For 1974, the once-mighty Pontiac GTO had moved from the intermediate line to the compact Ventura coupe, but buyers who still craved a sporty midsize Pontiac were not completely out of luck: They could still order a LeMans with the GT package, like this 4-speed Colonnade coupe with the 200 hp 350-4V engine.
When Pontiac had first introduced the GTO in 1964, general sales manager Frank Bridge didn’t think it would sell more than 5,000 copies. He was wrong then, but by the early ’70s, the GTO had fallen on hard times. The muscle car boom it had kicked off was nearly over, beaten down by high insurance rates, and Pontiac’s bag of marketing tricks had finally run out. The GTO was demoted from model back to option package for 1972, and while the option continued on the 1973 “Colonnade” LeMans, sales were down to 4,806.
For 1974, Pontiac transferred the GTO name to an option package for the compact Ventura coupe. It sold 7,058 copies, but that would be the end of the line.
Although you could no longer buy an intermediate GTO in 1974, you could still build the next best thing by ordering the individual pieces on a two-door LeMans or LeMans Sport Coupe with the GT option. Back 1970, Pontiac had supplemented the GTO by also offering a cheaper GT package for the A-body Tempest, originally called GT-37, with a floor-shifted heavy-duty 3-speed, dual exhausts, bigger 70-series tires, and various cosmetic items. The GT package continued on the Colonnade LeMans for 1973, and it was still available on the LeMans in 1974, after the GTO option moved to the Ventura line.
Unlike the GTO, the GT package wasn’t tied to any specific engine, which made it possible for customers to steer around the brutal insurance surcharges that were making muscle cars harder and harder for younger buyers to afford.
The 400-4V engine was still available on the LeMans in 1974, as was the 455-4V. Unfortunately for performance-minded buyers, either of the big engines was still likely to be hit with insurance surcharges, and their output wasn’t what it once was anyway, so they were rarely seen.
An intriguing alternative was the L76 350-4V engine. The 350-4V cost $164, $46 more than the two-barrel 350. The L76 normally had 185 hp, but adding dual exhausts (included with the GT package, a $30 option without it) gave it the same 200 net horsepower as the single-exhaust 400-4V engine, a healthy output for a stock 1974 U.S. engine. The 350 had less torque, 295 lb-ft versus 320 lb-ft, but it could rev higher, which made it a good companion for a manual transmission.
Unfortunately, intermediate buyers in 1974 were no longer very interested in shifting for themselves. Pontiac actually had a higher percentage of stick-shift intermediates than most, but that meant only about 2.7 percent of production. Just 883 1974 A-body Pontiacs had the 4-speed, which cost an extra $190 on the LeMans, raised later in the year to $197. The 4-speed wasn’t available in California, on wagons, or with the base six or 455 V-8 engines.
The Safe-T-Track limited-slip differential was another $45, and was also quite rare.
With the 350-4V engine and air conditioning, the GT Package itself cost $232. It included the floor-shifted M13 3-speed transmission (which you could replace with a 4-speed or Turbo Hydra-Matic at extra cost), dual exhausts, G70-14 RWL tires on Rally II wheels (without trim rings), dual sport mirrors, chrome wheel lip moldings, a blacked-out grille, badges, and accent stripes. You could get the functional pieces separately, but if you wanted the wheels, the transmission, and the dual exhausts anyway, ordering the GT Package gave you the dress-up stuff for only a few dollars extra, which wasn’t a bad deal.
The GT Package did not include this car’s $35 T36 “NASA” hood with its ducted scoops. These ducts were not functional; the 1973 Ram Air option, which would have allowed them to channel cool outside air into the air cleaner, was stillborn due to drive-by noise issues (although a few kits had been sold over dealer parts counters).
One surprising omission on this LeMans GT is bucket seats. You could get buckets as a no-cost option on the more expensive LeMans Sport Coupe or two-door Luxury LeMans, but the convoluted 1974 Pontiac Accessorizer doesn’t seem to offer any path to specifying buckets on a base LeMans. (You COULD order a LeMans Sport Coupe and delete its distinctive rear fender louvers for a credit, which amounted to about the same thing — the ways of ’70s merchandising were often inscrutable.) Thus, this car has a notchback bench seat with a fold-down armrest; with the floor shifter, this would require some delicate negotiation with a middle passenger.
This LeMans has the optional Rally Gauge Cluster, which included gauges for coolant temperature and oil pressure, a tachometer, and a clock for $100. Unfortunately, the secondary gauges were all crammed into the small center binnacle, so each instrument was about the size of a postage stamp.
The original buyer of this car ordered air conditioning, power steering (which was required with A/C), and power brakes, and the Y96 Firm Ride Package, but not the Radial Tuned Suspension (RTS). The RTS was $86 extra with the GT Package and included re-tuned springs and shocks, a rear anti-roll bar (which this car now has anyway), 15-inch wheels, and of course radial tires. This car now sports oversize radial tires on 15-inch Rally II wheels, rather than the 14-inch wheels originally supplied with the car.
