We’re diving back into the list again, Autopians. Which list might that be, you ask? Why, the infamous clickbait catalog of so-called “world’s worst cars,” of course!
Well, Wikipedia democratically calls it “list of automobiles known for a negative reception,” which is a less antagonistic name but a presentation of the same often flawed information. One of the unofficial philanthropic missions of this website is to shed some light on these maligned machines and find the silver lining. Sometimes this can be a difficult task — a Trabant really isn’t a great car [Editor’s Note: I disagree! The Duroplast people’s car of East German has plenty of appealing features! -DT] — but in other cases the vehicles on this list are actually good if not great. Scrolling down the long list to the 2000s, after entries like the Aztek and PT Cruiser I came across the 2004-2008 Pontiac GTO.
The original Pontiac GTO might not be the greatest muscle car of all time (Mopar fans for one will hammer that point home) but in terms of concept and marketing, the impact of this early example of the genre cannot be understated. The infamous John Delorean broke the unwritten GM rule of putting an engine larger than 330 cubic inches of displacement in an intermediate sized car with a skunkworks creation named after the Ferrari 250GTO. A loophole in the rule that could allow the bigger 389 mill as an option meant that the engine could see production in the mid-sized LeMans coupe in 1964 — this was a tremendously successful machine.
Strong marketing helped to build the hype about this new Pontiac with (sexist) ads like these:
There was even a surfer-rock style song on the radio..
..which was referenced in a great commercial years later (in German!) when VW still had the best advertising in the industry:
The early models might be the most iconic, but from a design standpoint the high point to me was always the 1968-72 models — fastback coupes with menacing faces and optional hidden headlights.
After the malaise era set in, Pontiac moved away from the mid-sized muscle car genre, and the “euro styled” soft-nosed Grand Am became the enthusiast version of the LeMans. The GTO name died out as a version of the Chevy Nova-based Ventura compact in 1974. The 350 V8 was the strongest powerplant available, and I have serious doubts that the 200 horsepower listed was a realistic figure.
While never forgotten, the GTO did not officially reappear until Pontiac dropped a show car onto the circuit decades later in 1999. There’s a lot to unpackage here on this concept, and honestly things like the strange Monster Energy Drink strakes, odd proportions, and blunt pointy-to-the-ground nose I’d very much prefer to have been left in the package, thank you.
If nothing else, the show car certainly sparked the public’s appetite for a new GTO, and one was on the way. Truth be told, knowing General Motors of the time, I was fully expecting a new GTO to be a front wheel drive torque steer machine — something similar to (if not identical to) what GM released as the Pontiac Grand Prix GXP, a crazy mid-sized sedan with a transverse mounted LS V8 and a wider track at the front than the rear which Thomas Hundal described in detail a little while back.
That was not to be the case: The upcoming GTO would be simultaneously more AND less than what the public likely had in mind. For once, General Motors did what it should have long before, and looked to a source that was right under its nose: the Australian Holden division. Holden built some of the most sophisticated domestic-style muscle cars ever, and the VZ Monaro was certainly one of them. GM spent 17 months converting this four seater coupe to US specs for the 2004 model year, adding the 350 horsepower LS1 V8 from the Corvette in the process.
The LS2 motor was added for the next model year; 50 more horses under the hood yielded a mind-numbing 4.7 second zero to sixty time. However, the performance was just the tip of the iceberg; this thing had a level of refinement that made a Firebird look like a joke. Car and Driver said that the all-independently sprung Monaro/GTO provided a decent ride and that the “handling is really more Deutschland than Detroit.” Did I mention that it was stick?
This was a GM car? Talk about the unexpected. “We’re really struggling to invent reasons not to put both hands together for this supremely comfortable…. highway-inhaling coupe” said Car and Driver. Well, there were a few reasons not to applaud, the primary one being the styling.
Don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing wrong with the looks of the Monaro/GTO. However, it’s hard to believe that there would be a Pontiac released where you might actually WANT more crap stuck onto it. Indeed, Pontiac did add some hood snouts later in an attempt to jazz the thing up, but it looked a bit like the result someone with a Cavalier walking into a Pep Boys with a hundred bucks and a dream. Since it was a bit pricey (albeit a great deal for the performance on tap) the resemblance to lower level GM cars did it no favors. Also, it did not by any stretch of the imagination look like anything before bearing the GTO name, or even a Pontiac for that matter.
Let’s say The General gives us the opportunity to fix that — a chance to make people notice this wallflower. Ready to do a redesign?
