I was in middle school and had finally been promoted to having my own bedroom when I went through a period of a couple of years when I would fall asleep with the radio on. Flint, Michigan had a lot of great radio stations in the late 1980s for any and every taste, with a few formats overlapping each other. With the acquisition of my very first radio and cassette deck for Christmas 1984, I had initially gravitated toward urban contemporary station 92.7 FM WDZZ (which is still excellent to this day), though not exclusively.
My older brother was into a lot of rock, new wave, alternative, and New Romantic, and with him being one of my childhood idols, I grew up liking (or learning to like) a lot of the music and sounds he was listening to at the time. By the time I hit seventh grade, a new school meant a lot of unfamiliar people and different sources of influence, so I had started also tuning the dial to more mainstream pop, dance, and rock like Def Leppard that used to play on stations like 102.5 FM WIOG and 105.5 WWCK. That band’s Hysteria album is pretty much the radio soundtrack for something like an entire two-year stretch of my life, and any of the singles released from that album take me right back.
Many of us can agree that adolescence is universally awkward for most people. As I was still trying to get my social “sea legs” outside the former, comfortable confines of my somewhat sheltered, gifted elementary school, I struggled for a time to make new friends, which did ultimately happen. In the meantime, my radio that was perched on the bookcase that served as my headboard kept me company at night, playing softly in the background, maybe even providing the soundtrack to some of my dreams. I came to think of some of those musicians as my friends. I remember the optimism in those days of feeling like one day, my life would actually be cool, and so would I. As Evelyn “Champagne” King had sung roughly ten years earlier, like her, I was also very much in love with my music box.
It was around this time that I remember a band called Icehouse getting rotation on many of the local stations. This was at what I would consider the tail end of the new wave movement, and their sound seemed like a natural evolution of the kind of synth-based rock that used to come from the speakers in the living room, thanks to my brother. At the time, I thought they were a new band, but later found out they had been recording since 1980. Their first hit that I could remember, “Crazy” from ’87, resonated with a kid with low self-esteem, with lyrics that included lines like, “Well, you’ve got to be crazy, baby, to want a guy like me”. The overall tone of the song, though, was a hopeful one, signifying that even geeks like Joe Dennis had a chance.
Icehouse’s second hit from their Man Of Colours album, “Electric Blue”, reached No. 7 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and was also their only top-ten hit on that chart. Also their only chart-topper in their native Australia, it was co-written by Icehouse frontman Iva Davies and John Oates. Hall & Oates is another band that will forever and unapologetically have my devotion to their greatness. (Try to ignore that Mr. Davies, as he appears in this video, looks a little bit like he wants to sell you a Gazelle fitness machine.)
The United States has long seemed to have a fascination with and harmless crush on all things Australia, but this doesn’t seem to have been more apparent than in the ’80s. Without delving into any kind of comprehensive list of examples from that decade, off the top of my head, I can think of fellow Australian band Men At Work, actor Paul Hogan and the Crocodile Dundee movie franchise, singer and actress Olivia Newton-John (and her Koala Blue chain of Australian imports), Aussie brand shampoo, Outback Steakhouse, and let us not forget actor / director Yahoo Serious. This is not unlike U.S. culture and kitsch being of interest in other countries, citing the popularity of “yacht rock” in Japan as just one example of many. It seemed to me, however, that the longevity of the stateside popularity of many Australian-sourced or themed things seemed to last for only so long into the ’90s and beyond.
Curbside has yet to comprehensively cover the final, 2004-’06 iteration of the Pontiac GTO, which was based the third-generation Australian Holden Monaro. I’m not the man for that job, though I did find and write up this one a while back. I’ll simply reiterate that I liked and respected it, and then was shocked and saddened when it was given the heave-ho after three brief model years in the United States. The official name for the color of this example’s finish is “Impulse Blue Metallic”, though “Electric Blue” a la the Icehouse song might also have worked, as this magnetic hue seemed perfectly suited to such a potent machine.
