Cars Worth Noting: 2005 Pontiac GTO

My wife’s cousin John is a true gear head. He not only runs a 570 hp 1972, tubbed and caged Chevelle on the weekends, but he also souped up his Duramax diesel-powered hauler so he could tackle the western Michigan sand dunes.

When he saw the GTO sitting out in front of Grandpa’s house (thinking it was mine) his first words were, “Have you hopped it up yet?”

This is his kind of car — built in the muscle car tradition — a 350 hp 5.7L, Corvette V-8 driving the rear wheels of a mid-size car — the sweet whump, whump of a tuned dual exhaust filling the interior as you grab another gear. There’s even that Corvette-familiar, first-to-fourth gear lockout that can be so annoying. Yeah, everything’s there, from the leather buckets to the color-matched IP.

After blasting around in this car, you wonder why they aren’t screaming off the dealer’s lots. “It doesn’t look like a GTO,” John answers. “Not in the way a Mustang looks like a Mustang.”

John thinks they should have called it a Cavalier SS, or something like that. He feels that this car should exist, but it shouldn’t be a GTO.

The upside for him is that the lack of demand has brought the price down.
 
It seems that the cheaper it gets, the better it looks and the lower price makes it tempting.
 
But, as he talks about the prospect of picking up a GTO, the conversation turns to a guy who he’s seen at the regional hot rod events who bought 40 GTOs and grafted the tail end from a 1969 Chevy Chevelle on each one. John says he’s selling them for 80 grand.

It looks like someone’s figured out how to make money on this car.