Before you grab a sketch pad, draw two massive circles and start making car shapes over them; hold up a minute. A design manager takes you out back to show you the remains of a Monaro that a staffer got a bit overenthusiastic with. As you feared, you’re going to be stuck with the Monaro shell as-is. “The front fenders are off of this one but we’d like to keep them on the production car, and the hood as well, and the trunk lid, too, but you can change the license filler panel” says the manager with a smirk. You’ve gotta make an apple out of an orange.
Enthusiasts were lucky enough to have top brass approve the cost of finally shipping and modifying an Australian supercar to the U.S. in the first place, and there is no way that they will foot the bill for a new body. The parts you see on this wrecked Monaro will stay on your redesigned production GTO. Well…shit.
Let’s look on the bright side. What can we do? Assuming we’re likely to fail, let’s make the best of it. A new nose, a new tail, some body cladding. What choice do we have?
Redesigning The Fifth-Gen GTO
The front end is simple enough. The nose demands the big full width split grille as on the 1968-69 car (or on Burt Reynold’s Trans Am); that’s a non-negotiable there. Headlamps are covered in electrically lowering doors, which sounds old school but even the new Volvo electric car sort of does that. The wraparound lights go away which visually increases the amount of ‘sheetmetal’ on the side of the car in front and back. Yes, you see the seams of the old nose and tail but some things must be tolerated. Then the job gets tough.
While the GTO/Monaro actually has fairly sculpted fenders (essential for GTOness), particularly in the back, the straight-line rocker panels and the sweep that runs from front to back on the flanks tends to hide this nice shape.
The entire side of the car seems like a thick bar-of-soap mass that is the antithesis of GTO. One solution is the rocker panel trim which will take on a shape that will accentuate (exaggerate, really) the ‘Coke bottle” shape of the car, which we’ll make stronger by using the even-chessier-but-it-works trick of graphically lowering the side windows with a black painted area. I’ve even painted a sliver of the sheet metal above the rear quarter windows as well. Look, we’re drawing at straws here, people.
It gets worse; note the different rear roof line, and the slight seam under the C-pillar of the modified car? We’ve had to resort to a trick used by GM in the past — the fiberglass or urethane trim panel. These panels cover up areas of the rear side glass and stick above the original roofline, connected by a full-width black “roof spoiler” thing (the whole roof is painted black so that helps to blend it in).
It’s a pretty awful idea conceptually but at the same time visually rather convincing. Yup, just like they did to turn a 1979 Buick Skyhawk into a “Road Hawk” to blend the rear spoiler into the side of the car. See how that panel that connects to the rear spoiler goes all the way up the trailing edge of the side door? It’s horrible and brilliant at the same time.
Can you imagine, say, the Germans doing these kind of shenanigans? I can’t, but they did. One of the facts that you might not know about the vaunted BMW e30 M3 (besides that fact that it isn’t really that fast) is that the roofline in back was altered with a steel cap welded right over the existing rear window opening, much like the roof cap on a Chrysler New Yorker. A new trunk lid was then installed to complete the look, but there is indeed a big targa-bar-like seam going over the back of the roof. I mean, it doesn’t make it right, but if Munich can do it, are we not allowed to? Desperate times call for desperate measures, and we have to add some glitz to this deserving Pontiac sleeper supercar by any means necessary.
In the rear, we’ve added a body colored tail and license plate filler panel covered in the eight-slot taillights from the ’67 model, and the lack of wraparound lights mean we’ll have to add a side marker in the form of a Pontiac logo which will warm Jason’s heart. The whole thing is finished off in modern interpretations of the honeycomb wheels used on some of the last real ‘Goats’ .
Inside, the revival GTO was praised for its uncharacteristically-good-for-a-GM-car seats, but the rest of it seemed as bland as the outside. The interior, like the rest of the car’s styling, is inoffensive, but seemingly came from a much further downmarket (i.e. cheap) car.
A few complaints besides aesthetics were the lack of an optional sunroof (I’ll add that — it can slide up and out into the pocket created by the roof spoiler on the top) and no navigation option. To better match the typically wide instrument area on GTOs of old, I’ve created a cap that goes over the top of the dash, extending to the center to form a space for a navi/entertainment screen, extra gauges, and even a heads-up display projector and center channel speaker for the Bose system.
[Ed note: That little top cap for the gauges looks great atop that dash! -DT]
How do I feel about all of this gingerbread decoration? You’re talking to someone who’s driven dull German sedans and wagons for the past 25 years, so I actually like the tasteful and even Teutonic look of the GTO/Monaro as is. Still, I know that the target market for this thing wanted the GTO the be more like the original muscle car, a car that in one variety came with pink stripes over the wheels and funky graphics proclaiming it as THE JUDGE. Subtle was not the word of the day. Pontiac owners often wanted flash to go with the dash, and there’s nothing wrong with that, even if we have to pop rivet and glue it on as I’m doing here. Would this semi-abomination have been enough to get more boomers to have parted with their cash back in the day, and pay the respect due to one of the fastest and best Pontiacs ever sold?
