Courtesy Pontiac
In years past, this blurb has espoused the fleeting thrill of driving Porches, BMWs, Hummers and who-knows-what-else. We decided to go American this year, and take a trip down memory lane — back to the days when it was still OK to drive gas-guzzlers. We picked the Pontiac GTO. To many baby boomers, those three letters have a mystical pull; they conjure up memories of those days in the ´60s and early ´70s when muscle cars rumbled across the land. Unlike Mustangs, Corvettes, Firebirds and Camaros, GTOs had the good form to vanish in ´73, only to be updated three decades later with more comfort, Euro-style handling and much-improved safety features. The new one, with its big hunka V-8 engine (350 hp), is a beast just like its granddaddy. After the salesman uttered the obligatory ¨Are you interested in buying a GTO today?¨ (to which we answered, with a smile, ¨How can we know if we haven´t driven it?¨), he took us on a generous course, from Dale Mabry to Memorial to Hillsborough. Mid-afternoon traffic was heavy, so we didn´t get to open the GTO up as often as we wanted to, but coming out of traffic lights, it snapped our neck back a few times. The engine sounded like a giant clearing his throat, but it didn´t make the infernal racket of the souped-up ¨Goats¨ of old. We could´ve driven this car for several hours; it didn´t beat us up or loosen our teeth. The car isn´t much to look at, per se; it´s basically a Pontiac coupe with a spoiler on the back that´ll smoke most anything on the road.
Courtesy Pontiac, 4600 N. Dale Mabry, Tampa, 813-872-7786, www.courtesycars.com.
This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2004.
