RIDE OF THE WEEK: 1966 Pontiac GTO convertible

by Michael Golubiewski
Production Editor

Little GTO, you’re really lookin’ fine

In the 1960s and 1970s, Pontiac was not just a General Motors afterthought that featured nothing more than renamed Chevrolet and Buick models. It was a brand that actually had innovative and original designs in its own right: The GTO, the Catalina, the Tempest, the Bonneville, the LeMans. This week’s ride, a 1966 Pontiac GTO convertible, comes from that era.

Auto historians consider the GTO the first true muscle car. Before it, performance cars were simply full size cars with the largest displacement engines available. Chief engineer John DeLorean and Pontiac General Manager Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen decided to find out what would happen if you put those big engines into smaller lighter cars. The result was the Pontiac GTO, produced from 1964-1974.

Jack Rudeski of Hanover Twp. owns this GTO (Gran Turismo Omologato). The phrase was first used by Ferrari, and basically means it’s a street-legal racecar. For its first two years GTO was an option package available on the LeMans and the Tempest, but in 1966, it became a model in its own right and had its most successful year, selling more than 96,900 models. Only about 11,311 of the 2-door 1966 GTO convertibles were produced.

Rudeski originally owned a GTO back in the day and when he decided to restore a car, he specifically looked for one. He found this model in Olyphant and has worked on it for 20 years. It features an eight cylinder, 400 cubic inch engine with overhead valves, a four-barrel carburetor and 4-speed manual transmission. It’s capable of producing about 360 horsepower at 5200 rpm, as well as a torque of about 424.

In 1966, the GTO convertible had a sticker price of $3,082. Rudeski says there are a lot of cars claiming to be GTOs, but are actually clones. The only way to tell a true GTO is by the VIN, which should start with 242.

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