Icehouse would crack the Billboard Hot 100 main chart only a couple more times in the late ’80s, with a No. 88 placing for “My Obsession” in 1987 and at No. 84 with “Touch The Fire in ’89, though their success would continue in Australia. I don’t remember either of those other songs, probably like many adults born in the U.S. around the time of their release might be challenged to distinguish our final GTO from a latter-day Grand Prix or a big Cavalier. I considered it fortuitous to have come across this beautifully kept example on a particularly nice arvo.
On my knees
Help me, baby
Tell me, what can I do?
Electric blue
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Saturday, April 17, 2021.
My son owned one of these several years ago, I believe it was a 4dr. It was quite a nice car.
The GTO/Monaro was two-door only. Perhaps he had a G8 (Holden VE Commodore)?
Now that you mention it, I think you’re right. G8 sounds familiar. Thanks!
I hate to say it, but this may be evidence of the perception of many that the final GTO lacked a certain visual distinction. I like both the GTO and the G8. There’s a G8 in my neighborhood I may need to track down.
Joe; great reverie. Thanks –
This car looks to have one of those shades of blue that can flip-flop in the right light to another color; perhaps purple. Such hues are my favorite car colors, and if there is ever an intersection of a car that I need with this sort of color, it’s a deal.
Another example is (I think) certain M-type BMW’s. I’ve also seen a Mercedes in a similar hue, although I’ve been there, done that with those brands, and like my money too much to chance having to give so much of it away again for the care of a car!
Thanks, Alan.
I think I know the paint effect you’re talking about, like on certain Fords of the ’90s. I don’t think the color of this GTO was quite like that, but it seemed deeply reflective like candy. With a fresh wash, I’m sure the color of this one pops.
We must be around the same age. I envy you having all that music on your radio dial. In my little SW Va town we had one local AM oldies station and two FM Top 40 stations out of Roanoke that played the same 10 songs over and over. That was it. Late at night though, I could pick up WUVT from Virginia Tech on my little clock radio and hear all sorts of mind-blowing stuff like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and The Scorpions. Or a distant station from Detroit or Cleveland or New York and listen to Geddy Lee talk about the new Rush album on Rockline (until the station was lost to static). You had to work for it. These kids today — they have no idea what we went through!
Oh boy, can I relate to this. I grew up just 60 miles from NYC, but we were “Over The Mountain” in Northwestern NJ, so the signals were really spotty unless you went 10-15 miles in one direction or another. We had one local radio station playing soft rock-ish, or depending on the weather and the day we might get one or another of some great stations out of the city, or WPDH out of Poughkeepsie, which was actually better than most of the NYC stations besides the great WNEW. The struggle was real!
These kids today will also never know the thrill or the frustrations of collecting and cataloguing music on hard copy media, and the agonies of maintaining and holding on to said collection. My first three cars were typical 80’s coupes with near useless rear seats, used primarily as a landing ground for mountains of cassette tapes, some purchased and some copied from friends’ collections. They had short self lives due to heat, cold, moisture and quite often pilfering by my brother and his friends. Not to mention that the favored ones wore out quickly due to over-playing on cheap aftermarket sound systems installed in the driveway with less-than-professional aplomb.
In fact one such vehicle was a 1982 Dodge Charger 2.2 in a very similar shade of metallic blue as this car. Replete with GOLD tape stripes and plastic hood scoop and spoiler. Totally 80’s crap-tastic, but I loved it.
Yes! My first car was a 10-year old 1976 Honda Civic. First proper stereo I added was a boom box in the back seat, then a Clarion in-dash unit with Acoustic Research speakers in the doors. Added an amp and pioneer 6x9s on a sheet of plywood in the back but could never get rid of the ground loop hum that rose and fell with engine RPMs. Still have my carrying case of cassettes but I’d be afraid to play them even if I could find a tape deck. Factory cassettes were the worst sounding things ever. I used to buy LPs and record them on a nice TDK or Maxell instead. Every day I remember an album I used to have that somebody must have stolen in college.