Source topshot: Autohunter
Our Daydreaming Designer Imagines Corvette Sedan And Wagon In 1978 – The Autopian
A Daydreaming Designer Imagines The Corvair Surviving Into Days Of Disco – The Autopian
The Daydreaming Designer Imagines A World Where The Corvair Never Went Away – The Autopian
This is a tough exercise, but I like where it’s going. I’m not sure if there’s much saving the back; I do like the taillights, but it’s pretty blobby. A tacky Grand-Am spoiler might help, but I’m indifferent. There’s really something in that front end, maybe a hint of 5th gen Camaro, which was probably in development.
Counterpoint. This and the real, nostril GTO are exactly what was wrong with American car styling during the early 2000s. The original new Monaro is still a good looking, simple design and did not need any of the associated frippery that came with the need to tie it to Pontiac.
The ultimate iteration is always the sadly never built, HRT 427. That’s how you maximise the aesthetic potential of this generation Monaro.
I’m currently on the hunt for an ’05 or ’06 with a manual transmission that has been used, but not abused. I would like to experience a naturally aspirated 2 door V8 with good power and a manual transmission for a bit while I can still afford it. I just don’t want what it seems like everyone else has (Mustang, Challenger). I liked the looks then and still do now. Plus, it’d get me a car built on a continent I haven’t previously had a car from. Getting Antarctica to complete the set is gonna be hard…
Anyway, I know why it didn’t succeed. What it wasn’t was a drag car out of the box. It’s really more of an Australian grand tourer and that’s not a bad thing, just wasn’t what the market itself was looking for.
This is not better.
I really hoped to see a front end cap much more reminiscent of a “Smokey and The Bandit” T/A.
That would’ve been enough to get the target market in to look at them, and the car would’ve sold itself to many who came to have a look.
Part of what makes the modern Challenger work so well is the empty space in the grille. Setting the mesh back from the front of the vehicle is a simple but highly effective use of style that urgently calls back the pony car performance years.
As someone who has owned an ’05 GTO for 16 years and 160,000 miles, I feel like I have to comment here. The front end on these was never their strong suit, and with a few tweaks I think your redesign could work. I know the stock side profile is somewhat boring, but what car wasn’t from that time period? I don’t think the changes you made are really much of an improvement, and the fake black around the windows is a pet peeve of mine no matter what car they’re on. The rear is where it gets bad. I know you’re going for retro, but the issue is this car was not designed to be retro. Since you’re stuck with the same shell and hardpoints as a late-90s lozenge look, it’s really impossible to bring back the angular ’60s/’70s styling cues and not have them look out of place. Which is probably why GM didn’t bother.
Unfortunately this was a great car that came out at the wrong time. “Retro” was in, and this car was decidedly not retro. I’ve never had a problem with the looks (at least on the updated cars. The ’04s were extremely bland), but I agree they’re not as eye-catching as a Mustang or Challenger (which came out later). Nowadays almost nobody knows what it is, but I get compliments on it more now than I did when it was almost new. I think the design has aged well overall, probably specifically because it doesn’t have any strong design cues to have gone out of style.
JT- as I said, trying to make and apple out of an orange here. Like you, I think the GTO is fine in it’s current format, but the goal is to get those that didn’t. I do wonder if just a new front end and different taillights might possibly have been a good, affordable compromise.
My sister cross shopped these when she bought her 05 Mustang GT. The GTO was in most ways a better car, but the looks (or lack of) are exactly what made her go to Ford. The Retro-stang is still in her garage!
Yeah, uh, look at what Chrysler did with the Challenger, and it outsells the Mustang. Had GM made the GTO look like a GTO, people would’ve lined up around the block to buy them.
mber- exactly! I’m not designing for myself here. I would prefer the grey, ultra tasteful stealthmobile (as would the Aussie market) but the target buyers here in the US would almost certainly want something busier and flashier to part with their cash. If they wanted something as subtle as a BMW they would have bought a BMW.
Looks a bit like the Maserati 3200GT, with the many lines going in different directions and the fat rear end.
No hood tach? For shame!!!
StillNotATony- I had one on there!! Then I changed my mind and figured the car had a tach and since it was 2000s Pontiac I would try to incorporate a HUD into the add-on dash cap.
Use the hood tach housing to project it on the windshield!
