Beautiful! Still have my first car a 1970 GTO, have had it 46 years. A 400 engine is rebuilt and have swapped out the 4 speed for a 6 speed, disc brakes all around, bullet mirrors and red paint. You just can't go wrong with a GTO!
I learned to drive in a 1970 LeMans Sport. Same GM A body as the GTO. Pontiac the mark of great cars! 24 hours of LeMans. Legendary speedometer registered 140 mph. My father got her up to 120 on the new Interstate and still had accelerator pedal left. It had a 350 cid under the hood and would burn rubber in all gears.
I love the original Pontiac V8s. all the Chevelles, Camaros, and Corvette were messing around with generic GM 427s and 383s while you got all of the Pontiac performance cars getting the job done with an all Pontiac 400 ci V8. I know they had the "must not exceed one horsepower per 10 lbs of weight" rule back in the day so horsepower itself wasn't such a big concern but I personally love the Pontiac designed engines because of their obscurity. Great car man, my parents have a 1998 Pontiac Firebird Formula that they've been drag racing since they were kids. My dad gave it to my mom as a sort of wedding gift when she was 18 and he was 21, I had just been born then. They still have it today and I can honestly say that im more connected to that car than I am with most people I know. We all are:)
Your right down the road from my hometown......im from Seminole county....sanford. I had a 64 way back in the 70s sure wish i had it back......wish i had a hand full of the old cars back then sure wouldn't worry about anything
I don't have a GTO but I do have a 1968 Lemans 350 H/O 320 hp that I bought from the original owner. 126,000 miles on it right now, engine never has been rebuilt and it still runs great and pulls hard. Heres a video of it spinning the tires ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bXHJ6VAcM-g.html
Very cool video. (Allman Bros?) Love the nostalgic pics, and you even gave us a peek at the eng. compartment. Wish you showed the interior tho. Any more, to add? The stick shift is always the caveat for me. I miss tri-power.
Unfortunately I never took any pictures of the interior. The music is copyright free music RU-vid provides for videos. Back when I had this car I was not very good at documenting the vehicles I owned. Some of my Pontiacs I only have one or two pictures of.
@@markcronk8109 I know the feeling Mark. What did we have for cameras back then? Polaroids. Kodak, 24 exposure, that took weeks to fill, and get developed. And then, maybe 3 outta the 24 were any good. I didn't take too many pics in the 70s of my Ponchos either. I wish I had tho.
Wow what a beautiful car. Hate to say it but my 01 tacoma with 500k miles wont have as much sentiment to me in 40 years because its gonna be long gone by then and in a junkyard.
Those body guards were quite popular back in the day. They helped protect the side from door dings. The ones on this car were aftermarket (held on by tape on the backside). In some years Pontiac did offer body side mouldings that were held on with clips and posts.
Hidden headlights were standard on 68 GTOs but you could order them without. In 69 hidden headlights were optional. All 68 GTOs still had the vent windows in the doors. 1969 was the first year without vent windows. It is a 69. I have restored and won national events with other 69 GTOs.
Of course traction was the big equalizer. Back then I thought it was "cool" to spin the tires further than anyone else and get rubber in all 4 gears. Only after going to the dragstrip did I realize traction was king. The car was heavy with A/C and other options (I had it undercoated and the doors took more effort to close). At the track it only ran 14.23 spinning all the way through first and most of second on hard street tires. Tried a set of slicks that were way too tall for the 3.23 gears and bogged the car hard on the start. I won my fair share of stop light matches. Will never forget beating a Ferrari one night on a rolling start. Guy missed a gear and it was over. The car made enough power to dip into the 13s with proper traction.
@@babaoreally8220 The real "wars" actually started in the early 60s with NASCAR racing. Most of the big OEMs were very involved with NASCAR (win on Sunday sell on Monday). The competition started the horsepower wars. Pontiacs dominated in 62 and 63 on the tracks and drag strip with their 421 Super Duty engines. Then the GM racing ban came out late 63 pretty much took Pontiac out of the running. There were the factory supported independents and we had the short deck 366 NASCAR engine and the 303 Trans Am series engine in the late 60s early 70s but nothing like the days of factory racing.
@@babaoreally8220 I agree. When GM originally decided to withdraw from sanctioned NASCAR racing, Ford and Plymouth/Dodge continued for a while longer. Like you said Pontiac found a way to keep the performance image of the division going by building performance oriented cars for the public. It is a well known story of how several Pontiac engineers, including John Delorean, found the big car engine would fit in the smaller Tempest body. Testing of this car at the GM proving grounds revealed this could easily be produced. However, like you mentioned, there was a GM limit on cubic inches for cars this size. By making the GTO (including the 389 engine) an option on the Tempest they found a loophole in that policy and were able to bring the car to market. The 64 GTO has long been credited as being the first "muscle car".
