Road Test
It doesn't look like the old goat. That's the harshest indictment we can make against this new Pontiac GTO. Yes, there are other, eminently fixable flaws with the Australian-built GTO, and we'll get to those shortly. But we're really struggling to invent reasons not to put both hands together for this supremely comfortable, rear-drive, all independently sprung, Corvette-powered, husky-sounding, highway-inhaling coupe.
Okay, the new GTO's styling is a snooze. But let's put the body lines into context. The car on which this new GTO is based, GM's Holden Monaro built near Adelaide, Australia, was a styling concept for the 1998 Sydney motor show. Holden staffers penciled it in their off-hours without any approval by the management for production, much less any inkling that it would ever be sold in America.
Wish all you want, but GM won't spend hundreds of millions right now to bring us an all-new replacement for the Firebird. We've seen GTO concepts, some based on the front-drive Pontiac Grand Am and most recently a vile orange nonrunning concept car at the 1999 Detroit show that was too ugly even for Hot Wheels to build. We respectfully yawned in GM's face. So instead, we get a decade-old platform derived from the European Opel Omega and Cadillac Catera sedans. But wait. The Monaro fits the template of what a GTO should be better than any other vehicle in GM's current global lineup. It's rear-drive, it's relatively inexpensive, and it's already designed to accept a 350-hp Chevy small-block LS1 V-8. Plus, it's a perfect blank canvas for the aftermarket, which will scramble to develop bigger wheels and tires, body tack-ons, exhaust kits, and the inevitable 405-hp LS6 conversion. GTO Judge, anyone?
Because the Monaro-to-GTO transformation was hasty-about 17 months, says GM-there wasn't much time or budget to thoroughly alter the car. The biggest change involved moving the fuel tank from below the trunk floor to inside the trunk-to help keep the GTO from becoming a fireball in rear-end collisions. The 18.5-gallon plastic-encased tank offers a range of about 350 miles while chopping the trunk almost in half, cutting cargo space down to about two golf bags' worth.
The other downside to the truncated development schedule: The options list contains just one item, a $695 six-speed Tremec manual transmission that replaces the standard Hydra-Matic 4L60-E four-speed automatic. There's no sunroof, no seat heaters, and no OnStar offered. Navigation is by the old-fashioned paper map and driver-supplied compass.
As sparse as it is of optional luxuries, the GTO's cockpit welcomes patrons with leather seating for four adults, detailed with elegant French seams and embroidered GTO logos. "The best seats in any GM product ever" were compliments regularly heard about the deeply bolstered, lumbar adjustable power front buckets. Put to the endurance test during a nonstop, 29-hour beeline to Las Vegas (see "Fear and Losing Near Las Vegas," page 60), the GTO's seats left backs feeling free of fatigue, tailbones coddled, and spinal nerves unruffled.
Other GM cars that fit that description? Um, we're thinking...
The individual rear seats are ergonomically sculpted and scalloped like the fronts. Heads and elbows in the rear get plenty of stretch space. The front seats sprout a manual-release handle that flips the seatback forward, but only just past vertical. Then a separate button must be held while the front seat motors forward and back with the alacrity of a garden slug. More than a few passengers preferred to wriggle into and out of the rear like escape artists rather than wait for the seats to release them.
That the GTO is a foreigner to GM's North American lineup is evident from the driver's seat. The center-console window switches, the thick rubber knobs of the manual climate control, and the European Blaupunkt CD-changing stereo will seem alien to GM regulars. So will the manual tilting and telescoping steering wheel. Every two hours the cluster's LCD flashes a "rest reminder" with a pixilated image of a tree (perhaps Australian eucalyptus?) and a picnic table. How exotic.
The elegant detailing-including the red-face GTO dials with silver bezels and chrome pointer hubs, the red stitching on the leather-wrapped wheel and shifter boot, the polished metal door handles, and the aluminum-colored ring around the center dashboard stack-is also a welcome departure from GM's typical Tupperware interiors. We only wish Holden would find some space for a dead pedal left of the clutch.
