Few genuine car guys get as high up in the corporate hierarchy at the big automakers as Bob Lutz. After leaving Chrysler for GM, one of the projects he spurred along was importing the Holden VZ Monaro and re-badging it as a Pontiac.
With the F-body Firebird Trans Am having been discontinued after the '02 model year, the Excitement Division of General Motors was left with a lineup devoid of anything sportier than a Grand Am or Bonneville and, indeed, without any rear wheel drive cars at all.
The angst among Pontiac fans caused by the lack of the Firebird would hopefully be assuaged by labeling the Monaro as a reborn GTO, bringing back a legendary name in Detroit performance that had lain dormant for thirty years.
Under the hood would be the all-alloy 350 SAE net horsepower 5.7L LS1 V-8 swiped straight from the Corvette, backed with a 4-speed auto or a Tremec 6-speed manual. Car and Driver recorded a 5.3 second zero to sixty sprint and a fourteen flat quarter at 102 through the traps, noting that it was traction limited and would likely be quicker with beefier meats allowing harder launches.
Unfortunately, the reborn GTO had two strikes against it right out of the gate. First, the styling was criticized as tepid. The hood scoops were a late model-year dealer installed option, and while it had a true dual exhaust, both pipes exited on the same side due to the asymmetrical fuel tank location.
The styling complaints always struck me as odd, because the original GTO could not be told apart from a generic Tempest Le Mans coupe except by the badges and (fake) intake nostrils on the hood.
Probably more fatal was the fact that while the car was initially designed to go head-to-head against the Mustang GT, price-wise, a combination of cost overruns, the fluctuating exchange rate between the U.S. and AUS dollars, and good ol' dealer price-gouging for the RETURN OF THE GTO! meant that people wound up paying Corvette money for Mustang performance.
Sales of the the 2004, like the Barbados Blue one in the photo, were far weaker than hoped, leading to a scramble to revise the car for '05... But that's another post.
This one was photographed with a Nikon D3 and 24-85mm f/2.8-4D zoom lens in May of 2022.
When these were new, the next-door neighbor's adult son bought one. It had a delicious burble at idle.
ReplyDeleteApparently they spent a ridiculous amount of time attempting to duplicate the exhaust note of the original Goat without exceeding noise regs. That's supposedly why the H-pipe in the exhaust from the Monaro was blocked off.
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