I hear you loud and clear, Timmy, about being afraid to play cassettes nowadays, after having a few chewed up. I still have the ancient Ikea ‘cube’ that held our Pioneer 3 in 1 atop a stand-up storage space for records and a pull-out rack for cassettes, mostly full. And I’m with you on re-recording albums on TDK tape; still have a carton with several sealed blank cassettes somewhere.
Timmy, I always wondered why distant stations were easier to pick up late at night, versus during the day. I always thought it was a big deal when I could tune into some Detroit stations (with static) from Flint, which was about 70 miles away.
I can also appreciate your memory as mental catalogue for your music. I can think of a handful of CDs that I never got back from specific individuals. I don’t stew about it that much anymore, not only because college is decades behind me, but also because there’s a local thrift store that sells CDs at two-for-a-dollar. The selection is great, and sometimes, for just fifty cents, you can’t lose by trying something that looks interesting.
There are a couple of reasons why radio stations come in better at different times, depending on whether they’re AM or FM. FM is very line-of-sight, so if you’re on the back side of a mountain it will never come in great, but at night you get a very small boost from the ionosphere, though the effect is very limited due to the frequency range which doesn’t bounce very well due to its wavelength.
The same can’t be said for AM. The reason you can hear stations from half the world away is because AM has significant bounce from the ionosphere, and the stations you hear have clear-channel licenses to broadcast up to 50,000 watts. Your average local AM station is required to have directional broadcast antennas and must drop power to 250 watts or less when the sun goes down to accommodate the clear-channel stations by the terms of their license. That’s why some of the local stations come in well during the day and not at all at night, yet you can hear the Cubs game on a Chicago station.
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As for the car, I always liked its understated styling. That’s not to say I don’t like the earlier GTOs, but something about this car appeals to me. Maybe it’s that they didn’t try so hard. And, of course, the biggest complaint is that they didn’t try hard enough. Go figure. All I know is that I would take one with no hesitation.
This is fascinating – thank you so much. There’s no limit to what I’ve learned here at CC.
Thanks for sharing, Joseph. I always liked these, even if they are arguably a bit anonymous looking. I seem to remember a C&D (or maybe R&T) comparison between a GTO and a Mustang where the GTO outperformed the Mustang in most categories, yet for whatever reason the less refined Mustang took first place.
It’s a short list of Australian-built cars besides this that were sold in the US in my lifetime (since 1982), and I don’t think any of them sold all that well:
– Pontiac G8
– Chevrolet SS
– Chevrolet Caprice PPV (fleet only)
– Mercury Capri (convertible)
– Mitsubishi Diamante
Can anyone think of any others?
Alas, I can only think of ones I wish were sold in North America, but weren’t.
for Mitsubishi Diamante only the wagons were Australian; the sedans were imported from Japan.
The Diamante is on another list, of cars I’d rather forget.
I think it was strictly the styling, Retro was hot in the muscle car category between 04-06 and this catagory has always been image over performance, the GTO was the inverse of what really sold.
Plus people excited by the prospect of a new GTO kind of of got bait and switched, the “return of the GTO” were the first headlines and it came with all sorts of retro concept renderings, including much speculation it would resemble the 1999 GTO concept(which incidentally bears a strong resemblance to the 5th Gen Camaro in many ways). I followed the rollout of these GTOs through Pontiac magazine, and each month when new info emerged you could tell the enthusiasm of the writers withered a little as it first became known it won’t be an all new GTO but a GTO based on a mysterious Australian car, then more when found out not simply based on this Australian Monaro with a new body, but simply a rebadge of the Australian Monaro, then the next issue trying to drum up some enthusiasm then showed some cool kitted up variant of the highest spec production Monaro in a vivid yellow/silver paint scheme to get readers excited, but then the next issue came out with the big reveal and it was just a silver blob with no hood scoop, a cheap Grand Am like honeycomb grille and a couple little throwback GTO badges. Next issue of the magazine moved on back to headlines about late model Trans Ams and old Judges and the new GTO came and went.
