I was watching the Barret Jackson auction last night...They had just completed auctioning off a beautiful deep blue '64 GTO (first year) for ~55,000.00, worth every penny....Then immediately after a 2004 GTO (first resurrection) came across the blocks...The announcer at first announced it as a 2004 GTO and went into the details about the car. But a minute later he says "This is a beautiful 2004 Grand Prix" ! ! ! I almost crapped my pants laughing! lol:

It appears even the experts have trouble identifying the new GTO from the run-of-the-mill!!!



SEE POST #7 FOR THE REAL TOPIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

He said "This is not a gran prix folks, it's a GTO."

i can imaginr the same beeing said with the old grand prix and gto if the auction was way back in the 60's..

 

Yeah, I was watching. He didnt say it like that. The auctioneer was complimenting the car, not bashing it.

 

Well, some people wish to continue to stir some trouble....

 

You frikin people kill me . Yes , and back in the day of the HOLY original GTO it could have been mistaken for a Lemans . Hell all the pontiacs back then about looked the same too .

so.....

PLEASE OVER IT , lol

 

Actually, that's not the way I remember it, as a matter of fact shortly after he said that., another announcer yelled out "GTO" to "correct" him....In all honesty, I think he might have being more fecisious than anything else....

Hell, I'm not the only one that feels that way, here's a quote from Brock Yates at the end of the C/D review of the GTO:

BROCK YATES
The Pontiac styling department—presuming such an entity exists—has yo-yoed from the sublime to the ridiculous. After decades of festooning their vehicles with grotesque fiberglass stick-ons, they have created a GTO cunningly disguised as a phone-company fleet car. When I first spotted our dishwater-dull, battleship-gray GTO, I thought perhaps a Navy recruiter had stopped by in an attempt to snare a couple of our office interns. Did the dolts at Pontiac even take a peek at the 1964-65 Goats, the first truly vivid and now classic muscle cars? The GTO is a solid-performing Cinderella who lost her shoe before leaving for the party.


But, In all honesty, my real intention here is to sitrr up a little discussion about the marketing strategy for the GTO....

Here's the title:

2004 GTO: Quick-to-market briallance, or slapped together sham?

Now that we've all had a chance to read exactly what the 2004 GTO is about, in retrospect, taking all of the previous pre-release discussions on this board into consideration I'm wondering how many people have changed their mind about the new goat.

A bit of history to consider...The original GTO was developed by a group of engineers and a marketing manager with a vision that revoloutionized the market...Drop a high-horsepower engine in an intermediate-sized car, include a 4-speed tranny, and GO LIKE HELL! All without approval from GM upper management! All in an easy to order package that anyone could recognize without having to be a "gearhead" that knows a lot about engine/rear ren/tranny combo's. The car chosen was a "economy" intermediate..The Tempest..This car was CERTAINLY not a styling leader, actually it could be considered a "phone company fleet car". This was the car that revoloutionized and created [IMO] the musclecar.

Now flash to ~1997: Austrailian engineers and marketing managers get together and create a platform with the idea of putting to use the mighty LS1 Chevy V-8 and the awesome 6-speed man/4-speed auto trannies to create a legendary Austrailian sports car! All without approval from their upper management! This creates a stir on the performance scene in Austrailia and becomes an instant HIT!

Now flash to ~2000? GM realizes that the F-body will cease production in 3 years. They need a product to "fill the gap". There certainly was no time to create a platform from scratch, but there was this interesting litte deal in Australia that might work...And with minimal cosmetic changes we can bring this to market it 18 months! The pledge was given that "this will be the fastest GTO EVER, and it will live up to the performance legend of the GTO name". And the rest is history...

All of that taken into consideration, I think I can confidently say that the new GTO meets and exceeds the performance legend that the fine GTO moniker implies. Performance-wise (especially handling) this is the best GTO yet!

The interesting question is: Does the styling of the car detract from the "legend" of the car, that being a result of the lack of funding/time/resources to do a clean-sheet GTO design?

Or, actually is the emphasis on performance over styling in tune with the intent of the original GTO????

 

Bottom line is do you have any idea how much it costs and how long it takes to re-design and re-certify a new hood?!? There's NO way in hell they could do anything about the rest of the car's styling.....which IMHO is not that bad at all.

Figure it out people......this WAS the best they could do with all the parameters they were trying to meet....

Give GM credit..they've heard us and it'll be better real soon.....

Can we argue about something that might acomplish something and that actually matters now?

 

Well 1st of all, those announcers on the auctions do say some stupid stuff at times and some of the things that they don't know makes me wonder why they didn't hire more informed people for that job. There's been a good number of few times when I was like, what?!

But you know something, I was driving around the other day/night and realized after seeing a few Pontiacs that it's gonna be difficult to spot a GTO. A little too difficult actually, and that kinda annoys me as I think it probably should any enthusiast.

 

Although I don't remember the exact details of what was said.........I just had the TV on in the background - I did catch that auction.
Funny stuff.
There was an orange Plymouth Superbird that sold for 180G!!
I think they said it only had 6000 original miles.

 

They did comment that they didn't like the looks,but what do they know...

 

I was coming home from a business trip last Thursday afternoon ~ 4pm. I saw blue lights in the oncoming lane on I-85 north of Charlotte NC- I was northbound, the lights were on the right side (median) of the southbound lane. I thought it was bizzarre that NCHP would pull someone in the median, so I was particularly attentive as I approached the last 3/4 mile.

About 300yds away, I saw a dark gray Grand Prix, with a 2003 Crown Vic behind it... no big deal. As I was just about to pass by (maybe 100 yds max), I saw the trooper get out of his car and walk toward the gray car with his tablet - papers flapping in the wind. It was THEN, that I noticed the proportions werent just quite right, and I saw the badges on the fender that GP's don't have. At just the moment I was parallel to the cars, it occurrs to me it was a GTO. A turn of the head to look back and see the taillights, and I knew I had just seen my first GTO on the road - not on a dealers lot. And I had been looking at it for 20 seconds or more unknowingly.

Morals of the story...
1) They are definitely hard to distinguish on the road from GP's and GA's.
2) Troopers will write tickets for the new GTO like any other car!

Wonder what the insurance rates are looking like for these GTO's here stateside... (before the ticket)...