Bill Porter’s nice Coke-bottle form to the body is going to be tough to mimic – you can change the profile of the rocker molding, but only in profile – the body section is what it is, and it’s never going to look less fat from anything other than a side view.
theotherotter- surprisingly, the Monaro/GTO actual does have a rather subtle Coke bottle shape to it, yet they seem to hide it with the straight line rocker panel as well as the line the character line that runs the full width of the side. You can see by the highlight at the top of the rear quarter panel.
I always find it funny that the US Boomers wanted it to look more aggressive and seemed to forget all the customising that was done in the 70s with metal flake and wheel flares in a bid to make 60s/70s cars more aggressive!
Over here the 2000s Monaros are highly sought-after, and nobody really complained about looks since we had no other V8 coupe options at the time and had none since the late 70s from any make.
I can’t say any Aussies would be swapping on Bishop’s styling, I wonder if the US would have been more keen on the HSV Coupe 4 styling (with or without AWD): https://www.justcars.com.au/cars-for-sale/2005-hsv-coupe-4-coupe/JCMD5189569
so what you are saying is you were fine with the Jellybean because nothing else existed to compete against it? That is like saying Liver is the best meat out there because you have no Filet or Porterhouse to compare it to.
Have you seen the ‘New Edge’ Fords we were getting back then? Aussies are happier with bland over ostentatious.
1,000 bonus points for the tail lights and side marker lights. I was always a fan of the interior but the added cap integrates nicely. Thank you for not putting a panel screen on it.
Where were you when they needed you?
When the world needed him most, he vanished.
But now, Jason and Tracy have discovered the new
AvatarBishop, and we think he can save the world…Nice. The nods to GTO tradition are done well, in the right amount in the right places. I especially like the new nose. I think you did better than Pontiac (or better than GM bureaucrats, more likely) at making this look more GTO-ish, but I’m still kinda bored. The jellybean era bored me a lot. The 00s Goat still isn’t an exception. And not because this isn’t great work, but like you said, because there’s only so much that can be done.
But one thing you really nailed is the honeycomb-inspired wheels. With the honeycomb wheels from 1971-76 and the snowflake wheels from 1977-82, Pontiac made some of the best looking factory wheels any American car maker has ever made. It’s frustrating that honeycomb accents stuck around on Pontiacs in grilles and interiors, but everywhere but the wheels. Someone at Pontiac, or GM, or whoever’s fault it was biffed it big time by not at least putting a classic Pontiac wheel on it. That alone would have gone a long way toward un-boring the car. Got any images of the as-is GTO with just the wheels on it?
I liked that the GTO was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I suppose I was in the minority on that, though. The redesigned render here kind of looks like a late 90’s Hyundai show car….
I remember my friends and I thinking it looks too much like the early 00’s Grand Prix coupe
Not that it was a terrible thing to say, my buddy had a GTP. It was a cool car in the day.
But aside from knowing the V8 was under the hood, it made the GTO’s arrival a bit less impressive.
Bishop takes Pawn(tiac).
Too bad the AUDM sunroof never made it to the US GTO 🙁
They should’ve also offered a cheaper V6 model. The Monaro was available with the 3800, both supercharged and not.
The Monaro was fine, the problem was the Pontiacifying of it with nostrils, rear spoiler and the sad droopy nostrils up front.
Those original Monaro’s (of this vintage) are quite the looker in the flesh.
agreeeeeeeeed!
Luckily, it looks like the bumpers are easily interchangeable.
The real sad part is we didn’t get the sunroof available on the domestic Monaro
dogisbadob- I know! I’ve heard the excuse that the sunroof would ‘hurt the structural integrity’ but the Aussie market one says that ain’t so.
Sunroof take-up was pretty low in Australian manufactured cars back in the day and was possibly done by a third party like Webasto, not at the factory, so technically no “factory” option to offer in the USA
Webasto designs and manufactures many OEM sunroofs, but they are usually installed at the same factory that non-sunroof cars are made.
Do they have dealer-installed options in Australia? Usually something like a sunroof would still be installed at the factory and not the dealer. Does/Did Australia have something like ASC?
Regardless, they could’ve done them at the same facility that AUDM Monaros got their sunroofs from.
The take rate would’ve been much higher over here.
Also, it’s the least they could’ve done after killing off the Firebird which had T-tops!!!!! 😀
I may be wrong, but up until the VE-VF Commodore, sunroofs were a “factory” option but actually done by a third party using a Webasto sunroof.
The roof cut and install would go out to someone else before delivery to the dealer, so still had factory warranty and all that but not a production line installation. The last of the Commodore/Pontiac G8 models actually had a slightly different roof turret for a sunroof and the install was done on the regular production line.