The Holden Monaro-based GTO was a Lutz-mobile, a Goat created on the cheap. Although performance was good, styling was generally lambasted as a 2-door Cavalier with a thyroid problem.
One of my biggest pet-peeves with the last GTO was the rear spoiler. As usual, it served no function but the car actually looked much better without it. I’ve seen a few of them sans rear spoiler and there’s a world of difference.
Sadly, Pontiac died before they could get a much more retro GTO into production. In fact, the next GTO could have easily been an Australian ‘ute’ version, a latter-day Pontiac revival of the El Camino.
That jives with what I found when I researched this article: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-capsule/curbside-expatriot-2017-chevrolet-ss-shes-the-last-of-the-four-door-rwd-manual-v8s/
I saw the title for this one a few days ago and wondered how you were going to tie Debbie Gibson into a story involving a GTO, then now I realized I was conflating her “Electric Youth” and “Out of the Blue” albums having almost forgotten about Icehouse!
The GTO of this era was interesting although I recall feeling sorry for the first batch of buyers after the original engine was replaced by the more powerful one in the second year if I remember it correctly, instantly relegating the original ones to second-tier status. At least in my mind, I’m guessing that both are plenty powerful.
The color suits it well, it looks similar to Velocity Blue, a Ford color that works surprisingly well on pickup trucks.
One of my car buddies sold his V8 swapped Tbird SC to buy an 04 GTO probably about 10 years ago, the price spread between a used 04 and was 05-06 6.0 was quite massive as I recall, I think he paid somewhere around $8k where 05-06s were going for around $15-20.
Regardless of engine they were a pretty good bargain as used performance cars since they depreciated so rapidly. Buy one of these circa 2010 and they’d be beating any then current Mustang short of a GT500.
IIRC, the ’04 GTO had the 5.4L engine and a single exhaust. Later cars got the 6.0L engine and dual exhausts. So, yeah, the ’04 could be had much cheaper relative to the later, faster cars.
It also seems like the only options were an automatic and sunroof for any year. And build quality wasn’t exactly stellar, either.
The 04 was 5.7 liters(same as the outgoing Trans Ams) and it was a dual exhaust, the dual pipes however only exited out one side of the bumper so it looked like a single exhaust.
I didn’t think the build quality was bad at all, it was far better than any other domestic GM from the period anyway
Thanks for the correction; I was too lazy to look up the correct data but at least I was kind of close. I might have been thinking of the 5.3L V8 that was used in the first SSR and later increased to the same 6.0L engine that the later GTO got.
Seems like those first 5.7L GTOs also didn’t have hood scoops, either. It was an easy tell to identify the later, 6.0L, ‘real’ dual exhaust cars.
The lutz era niche cars like these and the SSR are pretty easy to jumble details together! It also confused me at the time that the F bodies were too unprofitable to keep in production, yet a car imported from Australia with numerous federalized components, and a specialty convertible truck, both that only came with top tier V8s, was financially more feasible for GM!
I could be wrong but I think the scoops were actually optional in 05-06, but the take rate was very high so most have them. Personally I kind of prefer them with the flat hood for their more subdued sleeper appearance but that’s me. The other visual year tell on them is the 06s have clear taillight lenses. Here’s an underbody pic of the 2004 exhaust setup.
Thanks for the underbody image. I can only surmise that the dual exhausts out the same side was an Aussie thing and GM didn’t have time to develop the tooling and panels for dual exhausts that exited out of both sides. Coming up with new front and rear fascias was probably a whole lot easier.
And, as far as options go, I’m not sure it was even possible to get a factory sunroof on these final GTOs. I don’t recall the hood scoops being an option and think the only differences between cars were exterior color and automatic or manual transmission.
