Pontiac launched muscle-car era with GTO

Drag racing was popular on the streets of America in the early 1960s, and bragging rights were tied to who beat whom the night before on Woodward Avenue in suburban Detroit or on Waukegan Road in north suburban Chicago.

The timing was perfect for Pontiac's 1964 Tempest LeMans GTO. Pontiac needed an image car because General Motors had banned its brands from racing. The GTO became America's first muscle car — and a legend.

Pontiac's engineers "got the bright idea to do at the factory what the hot rod community had been doing for years: Simply, stuff a big engine into a smaller" and lighter car, said Jim Wangers, a drag race champion and staff member of Pontiac's ad agency, MacManus, John & Adams, when the GTO was conceived.

There were performance cars in the 1950s, but they were full-sized, heavy and expensive. The Tempest was an economy car, based on an intermediate-sized platform.

Wangers gives credit for the GTO to Pontiac chief engineer John DeLorean and Pontiac engineers Bill Collins and Russ Gee. Wangers, who was present, said a 1964 Tempest prototype was sitting on a lift at GM's proving grounds in the spring of 1963, equipped with a 250-hp, 326-cubic-inch V-8. DeLorean, Collins and Gee were under the car.

Wangers recalled, "Bill says to DeLorean, 'You know, it would take me a half-hour to stick a 389 in here instead of this lousy 326.'

"DeLorean looked at Russ, the engine guy, and says, 'Can we do it?' "

A prototype was running a week later.

A major issue was circumventing GM's Engineering Policy Committee, which approved new models. According to a GM edict, the Tempest vehicle platform was several hundred pounds too light for the 389-cubic-inch V-8.

Pontiac knew rejection was certain if the GTO was scheduled as a separate model with a standard 389 V-8. But the committee did not have to approve options.

Still, Pontiac's engineers feared their plan would be killed if discovered. So they quietly created the GTO option package: four-barrel, 325-hp 389 V-8; Hurst shifter; and other modifications. The Engineering Policy Committee learned about the GTO after 5,000 cars were built.

The "GTO" name was DeLorean's idea. Wangers approached Car and Driver, suggesting a comparison test between a Pontiac GTO and a Ferrari GTO. The magazine timed the acceleration runs with a hand-held stopwatch, which mistakenly produced incredibly fast results.

"They came up with times that were ridiculous," Wangers, now 82, said in a telephone interview. "The headline on the magazine cover, '0-100 in 11.8 seconds,' was not true. (But) I certainly wasn't going to stop it."

As a result, the GTO became "everybody's unbelievable dream," he said.

The recording "GTO" by Ronny and the Daytonas came out in 1964 and sold over a million copies. Neither Pontiac nor its ad agency had instigated the project, which became an advertising windfall for the GTO.

The GTO launched the muscle-car era, inspiring such 1960s models as the Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396, Ford Fairlane GT and Plymouth Road Runner.

But the era was short-lived, killed in the early 1970s by the Arab oil embargo, new emissions rules and high insurance rates.

Summarizing that era, Wangers said: "As awful as it sounds, what we did is take racing off the track and put it on the street. It's terrible but it's true, and the market was sitting there, waiting for this with open hands."