<VV>Retro

[Tony Underwood]

At 11:24 AM 11/24/2006, Russ Moorhouse wrote:
>Pontiac never intended for the new GTO to be a retro car.  It was 
>their idea to produce the kind of car the GTO would have been today, 
>had it remained in production all those years. Considering that the 
>original GTO was a mid-size car with a big engine in it's day and 
>the way the cars have decreased in size over they years and the 
>styling changes since it went out of production, I think Pontiac hit 
>the nail on the head.


But Pontiac DIDN'T hit the nail.    GM was in a rush to get something 
out there to grab a piece of the performance car market.    They had 
NOTHING with a RWD platform available, having already dumped their 
LAST substantial RWD platform in the F-Body.

There wasn't anything else in the GM stable (outside the Holden in 
Australia, which had NOT abandoned RWD) that fit the bill.    Thus, 
the "borrowed" Holden Monaro rebadged as a GTO.


>  It is a modern day mid-size car with a big engine and it's rear 
> wheel drive,

...something Chevrolet didn't have then and still doesn't have now.


>more than you can say about the new V8 Monte Carlo and Impala.

Best they could do was cram a V8 into a FWD platform...  in the 
meantime we now have GM engineer sorts working on getting a RWD car 
back on showroom floors again.    Hopefully it's not too little too late.


>Why are people snapping them up when they are far from being 
>retro.  The Impala's sure don't look anything like my old 58 Impala did.

Chevy fans have been treated to cars with so little left of what THEY 
wanted in a car, that the new V8 option, FWD or otherwise, is at 
least a step up from the previous offerings with the biggest engine 
available in your new Impala being a 6-banger.

Sure as Hell isn't your father's Impala...



>Unfortunately, for Pontiac the fickled buying public wanted 
>something retro instead of what the GTO would be like today.


It wasn't a Pontiac.  People in the know who wanted to get themselves 
a performance car with an identifiable badge (GTO) made it a point to 
know something about what they were buying.

GM had spent far too  much time building beancounter cookiecutter 
cars with marketability based on the "color code" concept...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What sort of car are you looking for today?"

"A red one."

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Performance car customers today are a little smarter than that.    A 
new GTO pops up in the picture...  car guy realizes that GM had 
abandoned RWD tech along with almost everything with only two doors 
outside trucks and Corvettes, but here's this new RWD 2-door 
"Pontiac" that doesn't look like anything GM ever made and in fact 
resembles the styling you'd expect to see in an Asian coupe.

Ya think they were just gonna go buy one on a whim because it had GTO 
badges on it?   And when they found out how much the damned thing 
cost, a lot of people backed off quick.    Thus, the new "GTO" was 
hardly the blistering seller that the '64 GTO turned out to be.

Now it's slated to be dumped from the lineup.   Nobody seems to have 
much interest in them... in SPITE of the car having some damned 
serious performance.    Improper marketing combined with a very high 
price... which kinda flew in the face of the original Pontiac GTO 
concept which was to produce an uncomplicated performance car that 
looked distinctive and was affordable.

I don't know very many people at all who liked the appearance of the 
Monaro GTO.   I also know almost nobody who ever bought 
one.   They're seldom seen on the streets...  maybe see one once a 
week or so, to and from.

Meanwhile, I'm tripping over new Mustangs.


>Due to poor sales, the GTO turned out to be one of the best high 
>performance car bargains you could buy.
>
>I've often wondered why Chevy doesn't offer the Corvette as a retro 
>version of a '57 or '58 Corvette,

Because they're selling all they can build as-is.   Why offer a 
stripper that takes just as long to build and garners you less profit 
per car?    Hell, it's highly likely that a LOT of people would want 
a stripper 'Vette, but I'll bet that in the end it would likely cost 
almost the same as the loaded variants... after you waited weeks and 
weeks for it to show up.


>in addition to the existing Corvette.  Being a fiberglass body, it 
>doesn't seem that it would be that difficult make a retro body and 
>fit it on the same chassis and give the buyers a choice of the style 
>they want.  It would be a great anniversary promotion.


They're not gonna do it for the same reason you'll never see that 
retro Bel-Air showing up on dealer floors.   GM isn't gonna waste 
their money on anything that's not gonna bring in max profits with 
minimum expense...  they *Can't*, until they do something about the 
unions that are bleeding them dry.


I liked the Oldsmobile marque...  had hopes for a new 442 to come 
along maybe...  not to be.

And the sad part was that in order to get rid of the ones on dealer 
lots, GM was running Olds commercials touting the Olds name with 
reverence and spouting off about how they were building new 
Oldsmobiles around the clock to make sure that you could get 
one.   This, after the marque had already been cancelled.

Bullshit...

General Motors just hasn't been doing its job as of late.    I can't 
honestly say that they make ANYTHING that I'd want to buy, if I hit 
lotto and could afford to buy *anything* available.

Frankly, if I wanted a useful performance car I'd find myself 
checking out the Ford dealership and end up looking at Mustangs.   Of 
course, if I wanted a real musclecar I'd be hitting up the specialty 
arenas and scouting around for a '68 Charger R/T or a '68 Hemi 
Roadrunner...  seeing as how lotto had made money no object...   and 
then I'd start in on restoring the '66 Satellite I've been collecting 
parts and pieces for all year.    Hell, I'd even be scouting around 
for a body for that 'Vair based kitcar chassis around back.


Of course, I'd have a sizeable piece of property outside town, not 
too far, already seen a place that would work out nicely...  and 
stock it with state of the art facilities for doing whatever I wanted 
to do to a car, and also have it stocked with about a dozen or so 
Corvairs, various models...   including the ones already here that 
deserve better than what they're currently getting for lack of time 
and money.     I wonder if the Mustang GT would look too much out of 
place among all the '60s vintage cars...

All I need is to win lotto and I'd be on my way.



tony..