This made me laugh when I read it this morning. You know what? If I ever find an early Chrysler K-Car, I may have to tie in Debbie Gibson’s “Shake Your Love” to describe the front suspension, if I see the car in motion.
If I recall correctly, Pontiac didn’t play up the Australian connection in its GTO marketing; indeed they seemed to avoid any mention of the car’s origins. The prevailing opinions at the time seemed to be that while the car had the performance credentials to wear the legendary GTO name, it didn’t look the part. It wasn’t unattractive, just rental-car generic. I wonder if GM would have done better marketing it as a Holden and tapping into the Australian aura as with the brands mentioned in this piece rather than pretending it was a reborn Pontiac muscle car. Then again, given GM’s inability to sell Vauxhalls and Opels to Americans, probably not.
I have no recollection of that Icehouse song; I didn’t care for most ’80s pop at the time and still don’t. I can totally get into the current Japanese obsession with vintage American yacht rock and sunshine pop though.
Was WIOG the Party Lizard? I remember listening to that station sometimes, I think Lansing was kind of the far edge of their signal, so it depended on what car I was in.
The GTO seemed like a clever idea, and I like them, but can totally see why they weren’t a success.
Dan, WIOG was absolutely the Party Lizard, and if I recall correctly, I still have a bumper sticker in storage somewhere for 102.5 FM with the cartoon lizard with sunglasses on it. IIRC, this was a new station in the Flint area in the late ’80s (or at least a new format), and I remember thinking it was a big deal.
Back when these were new, I test drove a black ’05 GTO with a six-speed, and I pretty much fell in love with it. I had just gotten married, however, and a brand new car wasn’t (and isn’t) a top priority. Still, it was a really fun car to drive with a ton of power, and I would have had a great time with a daily driver like that.
Aaron, I will say that with this car’s larger dimensions that many other performance cars like it, I could see some new families justifying the purchase… until they looked at the smallish trunk, which someone else referenced in the comments.
Ah the AM radio days… long gone for most. But being the hick that I am and my 1976 F150 4×4 only has an AM , I suppose I am still back in that time in many ways. So my kids say anyway. And the funny thing is my 31year old (today actually) is right there with me. And that is probably why he still has his first vehicle since he was 14, a 1971 F100. It has small upgrades and we painted it a dozen years ago or more (2007) but basically original. Must be a DNA thing. Always thought my dad was old fashioned too haha
The styling always looked to me like a 94-98 Mustang with more midsized proportions, which I think that on top of its very well publicized and nearly unaltered foreign roots turned off a lot of GM diehard American Muscle faithful that went on to buy the retro 5th Gen Camaros in droves. Didn’t help that they were V8 only and the one thing that was substantially altered for American use(besides LHD) was moving the fuel tank from underneath the rear overhang to behind the back seat, creating an absurdly small cargo space for a relatively large car. And as one of my friends found out some parts as mundane as body clips needed to come from Australia and took weeks to arrive, and his 04 was only 6-7 years old!
Weirdly enough those of us enthusiasts who were/are into MN12 Tbirds and Cougars really embraced these GTOs since they were so similar in many ways, and had so many things we wanted in those cars. With these so orphaned by the GM faithful and the SN95 like styling we embraced them as a next gen MN12
Forgot to attach the pic, my friends GTO in our small club meet circa 2012
I like that you reference the 1994 – ’98 Mustang as a visual comparison. This wouldn’t be the first thing that came to my mind, but now that you mention it, I do see it – especially in profile, and in the C-pillar.
I hadn’t realized until you mentioned it that these had relatively poor cargo space. I referenced your comment in my response to Aaron65 above, but had forgotten it was yours.
Yeah my friend who had that one and I used to joke it looked like a Sunfire, that and the Cavalier seemed to be the more common comparison (though the Sunfire roofline is way closer). The extra Mustang resemblance comes from that body crease just below the beltline, there’s certain angles where the resemblance is uncanny.
