My GTO Page

And on the last day, the GTO was born...

Now you ask why did I not have a GTO until 1994. Well as I grew up in Chicago it seemed that every time I climbed into a car the law was behind me. Driving around in dads ‘56 Chevy with the factory power pack for some reason attracted a lot of cops. I even got a ticket for doing nothing but driving slowly down a side street. I did manage to get away from them once while drag racing a 56 Ford but that’s another story. The hot place to go in that time period (the 60's) was Skips. We stopped the traffic on North Ave with 30 or 40 guys and then let the cars out of Skips three at a time, line them up and drop the flag. I had acquired too many tickets to even think about a GTO. I could never afford the insurance on one. So when I turned twenty-one I purchased a 1966 Buick Riviera. Cheap to insure and it went like hell in spite of its 5200 lb. I did have various Pontiacs during my younger days, a 55 2dr, a 61 Catalina convertible and a 62 Bonneville convertible, all which were sold a long time ago and like everyone else, I wish that I still had.

So now it is 1994, and while on vacation in Florida my wife and I went to the car auction at Zephyr Hills. There it was. A gold ‘67 GTO hardtop with a black vinyl roof. Shimmering in the Florida sun, beckoning me as I approached. I checked for it being a GTO but that was about all I knew to do at the time and it looked like one?! Bought it. Had it delivered, then I found out that you could run the numbers with Pontiac Historical Society. Just a stroke of luck, it was a GTO. The only unusual option that came with the car originally was a set of shoulder belts. Of course, they weren’t there now. And I also found some surprises. The car was supposed to have a gold interior and after driving the car for a few years, I found it......painted and dyed black but still in the car. Possibly the original gold interior was dirty and they changed it to black to cover the dirt.
I drove the car for a few years and noticed that mine was not quite like the guys in the Cruisin’ Tigers Club. I seemed to be missing lots of things and the car was a little rough around the edges. Off to the swap meets we went, to find all that was missing. Little did I know how much I was going to learn in the years following.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines....

In the meantime, the owners manual in the car had the correct protecto plate still in it which matched the car. The first owner’s name was on it. Not being on the Internet yet, I asked a friend of mine to run the name in Ohio and we found about 25 matches. I started narrowing them down by phone calls, finally a lady answered the phone and said “That is my husband’s car, our daughter was almost born in that car.” With that, he called me back and we talked about the history of the car and that he sold it in Florida in 1969. Back then, he said, $500 and a used GTO got him a used Mercedes, as his family outgrew the GTO. He sent the original license plate that was on the car, the original window sticker, the purchase order form that was used to order the car and pictures taken of the car in 1967-68. Can you believe that after moving across the country several times that he kept all these things? After several conversations with the state of Florida, I found that this car had in excess of 5 owners, but it looks like the car stayed in Florida from 1969-1994.

The Finish Line

Fast forward to the present. After finding all the parts that I needed and with my wife’s coaxing, it went into a frame off restoration in the fall of 1998.

I took the original motor out, and put in a newly rebuilt 428, of course, telling my wife that we should save the original motor because it was a numbers matching one. Don’t think she ever really believed my reasoning. Out of the stripping of the car came some nice surprises......the frame was great, so I had it sandblasted and powder coated. There was one nickel size hole in the front windshield frame, and none in the rear window frame. Both the interior floor and trunk floor were perfect.

The only real problem was the left rear quarter needed to be replaced, because of poorly repaired accident damage. It had tons of bondo. The car was rebuilt to stock with stock colors with a stock interior, except for the 428, a Tri-power, the headers and the mags.

I hurried the finishing of it so that we could go to the Nationals in Ohio and literally did not even start the car until two days before we left. I couldn’t get the Tri-power working before the Nationals, so at the last minute we had to take it off and put the Q-Jet back on. We missed much of the final detailing just to get it on the road. We went to the nationals in Columbus, Ohio, which is where the car was originally purchased. We took a silver in restored modified, missing a gold by one point. The car is back in my garage now to finish all those details and put the Tri-power back on (of course) and we hope to be in Minnesota this summer for the Nationals.


While in Ohio, after the Nationals, we took the car to Findlay, Ohio to see the original owner. He was thrilled and we spent the day with him, catching up on 31 years of missing his GTO. That was probably the best part of the trip. Priceless.

He told us that he had ordered another GTO that arrived at the dealer before this one, but it was missing the air conditioning that he ordered. So there is another ‘67 GTO identical to mine that has shoulder belts running around, but it does not have air. Is it still alive?! He also said that the original redlines only lasted about 8,000 miles. A curious thing about the car, is that records show that it was produced and then delivered to the Columbus, Ohio dealer on the same day. I understand that this is not unusual because of its close proximity to Pontiac, Michigan where it was built.

And the Restoration goes on . . .




Cool Car Sites

Classical Pontiac
Judy D's Dolls