(Me, in 1973): “Hello? Yes, good morning, I would like to get an insurance quote on a new car please? Of course I can wait….Oh, yes. Of course. 25 years old. Living at home. Midtown. Yeah, it’s quite a nice part of town isn’t it? What, oh, employed in IT. It’s a new field. Like record-keeping but for computers. Sure, sure, steady with a five mile commute. The car? Oh, it’s a Beige Pontiac with a black roof. What? Ah, a GTO…Hello? Hello!?”
Now what was the mistake of 1973 Gerardo Solis?
Well, for starters, 2018 me would question why he’s not buying a Coronet instead of a blobby Colonnade if he’s dead-set on getting a midsize. And If he isn’t set on a mid-size, why the hell is he not buying a Dart!? The Dem-ahem, sorry middle America, the DART SPORT is right there! But if you were dead-set on a new GM intermediate in 1973, there were worse options available. The GTO carried the new corporate look pretty well, even with the questionable addition of a padded roof in this example. To 2018 me a padded roof on a GTO, even this GTO, is a bit like fitting a Tesla Model 3 with wood paneling, but 1973 me has less options to compare it, not to mention lacking any idea of just what the hell a Tesla Model X is.
For reference purposes, here’s a GTO without a vinyl hat. An improvement…of a sort.
Pontiac’s version of the all-new A-Bodies worked the new bumper regulations into its design pretty well, the split grille with the large chrome bumper took some of the heft of the new front and hid it away. Compare and contrast with the also new Cutlass/442. That one had a similar grille arrangement but the narrower bumper that looked like an afterthought when it was on. Take it off however, and the resulting gaping maws will make it immediately clear that it was planned to look like that from the start.
You even had a pretty good choice of engines. Sure, numbers had plummeted ever since manufacturers were forced to come up with some actual figures instead of plucking some numbers from the aether and showing them to oooh-ing crowds with a tiny *(gross) sticker next to them, but up to 250 horsepower from the 455 engine was no less than last-years GTO. So as long as you didn’t look how much your new GTO weighed in comparison with that one, it was as though you weren’t losing anything. If you weren’t the sort of person who would go around telling everyone how much power your car made, you could keep the standard Pontiac 400 and bolt it to a 4-speed manual for a much easier way to confirm to the world that you enjoy driving.
And if you look at the competition from around the time, the A-Body just kept making more and more sense for the sort of person that would buy a GTO anyway. Over at Ford, the executive committee had clearly made HFII see the writing on the wall for muscle cars and double down on Brougham. The Torino would just keep packing on lard and sound deadening until its death in 1976. As for that Coronet, it was only available as a four-door sedan and wagon by now. The Charger had been left guarding the coupe front, which was a sound idea to cash in on name recognition until you remember that the insurance companies knew them mostly for having to pay checks to the owners of businesses who had their storefronts unwillingly decorated with 3,600 pounds of Dodge.
And that was indeed the mistake that 1973 me did. Because by this stage the GTO no longer had any unique features that would sell it apart from its lesser Pontiac coupe brethren. No tach on the dash, no unique glowing paints, no ‘here come da judge!’. In anything other than the stickers, some trim and the grille, all you were getting was a LeMans. However, because it still had prominent GTO badging throughout, it created images of standing quarter miles and company sponsored prototypes being sneakily taken out to Woodward drive on Friday evenings for some “Real-World testing”. Smoke coming out of tires, fire coming out of exhausts. Front wheels coming off the ground. In reality, all you were getting was the ability to have insurance companies do the same for your quote than car manufacturers did with gross horsepower. So if 1973 Gerardo wanted a fast colonnade Pontiac.
He should’ve just bought a LeMans. The market agrees. Only 4,806 GTO’s rolled off the line in 1973
Special thanks to nifty43 (nifticus) for uploading this GTO to the Cohort. I can’t imagine they sold very many of them in Canada either.
An excellent excercise for imagining a 1973 decision. Was the GTO still a separate model or an option package on a LeMans? Maybe you could have your GTO but still only pay LeMans insurance rates? (Joe Dennis the underwriter will probably chime in and warn about the bad things that happen when you try to get funny with your insurance agent.)