Here is a version of that video, only in the correct aspect ratio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZHdpvgnZWI
I don’t remember it, but it is the most meaningless generic derivative lyrically and musically post-New Wave pop song imaginable. Also: worst haircut ever, and I do respect a decent haircut band look.
That Pontiac is also too middle of the road generic looking to make an impression, despite being a nice looking car. Everyone knew about the original one, but who noticed that later claim to the title? All American car makers for decades had a way of blanding out every original concept in various ways. And also spreading the name to ordinary cars. See: Impala, Chrysler 300, etc.
I am older so this car makes me think of Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James and the Shondells. But your reference works well too!
The right car looks great in an electric blue like this. My Honda Fit was offered in something similar, but the interior color was wrong so it failed the Mrs. test.
I wanted to love these – they were everything I said I liked. But for some reason they just didn’t really move me.
Haha – “Crystal Blue Persuasion” was the title of one of my first photos (of a blue ’68 Olds Toronado) I had posted to the Curbside Cohort that Paul had used for a feature.
I’d say my admiration for these grew in time after I initially just scratched my head. The more I read about them, the more I liked them.
USAF used these as chase cars for the U2 at Beale AFB several years back.
I wouldn’t have thought that the smallish trunk on these was big enough for the U-2’s take-off gear. The previous, last generation f-body rear hatch area was much more commodious.
Interestingly, it seems that Teslas are now the current choice for the U-2 chase car.
My Saab (GM) ’08 convertible is this color and was actually called Electric Blue. Saab only used the color on convertibles, and only ’06 through ’09 – fewer than 900 cars for North America total (stick or auto, I4 or V6). It wouldn’t have worked on their sedans or wagons, I’m sure.
Good to hear this car made you think of Icehouse, Joseph. Electric Blue indeed. Classic!
Holden had some great colours for these cars, as Ford did for Falcons of this era. I think the companies’ designers egged each other on with wilder and wilder hues through this era. I see a nice green Monaro from time to time; never when I’ve had my camera though.
I’m sure its been mentioned before, but here in its home country most folk bought the regular Commodore; the fact that the Monaro looked like a two door version of the ‘folk hero’ many-times Bathurst-winning sedan was part of its appeal. Taken out of the Aussie context and transported to the Land Of The Coupe, I can understand it being perceived as plain. To us it was clean, and as such it appealed to Aussie tastes. If you wanted “one with the lot” you went to HSV, though even theirs would look tame to American eyes.
Excellent! My favorite Icehouse song is probably “Hey Little Girl” – an earlier song that was a later discovery for me.
I’m always interest to hear perceptions of models that are foreign to me, so it’s great that you chimed in with your impressions of this model. It’s for this same reason that I love reading Tatra87’s pieces about cars I have little-to-no awareness of.
“Hey Little Girl” was off Primitive Man, their second album. I don’t think they started getting heard overseas until Man Of Colours, their fifth. “My Obsession” is another favourite of mine from M of C. For some fun listening, try “Big Fun” from Code Blue (a party full of Mother Goose characters – it’s absolutely nuts!) and “Satellite” from Big Wheel (“And there’s space junk inside her head/She’s somewhere out there/Spinning like a satellite…”) which always reminds me of a certain niece of mine. 🙂 But I digress.
Interestingly when the Monaro was updated with the scooped hood from the GTO, some purists here complained that the original’s clean looks were compromised. Yeah, those same clean looks that looked so anonymous to US eyes. Go figure! And yet there’s quite a few Monaros and Commodores getting around now with the Pontiac grille/bumper on them. Not so much because it’s Pontiac, but because it’s different, I feel. There was a fad for a while there for putting Chevy badges on Commodores, but now that GM has murdered Holden that’s not so popular. Neither is GM.