This wasn’t the fastest LeMans you could order in 1974: An extra $51 would have bought the 400-4V engine, with an extra 30 hp, while an extra $154 would have bought the 454-4V with Turbo Hydra-Matic, with 250 hp. A GT with either of those engines would essentially have been a GTO in all but name. However, for 1974, the 200 hp dual-exhaust 350-4V was probably a better all-around compromise.
Alas, that did NOT make this 350-powered LeMans a poor man’s GTO. As equipped, this GT was a $2,960.60 car with over $1,800 worth of options — the total invoice price was $4,891.60, a big chunk of money in November 1973. This car was definitely not a stripper, of course, and it would have been possible to pare around $600 off the price tag by skipping the air conditioning, vinyl roof, and factory 8-track player. However, the original owner obviously had specific ideas about what features they did and didn’t want.
In the short term, that was the main thing that was lost with the decline of models like the GTO: You could still put together a pretty sporty combination, but it was once again becoming difficult to just buy one “off the shelf.” Even before the muscle car era, most automakers had offered a surprising amount of performance equipment, but finding and ordering it took a knowledgeable and patient salesperson and a deep dive into the more obscure corners of the options list. Buying a regular GTO or 4-4-2 sidestepped at least some of that, and if you weren’t out to build an ultimate dragstrip terror, you could potentially find a satisfactory performance car on the showroom floor rather than special-ordering one. By 1974, that was becoming less and less likely, and a lot of the desirable hardware was starting to disappear from options lists if it hadn’t already. The 4-speed manual, heavy-duty 3-speed, and dual exhausts were no longer available at all on the Pontiac LeMans after 1974, and the GT package would survive only through 1975.
Muscle car retrospectives often ignore the late LeMans GT and just assume that the midsize Pontiac muscle line ended after 1973. However, while the original star may have moved on and the audience had diminished, the show continued without them for another couple of seasons.
Related Reading
1973 Pontiac LeMans Sport Coupe: The Poor Man’s GTO, With A 3-Speed Manual Transmission (by me)
Cohort Classic: 1973 Pontiac GTO – Insurer’s Special (by Gerardo Solis)
Curbside Find: 1973 Pontiac LeMans Coupe – A Strong Start to a Weak Finish (by Dave Skinner)
Cohort Pic(k) Of The Day: 1974 Pontiac LeMans GT 400 – A Spring Colonnade (by Rich Baron)
That is not the original radio, it has FM. Sticker says just AM radio with 8-Track (yes they sold 8-track without FM). It should look like the radio on page 12 of the 1974 Pontiac Accessories brochure.
Good catch, I hadn’t noticed that. This car has been modified in a number of ways (mostly under the hood), that must have been one of them.
We keep hitting all around the edges of the car I got my drivers license in – my mother’s 74 Luxury LeMans. Yes, that is absolutely Honduras Maroon, which our car was. I remember that dash panel quite well, although we did not have the rally gauge cluster. As I recall, the left side pod was just 3 warning lights around the outside edges of the gauge and a blank for the missing clock. I believe that our radio was AM/FM but not stereo. it was not a very impressive sounding unit, and the windshield antenna made for lousy AM reception.
I love reading about all of the arcane performance pieces that were still available to someone who really wanted to search. Our car came straight off the lot (after a short-term lease as a driver’s ed car) so we had no such opportunity, not that my mother would have requested any of those performance options.
I never could appreciate the Pontiac beak other than on the Trans Am, but I have to say the Le Mans is pretty; I rather like how the hood flows into the side , and the colonnades always cut a nice figure on the profile.
One could argue that if the GTO has to be an intermediate, then this is the real GTO and not the Ventura? Besides, a Ventura GTO would start at around 3200$, and had the same 350-4V of the Le Mans GT, hard to see many advantages on going with the compact unless someone wanted the lighter body
I believe the author meant to refer to the hood scoops as “NACA” scoops, i.e. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, not “NASA”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACA_duct
Correct, and it’s now been fixed. Thanks.
I am aware of the distinction, but Pontiac explicitly described this as the “NASA hood,” which is how it appears in the contemporary Accessorizer option booklets and how it’s listed on the invoice. That’s why I put it in quotation marks in the text.
That’s highly embarrassing, for them. But then this is the company that used “gages” for years, although that’s less egregious.
Maybe they assumed their target audience wouldn’t understand what a NACA duct was?
Quite possibly, and also the 1974 model year coincided roughly with the NASA Skylab program, so NASA was still in the news.
Also, NASA was the legal successor-in-interest to NACA, and had been founded explicitly as a “strengthened and redesignated” version of the earlier advisory committee. So, it wasn’t exactly wrong, just imprecise.
I spent most of a decade as a real Colonnade nut, but Aaron has shown me more 4-speed Colonnade cars in the past couple years than I ever saw in the period.
If he ever comes up with a 4-speed GMC Sprint, I think my head will explode.
