SEPTEMBER 2019 MOTORTREND.COM 37L
ong before the term applied
to angular mid-engine
European metal, the term
“supercar” was coined to
describe the original 1964
Pontiac GTO. The first GTO
was essentially a 325-hp V-8
squeezed between the fenders
of a Pontiac LeMans. The world-
beating performance it offered
inspired a generation.
Although the original GTO
will always be credited with
creating the muscle car genre,
no car defines the muscle car
era better than the 1968 Pontiac
GTO, our 1968 Car of the Year.
In retrospect, it’s easy to look
back at the ’68 GTO’s win as
our editors being swayed by
“supercar” performance over
all else, but the truth is that the
1968 GTO’s virtues run much
deeper than that.
“The finest commentary on
the fallacies of modern tech-
nology has now been presented
to the American automotive
world by the 1968 GTO—a car
that incorporates not only the
best taste in GM’s ‘A’-body
variations—and an excellent
handling and performing
supercar package—but also the
most significant achievementin materials technology in
contemporary automotive
engineering,” we wrote in our
February 1968 issue.
The GTO was an engineering
marvel for its time. Ignoring its
certainly underrated 350-hp
400-cubic-inch (6.6-liter)
V-8 for a moment, we dedi-
cated more than half of our
essay to the “Endura” front
bumper. Basically a piece of
hard, painted foam resistant
to impacts up to 4 mph, the
bumper was so durable that
we depicted a staffer swinging
a hammer at the GTO and
featured photos of the car
running into a bollard, looking
no worse for wear. The Endura
bumper allowed Pontiac to
revolutionize design, we said, by
opening up new possibilities for
front bumper shapes and colors
not previously possible.
We were of course impressed
by the performance, too. “Like
the fabled tiger connected
with GTO, it paws around
corners flat and true, then
leaps through short straights,
ready to have another go at a
seemingly hard turn,” we wrote.
The Pontiac could obviously
hustle in a straight line, too. Our
four-speed automatic tester ran
from 0 to 60 mph in 7.3 seconds;our Hurst four-speed manual
tester, equipped with a Ram-Air
intake, could do it in 6.5.
Our Verdoro Green 1968 GTO,
graciously loaned to us by the
Original Parts Group of Seal
Beach, California, feels every
bit as healthy today as it did 51
years ago. That Pontiac was
able to coax 350 hp out of this
V-8 in the ’60s is impressive,
especially considering muscle
cars didn’t begin to crest 350
hp again until the early 2010s.
Freed of modern emissions
equipment, the 400 breathes
freely and deeply, and it still
launches the GTO with the
ferocity of a current muscle
car. Dipping into the throttle
and letting the V-8 trumpet
produces the same sort of
giggles a Tesla Model S P100D
does when launched—it’s pure,
silly, pointless fun.
If only the drum brakes,
and steering were up to the
task. The former are woefully
inadequate for a car with 35 hp,
let alone 350, and the latter is
fingertip light with little in the
way of feedback. How all you
baby boomers survived the late
’60s and early ’70s driving these
wild beasts is beyond me.Finalist: 1960s
1968 Pontiac GTO
The first supercar
“We’ve owned several other
new cars that wore thin after
their newness wore off,” we
concluded in our homage to
the Pontiac. “That wasn’t the
case here. Even when we’d
clocked thousands of miles, the
GTO still appealed to us as a
‘new’ car, with the thought of it
becoming ‘old’ a nearly impos-
sible happening.” Five decades
later, I’m happy to report that
those words still ring true. CS