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R&T SORTA CARPS ABOUT THE MUSCLE CAR ERA PART 1
R&T GOT ALL NUTSY in 1964 about the Pontiac GTO’s name, but they were also recognizing the category of “muscle car.” Wikipedia cites Merriam-Webster defining the category as “a group of American-made two-door sports coupes with powerful engines designed for high-performance driving.” The online Britannica Dictionary goes even further: “an American-made two-door sports car with a powerful engine.”
Here in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow are tidbits about this era and a particular muscle car gleaned from R&T March 1964 and from some Internet sleuthing.
R&T’s Complaint. “First of all,” the magazine began, “let it be understood that we disapprove of name-stealing. Pontiac has long been the most flagrant practitioner of this distasteful deception, what with its ‘Grand Prix’ and ‘Le Mans.’ These thefts were bad enough, displaying the intention of the company to trade on an image that was not deserved and had not been earned.”
“Now, however,” R&T continued, “Pontiac has gone even further, lifting the exact designation of a highly successful GT racing car, the GTO, from Ferrari. There is an unforgivable dishonesty in such a practice as this and the insult should be sufficient to prevent any intelligent person from regarding it with anything except derision.”
Gee, R&T; chill out. My favorite ill-named car is the 1927–1937 Studebaker Dictator.
R&T does chill a bit: “Now, with this off our chests, let us get on with the business of this article, a road test of the Pontiac GTO. And let us, in all fairness, admit that it isn’t all bad. It’s far from all good, but it isn’t all bad either.”
This and the following image from R&T, March 1964.
In a particularly lengthy observation, R&T wrote, “With a chary eye on Papa General Motors and its stern no-racing-machinery-to-be-built-on-our-production-line edict (and with a sidelong glance at Brother Bunky Knudsen over at Chevrolet, who can be counted on to have a fifth ace up his sleeve at all times), Pontiac had dropped one of its big-car 389-cu in. engines into a Le Mans chassis, ’omologated it with the FIA, dubbed it GTO and, with a happy hopeful chortle, sent it out to do dirt to the infidel.”
Mid-Sixties Lore. There’s a lot of mid-Sixties car lore embedded in the sentence above. Until reading it back then, I hadn’t realized that Pontiac had actually sought FIA blessing. The International Sporting Code of the era specified that such a Gran Turismo Omologato be in actual production with at least a hundred examples built (clearly an easy goal once Pontiac submitted the obligatory paperwork).
Rocky Rotella’s “GM’s Infamous Racing Ban of 1963,” September 14, 2018, describes the complex interactions of government and automakers in this. In retrospect, it was more than just backing away from the horsepower race.
R&T’s reference to Bunky (Wikipedia prefers “Bunkie”) Knudsen was probably about the Chevrolet’s Super Sport models, limited-edition versions featuring increased power, stiffer suspension, and high-performance tires.
Tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll get specific with R&T’s testing and evaluation of the Pontiac GTO. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024
Simanaitis Says 
I was in high school in 1964 and we thought the GTO was a supercar. Now it would be blown away by a typical econobox. How times change!
If it please the court, many of us of an age to supposedly bow and scrape before egregious, decaled, mid-sized slam, bam, thank you, ma’am Motown ’60s tin saddled with station wagon engines on teenaged suspensions laughed at “muscle cars” when they were new, preferring, in varying order, old sport cars (Carroll Shelby insisted sport was singular and who are we to argue?), girls, music.
If someone now in their later decades feels a need to chirp tires and try to impress strangers at traffic lights by, pardon us, jerking off, in such one-trick ponies, so be it. But we’ve observed that most such adherents have little knowledge nor understanding of the panoply of automotive history, or the patience to rejuvenate, keep fettled something both with charm and able to get you a serious speeding ticket built before the war–that would be pre-War II, not the undeclared Vietnam or Korean.
Car snobs? Anything but. The word is discerning. As for Pontiac’s nerdo appropriation of “GTO,” remember that Chevy cribbed Ferrari’s grille for their ’55 models, the ’63 Lusso’s entire shape for their ’67 Camaro, and the occasionally skillful designer, if unlettered hick, Bill Mitchell, told his stylists he wanted “a sorta Ferrari Rolls-Royce” for what became, not the LaSalle II, but ’63 Buick Riviera.
Go to any cars and coffee these days. Aging duffers with automatic transmissioned, power braked, power steering “muscle cars,” the best oxymoron since “sport utility vehicle.” V-8 golf carts. Vintage road and sport cars, luxe or not, are for reflective men. The above are wheeled La-Z-Boys.
Sure, here you go:
There once was a car full of muscle,
Whose engine would roar with a hustle.
With curves so divine,
It was truly a sign,
Of power that made hearts and hips tussle