Tickford, Walkinshaw, HSV and a host of other companies did these “factory” installs on Commodores and Falcons for years.
Yeah, fuck GM and their lame excuses.
GM’s slogan should be “We don’t make cars. We make excuses”
dogisbadob- they saw the roofs off of cars and reinforce them to make convertibles. I still don’t think that would have even been needed here. What was needed was amenities that would make people want to shell out the money for a car.
This article really emphasises the difference between US-market tastes and Australian. I don’t believe Aussies are particularly known for their aesthetic subtlety, but that generation Monaro wasn’t seen as especially subtle here – certainly not bland or invisible, at least.
TBF, there were definitely other HSV-variants of the more common 4 door that slapped on a lot more go fast cladding… Actually surprising those were never adapted for the US market, guessing too much effort.
Interior critiques are fair though – the residual from the base spec salesman sedan Commodore was a sore point throughout both the Commodore and Falcon runs, much like the Impreza/WRX and Lancer/EVO. Properly new interiors cost too much, obviously.
NotSpanky- yes, the ‘too much effort’ part is what killed it. Sadly, many of the possible improvements (like the sunroof, adding heated seats, and even navi or extra gauges in the silver panel on top of the dash which aftermarket offered) would not have taken that much effort or money but made a big difference in customer appeal.
On a serious note, absolutely love the Japanese style taillights you added! Very clean.
Thad- they’re actually of the 1967 GTO! Glad you like the choice.
I do indeed. It’s the flush mounting that made me think of Japanese.
Thad- I had a Nissan Z32 and now I can see the resemblance to that!
Yep, that was the era and possibly the very car that made me think Japan.
As someone who owned (bought new and LOVED it) an 04 Pulse Red GTO (its the one in my avatar) it was better as a sleeper. Even pull me over red, it was simply ignored no matter who much of a hooligan you were being. It was simply invisible.
As a 2004, I had the “slowest” model of the group as the later 2 years had the LS2 with more HP, but I I personally never lacked for oomph. 0-60 was 5.3 seconds (as Jeremy Clarkson said it’s a FAT AUSSIE PIG!) and quarter was something like 13.3. It wasn’t hugely fast 20 years ago, but it was more than fast enough.
I got divorced and with child support and all that even with my amazing 0% interest and employee pricing I just couldn’t afford it and had to get rid of it. I still miss that car.
Just a couple of things; GTO was only produced from 2004-2006. The 2004 model had the LS1 and a flat hood, while the 2005-06 models had the nostril hood and the LS2 motor.
I had a 2006 GTO with a 6-speed, and it was very quick. I liked the blander look of the car, especially when you drove past someone. They wouldn’t give the car a second look, then they heard the sound coming out of those cantaloupe-launcher exhausts and started looking around for the car. I even got a thumbs-up from a state trooper!
It was a really fun car, and I do miss it.
ProfPlum- exactly! I’d want one in silver or grey since it would not be a car the cops would point a radar or laser gun at in a pack of traffic. Especially if I had the LS2 like yours, if I wanted to stand a chance of keeping my license.
I had a Cyclone Grey Metallic model, which looked nice and it was pretty stealthy.
ProfPlum- I honestly have to say that people who thought the car wasn’t showy enough obviously were not using this machine for its intended purpose.
I actually quite like the GTO, the squat with the IRS was a little difficult to get used to at first, but it was a really sweet car and actually looked not that far from the pontiac grand prix and Bonnevile at the time. The G8 4 door follow ups were also quite good looking, but in the midwest a 4 door sports car with big engine and rwd makes owning one a second car proposition. it is kind of surprising the 300C managed to pull off this trick and sell for so long actually.
I have pined for a G8 GT dad-rod since they were new.
I personally don’t think it needs fixing, just a prohibition on silly model names and decals. The Judge…
My favorite Hotwheel as a kid was a black Judge GTO. There aren’t many muscle cars I lust over, but that is top of the list.
I think those black ones should have been called “The Executioner.” Then it would be cool.
Thad- I almost put Judge-style stripes over the fenders to help break up the mass but figured that would be going a bit too far.
You would be correct. That would be too far indeed.
Now if the car were named The Bishop… 😀
Thad- I’ll only do a signature edition if it came with the Peter Brock energy polarizers.
Have you heard of the Smokey Yunick Homogenizer? I hear they pair quite well with those Polarizers.
Counterpoint, we need even more trim levels named after recurring sketch characters – Tesla Model 3 Darill, Chrysler Voyager Matt Foley Edition, etc