One thing though, 1973 Geraldo would have been more precise about that vinyl roof. He would have known that a *padded* vinyl roof was a whole new level of decadence over a plain vinyl roof that was just glued to the primered steel. But he would have been right that the better choice was to just skip it altogether. That was what my 1974 mother did when picking her Luxury LeMans – maybe ours came without because that vinyl got used on this GTO?
It was no longer a separate model, but an option package in 1973.
The Grand Am was the new Pontiac “sportish” mid-sized car.
By 1974 the GTO option was on the old Nova/Ventura compact body and about as fast as a Gremlin.
There ya go. “Hello, Mr. Insurance Agent? I just bought a Pontiac LeMans. Do you care which options it has? No? OK.”
74 Goat wasn’t “slow”, look up road tests before making claims. And btw, a mid-70’s Gremlin could be ordered with 304 v8, and as wasn’t slow at all.
Yes but the Ventura GTO looked a whole hell of a lot better.
Or you could have had a Grand Am optioned as you like in 2- or 4-door form.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/car-show-classic-1973-pontiac-grand-am-meeting-your-heroes/
The Grand Am also had “RTS” – radial tuned suspension and the Grand Prix instrument panel complete with African cross-fire mahogany. Woo-hoo!
Just my taste but if I were buying a coupe and it HAD to be midsize in ’73 I’d go for a Chevelle or Oldsmobuick in the low series since the two-door Colonnades I ever liked had the big triangular quarter windows that it’s clear were the original concept.
But the Dart Sport/Duster 340 with four speed and stripe/black hood delete in B5 blue with blue plaid seats would’ve made a compelling case for itself…
Or you could have bought a Vega GT. Several of us here at CC did. Sleek lines, 4 speed, excellent GM handling (smooth roads). I think my insurance was around $100 or $150 a year.
Given the passage of time I no longer remember how much I paid for insurance on my 1973 Vega GT; it had to have been fairly cheap or I wouldn’t have been able to afford it as a low ranking enlisted man in the Air Force. I agree that the Vega did handle fairly well, and if you squinted just right, you could see it as a three-quarter scale Camaro. On mine there was a huge gap between first gear and second gear; you could wind it out to the red line in first, power shift to second, and it would still bog down as the RPM dropped below the “fat” part of the torque curve. Of course the oil consumption issue eventually made everything else about the car redundant; when it reached a quart every 100 miles I bailed and sold it to another airman for a couple of hundred bucks. Before that I had several years of enjoyable driving in the Vega.
The Pontiac does look good, even aerodynamic compared to other cars of the era. I think the quality (such as it was) would be better in the GMs of the era.
By the way, it is Woodward Ave (M-1), not drive. This weekend is the annual Dream Cruise, and last weekend a portion of Woodward (no local puts Ave after it) was closed for legal drag racing – Dodge Roadkill Nights, right in front of the M1 Concourse. The M1 Concours is a new race track build within Pontiac city limits on an old GM site (I believe Fieros were made there, maybe also S-10 trucks).
I think I would have tried to stretch for a ’73 Grand Prix instead. It’s much better looking.
Reverted to option package for 1972, so the VIN wouldn’t show GTO.
Insurance surcharges helped killed the muscle car market. But also huge, cheaper supply of used 60’s ones also cut sales.
Could get the top 455 HO in ’72, but the 1973 455SD was only in Firebird Formula and TA.
Both my Dad and neighbor bought new Colonades in 1973. Dad’s was Grand Am sedan and his (for his 20 something son) a LeMans Sport coupe. Both were stunning to my 10 year old eyes.
“…why the hell is he not buying a Dart!? ”
Umm, this is why the 1974 GTO was moved to Ventura X body, to compete with Duster/Dart 340/360. Go where the market is, lower weight bodies, but purists wanted 400-455 motors. Read enough about it, a dead horse trope.
Not everyone was expecting to win drag races back then by the way, some wanted a nice cruiser. Some think all 60’s GTO’s were “fastest car then”, but it really just kicked off mid size cars with engines meant for big cars. And had trim package for image.
