The Pontiac GTO was the prototypical muscle car. The iconic three-letter initialism today is more associated with Pontiac than the racing category it usurped. Back in the 1960s, the GM division’s management wanted to appeal to young drivers and tie its brand to performance despite a self-imposed company ban on factory racing. Without a doubt, it worked.
If you worked at Pontiac in 1963, it wasn’t uncommon to see then-division chief engineer John DeLorean behind the wheel of a beige prototype 1964 Pontiac Tempest. His unique vehicle was fitted with a 389-cubic-inch V8, packing power into a relatively small frame. DeLorean’s daily driver would become the basis for a new Pontiac model he named the GTO, or Gran Turismo Omolgato.
DeLorean was likely inspired by the Ferrari 250 GTO. The Italian grand tourer won the GT class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1962 and 1963. On both occasions, the 250 GTO finished second overall to a Ferrari prototype. Most importantly for Pontiac, Ferrari didn’t copyright the GTO name.
The moniker is Italian for “Grand Touring Homologated.” Homologation was the primary mechanism in sports car racing for separating production-based GT cars from purpose-built prototypes. If a manufacturer can build a specific number of a model then it’s allowed to compete in the GT class. In the mid-1960s, the FIA set the figure at 1,000 cars.
Despite the name’s origins, Pontiac would never allow the GTO to touch a race track in company colors. GM top brass imposed a company-wide ban on factory racing in 1963. Executives feared that the U.S. Justice Department would break up General Motors as its market share neared 60 percent. Abandoning racing was viewed as a way to gently tamp down sales.
The ban disproportionately impacted Pontiac as a youth-focused division. In “GTO, Pontiac’s Great One,” Pontiac consultant Jim Wangers outlines the dilemma he was put in to sell the car:
The corporate racing ban seemed like a death sentence for Pontiac, but Jim Wangers saw it as an opportunity. “Pontiac had carefully planned the image of its new cars,” Wangers says. “They were quick on the street, but we knew that racing performance wasn’t the only way to sell these cars. When that stage [racing] was abolished, we needed to keep our cars in the performance limelight.”
GM initially imposed a 5,000-unit sales limit on the GTO and Pontiac obliged by removing the new car from its 1964 model year. However, the GTO got a surreal amount of publicity through word of mouth and a controversial Car and Driver article. The magazine published a fictional comparison test between the Pontiac GTO and a Ferrari GTO. The data was real but the cars weren’t tested at the same location on the same day.
Now, the Pontiac didn’t stand a chance against the Ferrari but just the comparison was enough to drive sales. Pontiac sold 32,450 GTOs in 1964 and an icon was born. And yes, the Pontiac GTO was homologated by the FIA for international competition.