The above ad for the 2004 GTO touts its 350 h.p. As “the most powerful GTO ever built”. Not so. The ram air goats of ‘69 – ‘70 put out 366 h.p.
Technically it’s true, that 366 gross horsepower would translate well below the 350 net horsepower the 2004 was rated at with modern measurements.
Joseph, as always I enjoyed your post.
To me, both the car and song were derivative but that’s okay and I like them both.
Thank you – and I share your thoughts on both.
I’m an owner of a 2006 Impulse Blue Metallic GTO. I had kept my eyes on them when new but was never in the financial position to buy one. I ended up getting mine in 2012 and I drive it sparingly. These cars are criminally under appreciated. While certainly not a driver’s car like a Miata or Porsche, but for the money, I can’t think of a better deal. I paid $16k for it in 2012 and at the time to get the equivalent horsepower I would have had to get something with 3 times the miles or pay $10k more. It’s been completely reliable and it’s amazingly comfortable. Plus it gets better gas mileage than you’d expect.
One day the value of these will shoot up, so if you are thinking about getting one, I wouldn’t continue to wait. They’re not getting any cheaper.
The irony here is, back in the day when musclecars were everywhere, after a few years of hard use, they were a dime-a-dozen.
In today’s niche market, while it’s still possible to find one that been rode hard and put away wet, most were maintained quite a bit better and prices reflect that.
Yeah these were pretty much instant high performance bargains within a few years on the used market, my friend got his 04 for something like $8,000, it did have a lot of miles and needed a very minor bumper repair but was remarkably clean otherwise and had no other problems, 05-06s were hard to find for under $15k but that is still way cheap for 400 horsepower, by comparison Terminator Cobras were holding their value at the time in the $20,000 range and still seem to hover around there today, and the GTO was a much better equipped and comfortable car than those Mustangs.
Yours looks great, that inset grille mod is my favorite change people make to them, that blue and the copper color were my favorites on these.
Yes, a very nice car with minor, tasteful mods. Besides the inset grille (which is how it should have been done to begin with), it looks like the rear spoiler has been removed, which is something I’m a big advocate of on these cars.
I live in Kingston NY about 90 miles north of NYC. Back in the 80’s and 90’s my friends and I would go to concerts at Giants stadium in East Rutherford NJ, as soon as we got near the NJ state line on the Thruway going South, we would tune into WSOU 89.5 FM Seaton Hall University in South Orange NJ. Nicknamed Pirate radio after their basketball team. they played the most scorching Metal known to man! As for the ’04-’06 GTO, I had a friend at work who gave me a ride in his ’06 model one day, although the styling was bland this thing could lay down the rubber! A definite sleeper to be sure.
While the “Impulse Blue Metallic” color on this GTO looks good, Ford’s “Velocity Blue” (mentioned a bit earlier in this discussion) is one of the most striking exterior colors I have ever seen. When such a color is used on the most recent generation of Ford Fusion, the result is a car that is beyond gorgeous. (By the way, I own a 2020 Ford Fusion which is painted Velocity Blue. And when I first saw that car on the dealer’s lot, I was absolutely blown away by its beauty.)
I agree with the general sentiment that this generation of the GTO was underwhelming. One design of Pontiac’s final decade that I did like, however, was the Solstice.
To be honest, I don’t view the failure of this final generation of the GTO to be that sad of a development, given that more than thirty years had passed since any incarnation of the GTO was popular. IMO, what was really unfortunate was to witness the death of the Ford Thunderbird (which occurred at roughly the same time as the death of the Pontiac GTO). The T-Bird–arguably Ford’s most iconic passenger car aside from the Mustang and the Model T–had such a rich history. The final generation T-Bird was a cool looking car, but it was done in due to a way-too-expensive sticker price.
Adding to the comment from Airman193SOS regarding the ionosphere that reflects AM radio signals at night:
That quality of the ionosphere varies seasonally. It is strongest in the winter and weakest in the summer.