Well there is literally zero reason besides potentially cannibalizing F body sales the Ventura GTO couldn’t get a 400/455. And 64-72 GTOs were nice cruisers, people who bought bought 340 Darts, Dusters and Demons however did it to win races against the big dogs, that was the point. The 74 did neither well, it looked and drove like a 6 year old Nova, because that’s what it was.
The grand Am was In Planning stages and concept, supposed to be the next GTO. However, Pontiac was deciding to go more “Euro Brougham” in it’s product line at the time. The ‘Grand Am” was supposed to evoke the luxury of the Grand Prix melded with the sportiness of the Trans Am. The GTO should have died with the 72 model year…(Actually, 70 or 71 would have been more kindly) The idea to go to the Ventura for the 74 GTO was a good one, on paper. But it still looked like a Nova with parking lights in the grilles, a hood scoop and slit taillights. Pontiac was losing it’s mojo since 1970, but kept trying to recoup the magic of it’s heyday of the 60s. The Grand Am was a valiant effort. But never sold well, The Grand Prix and Firebird kept the fires lit after the GTO passed. The GP becoming more the Brougham, the Firebird held onto the fast sporting image and as a surviving “Pony” car, did the job. Helped by Hollywood and Burt Reynolds, later In the 70s. the 77 Can Am, built on the Lemans, was successful enough and is considered by many the true next Gen GTO. But was done in by the failure of the machinery that made the rear spoiler. Would a GTO built off the downsized 78 Lemans have succeeded? Well, The Grand Am was brought back, but only lasted a few years, again. Not until the 86 6000 STE did Pontiac have any midsize sporting sedan ideas… and this was on a FWD package. The GTO of the 2000s was nice in itself, however, was it really just GTO in name, only. The very last Pontiac that carried GTO DNA was the G8. A good car. Pontiac might have made it on the G8, G6, and Solstice had GM not been in such bad shape.
I would rather have a Grand Ville convertable.
+1. My favorite GM B-Body of all time, and my favorite Pontiac as well. A sedan or coupe would do almost as well, depending on options. Love the Grand Ville.
Sorry to be the contrarian.
Olds and Chevy did a much better job of the tail on their Colonnades. If your 1973 self must have one, get a Cutlass.
The 73 Le Mans is nice looking up front, but is one of my top three ugliest designs out back. For 1974 they unsharpened the knife and made it more mainstream looking.
Moparlee, I think you have found the most unflattering picture of a 74 LeMans sedan I have ever seen.
But look at all the nice houses in the background! 🙂
If 2018 me was forced to have a colonnade, it would have to be a Century Sedan. The shapes kinda look awkward to me on the wagon and I am not a sadist to force people to ride on the oven that is the back of the coupe.
If it was just limited to a 1973 mid-size American cars it would be a Coronet, as mentioned in the article. I like fuselage bodies much more than I do Colonnades. This little company from Germany called BMW was also doing a large coupe called the 3.0 CS if non-American was also an option. Much more expensive and a bit smaller, but those Germans may be up to something with that one
That little company called BMW did nothing more than build a front engine(more conventional)Chevy Corvair. Pick a gen,they were inspired by both.
I always thought the 2002 looked like what you’d get if you crossed a 1960 Corvair with a 1960 Falcon.
And it probably would’ve been a 2002, not a 3.0CS you’d be looking at for LeMans money even if ’73 was before the $/DM relationship went nuts.
Base price of a 1973 3.0CS was $10K.
Mechanically, the Neue Classe and the 02 would have to be propeller powered to be more different from a Corvair.
The NSU Prinz is much more similar to a Corvair in style and layout.
My friend’s dad picked up a used 2800CS in 1973 for quite cheap. It was far and away the nicest car I’d ever ridden in. I even got to drive it a bit and it felt nice behind the wheel too. But today, I’d pick a Colonnade Cutlass, perhaps a wagon, or even an El Camino, if it had to be domestic midsize.
In 1973, i would have gone to the local Chevy dealer and ordered a fully optioned Monte Carlo Landau. That said………..nice write up, these GTO’s are worth considering based on scarcity alone not to mention their good looks(i liked the Laguna better though)
I’m curious why no one has mentioned the other 1973 Mopar B-body musclecar, the Road Runner. The new 5 mph bumper version was arguably as good-looking as (if not better than) the previous loop-bumper cars, and could still be optioned up with a big-block 400 or even a 440 (turning it into a Road Runner/GTX).
