is driving it home from Washington to Harrisburg one Saturday morning during the gas crisis, on an empty tank, and no filling stations open because there was no gasoline to be had. Eyeing the gas gauge in a 455 TransAm would have gotten me to Frederick.

Pontiac offered the GTO from 1964 to 2006. The final GTO, like the Pontiac G8 V8, was supplied by Holden, GM’s subsidiary in Australia.

It had a 6 liter V8 rated at 400 hp, top speed 175.

When GM went belly up and reorganized, they did some smart things and some stupid things. Dropping Pontiac and especially the GTO,

wasn’t one of their smarter moves. They need an everyman's muscle car and there ain't no Chevy, Buick or Cadillac that can stand behind that empty chair. Not even the Camaro. A GMC GTO? I don't think so.