We built GMC Sprints and El Caminos at the Fremont plant. I’m pretty sure that a few four speed cars came down the line. I recall that those cars caused a lot of interest in the young guys working on the line. At one time I had a job that consisted of driving finished cars off the end of the assembly line. Being comfortable driving a stick helped me land that job.
Didn’t some of the high-performance drivetrains last a bit longer in the El Camino/Sprint because being trucks, they were subject to less stringent regulations than passenger-car Colonades?
No. That only applied to larger trucks, like the F-150 with 6500 lbs of GVW and the Heavy Chevy C10.
I don’t remember the exact year that GM started slapping GMC badges on El Caminos, Maybe 1969 or 1970, but they were never strong sellers, as GMC dealers were not places people shopped for something like that. I wouldn’t bet that GMC sold more than 20,000 Sprints per year. It was only with the final generation, 1978+, when the Sprint was renamed as Caballero, that I really started seeing GMC-badged utes.
All GMC truck dealers I have seen were combined with Buick, Olds or Pontiac. Having an “El Camino” to sell alongside BOP intermediate cars made sense at almost zero tooling cost.
This is a nice looking car in a great color, both inside and out. 200 net HP is quite respectable for the times. I’d option this car similarly, except for dropping the vinyl roof and adding bucket seats.
For $4,891 that’s got be in Grand Am territory, no? Which to me if you’re going to have a GTO in all but name is a much more appealing car all round
It is amusing to me the GT decal is clearly the 73 GTO decal with the O omitted. Pretty sad effort to dodge high insurance rates for a car by now even in hottest form runs 15 second ETs at best
Pontiac was trying to hit every possible market with their Colonnade cars.
The base models were a step up for base Malibu buyers
Grand Am was more “sporty/European”
GT was more aimed at the muscle car buyer
The Grand Prix was personal luxury
They split the marketing so thin that none of the models sold in huge numbers, but any sale was a sale, so it didn’t really matter.
The real takeaway, Matt, is that cars were almost invariably a lot more expensive than the base price, unless you wanted a poverty box. Folks today lament not being able to have the degree of customization with options as back then but the reality was that these options almost all had ridiculous profit margins and made the manufacturers big money. Comparing base prices of cars back then is rather misleading.
This is a somewhat extreme case, given that it started out as a base trim LeMans, but it just goes to show what it cost to get what you really wanted.
A Grand Am with similar equipment would have been hundreds of dollars more (the two-door version started at almost $4,600 without air), and a Grand Am with the 455-4V and other such options would have been more like $6,000.
Sure but the Grand Am came with a lot more standard equipment that would make it close to this, omit the AC (as muscle cars often did) and stick with the standard 400 it seems to me a better “GTO in spirit” than this in base form.
Even accounting for the extra standard equipment, the Grand Am was a LOT more expensive than a LeMans. Ordering the major functional items included with the Grand Am (TH400, 400-2V engine, console, power steering and brakes, big tires) on a LeMans Sport Coupe was over $400 cheaper than a two-door Grand Am.
For a buyer like the Warren Oates character in Two-Lane Blacktop, a Grand Am was probably a reasonable GTO substitute/successor, but it was very pricey, and I think a lot of people looked at it and said, “I could get a Grand Prix instead.”
But that’s the point in driving at, prior to this what was the price difference between these sorts of options on a previous Lemans(T-37 , GT-37 etc) vs. a standard GTO during the time of a GTO as a separate model?
The Grand Am it seems to me was little different in “the package” that prior GTOs encompassed; big cubic inches, deluxe trimmings, endura bumper, European flavor(I mean GTO was named after the Ferrari) especially by the time of The Judge Warren Oates drove in 1970. This LeMans presents a compelling case for a less affluent muscle car buyer especially with less options than this one, but the GTO in its heyday wasn’t a RoadRunner which this would be a closer analog to if equipped right.
Ultimately I agree, the Grand Prix is the elephant in the room once you get to higher priced intermediate Pontiacs by this point.
I am very biased, but in my humble opinion, the 1971 line of Pontiac GTO, Lemans and T-37 in my case looked so much better.
Without the ridiculous looking bumpers and sans vinyl top and adding bucket seats, it would be a decent looking car. Overall a nice design otherwise.
I always sort of had the impression that the ’73 Colonade Grand Am was the real replacements for the GTO. (And that the GTO was demoted and became sort of like the GT-37.) You’ve recently written some great pieces on the Colonade Grand Prix, Aaron. Maybe something on the Grand Am in the future?
It’s possible I’m the only one, but I’d be interested in a deep dive on the insurance situation. I read a lot about punitive surcharges, but little about what they were, how rapidly they came and went, and how insurance costs for particular demographics and cars related in modern money to insurance now. It would also be interesting to relate the 70s situation to the 50s and 60s – presumably insurance evolved over that period – and to modern insurance in terms of deductibles, coverage levels, etc.
Aaron, if you write this, I will read it (as I do everything you write, but, uhh, anyway).
Good looking car, despite the big bumpers. The deep red suits it.