Than there’s that other colonnade musclecar, the Buick Gran Sport. If I were looking for an intermediate musclecar in 1973, those would be my top contenders.
In ’73, “IT” was known as “data processing”. Don’t ask how I know this, I feel old enough already.
As a 14 year old in 1965 I was transfixed by an older cousin’s new GTO, dreaming one day that I might own one. These feelings grew stronger in 1969 when a spoiled friend got a new 4 speed Ram Air coupe, beautiful dark blue with a white vinyl roof. Another friends older brother had a splendid ’68 convertible. I loved the ’68-’72 generation with the coke bottle styling and the strong 350 hp 400. There was an aura surrounding this car, fed by those great Delorean/Wangers ad campaigns. They sure worked for me. I was hooked and wanted one sooo bad.
Fast forward to 1973. Freshly graduated from college with a good job and a bit of money, I was ready for my first new car. Finally, my unrequited love for a GTO could be consummated at last. And then I was presented with this. A taut, powerful, muscular intermediate had been replaced by this Colonade blob. Yeah the muscle car era had been waning and Detroit was moving in a new, broghamy direction, but I still wanted the GTO of my dreams. It was not to be. The party was over and I missed it.
In a weird twist on the pre-CC effect I’ve seen a number of GTOs recently, none of the Colonnades but the previous two generations. From a car with flapping quarter panels in the front of a local body shop to a survivor rag top that was showing some serious patina to a couple of nicer ones including one this morning.
At the time, these were completely overshadowed by the Grand Am, Grand Prix, Oldsmobile Cutlass S/Salon and Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
The blunt front did not mate well with the tapered rear. No less an authority than Jim Wangers said the tapered rear quarter panels and trunk of the LeMans/GTO remind him of a chocolate bar left in the sun.
I would have gone with the Cutlass S or Cutlass Salon for 1973, followed by the Grand Am.
1973 me would have bought a new Datsun 510 or a used BMW 1600 or 2002. But in 1973 I was in 3rd grade, reading Road & Track and Car & Driver, and riding in my parents’ BMW 2000 and Mercedes 250S so Pontiacs weren’t really my thing.
Front bumper not as well as done as previous GTOs with their Endura front ends – now reserved for the Grand Am. And the rear bumper of the ’73 GTO, LeMans and Grand Am was shared with that year’s Chevelle.
Sorry, no mid-size passenger car for me back in ’73. One year before the first oil embargo I was lusting after the newly restyled GM pickups. Make mine a C10 short bed with the 454 V-8 and all the extras, including positraction. Insurance on full size pickups was about as low as it got.
Another option would have been a “sin bin” van, probably Dodge. I did own a ’74 customized E-100 at one time.
Motors began losing power in ’71. 1972 was a bit worse. At least engines still had reasonable drivability. 1973 changed all that.
Power – down. Drivability – an quaint concept from the past. The final insult – fuel mileage took a dive. I never understood how a motor could use more gas to make less power, yet somehow pollute the air less.
1974 was just as bad. Luckily the seat belt interlock was introduced. Our garage got so many complaints about those things that it seemed like drivability, power and fuel mileage complaints were less.
For several years beginning with the 1973 models, any performance label was just that – a label. Cars offered a shadow of their previous performance. Models like GTO should have been dropped then.
Technological progress would eventually allow legitimate resurrection of old performance labels. Too bad sorry performing cars had already diluted the brand equity of labels like GTO.
Despite my revulsion at seeing 70’s performance labels equipped with smog motors, I do have to give credit. If you remember LA skies of the era, there is real improvement despite so many more cars on the road.
Admittedly a rare GTO but not a very good one. It was all over (with the possible exception of the SD 455 T/A and Formula) by ’73.
this generation intermediate is my personal favorite.. i love the collonade styling. the previous gen is just too tired and predictable for my tastes. whether it be the ’73 century G.S., Cutlass 442, Grand Am or Chevelle, im all about it