Maybe they should have never went ahead with the GTO. Considering how short lived it was and its low sales volume, that was probably the right choice.
You're confusing cars designed from the ground up to be both left and right hand drive with the GTO. Its parent car was never designed to be converted and this made the process much more complicated. This in turn made the car's profit margin very slim and forced a higher sales price than the public would pay.
All I am pointing out is the inconsistencies in your statements.
We are talking about the concept of the original GTO to the latest offering. Not about the technology used in either car. Of course there are major differences in technology but there were also major differences between the concepts employed in their development.
The Mustang has held true to the original in design and concept. That is why it is still around and the GTO is gone.
It wasn't what people expected because GM deviated too far from the original concept they used in the 1960s.
That doesn't change the theme. It's the spot GM put themselves into when they killed off almost all their RWD cars. They also needed to move the driver's side over to sell cars on that platform in the middle east when they stopped building the RWD caprice in the USA and no longer had it to sell there.
There is none, except that manufactured in your head. Cars aren't the same as they were forty years ago and aren't going to be. Just themes survive.
A family sedan made with more punch. That's the concept, that's what was done.
A family sedan with more punch, that's the concept of the development.
You do know the car that the GTO was based on ended production....
But you could make various similiar gripes based on where the SN197 platform came from.
It's a family sedan with more punch. That's the original concept, that's what the last one was. All your gripes of 'difference' are behind the scenes trivia that most people don't even concern themselves with knowing.
The '64 GTO was an option package on the Tempest. It was a bare minimum to get the project off the ground. John DeLorean was sneaking it under the radar of the GM ban on big car engines in intermediates, and did not want to attract too much attention prior to the roll-out, by adding a bunch of distinctive features.
The '64 Tempest may or may not have been intended to be boring. What it was intended to do was to make the buying public forget all about the '61-'63, which was probably the worst modern domestic ever. A Corvair transaxle with swing axles designed to flip you over in hard cornering. A sliced in half V8 that shook so bad it required a rope drive shaft to try to cope. A truly nasty little vehicle.
The Barracuda always had an available with a V8. In '65 -- the second year of production -- it got a 235 hp solid lifter 273-4v that was as strong and probably had more potential than the Ford Hi-Po 289 sitting in the Shelby Cobras and the K-code and GT350 Mustangs of the day.
In the '66 Trans Am series, Mustangs won the season manufacturer's title with 46 points to the Barracuda's 39. Adding the Barracuda's 39 and Dodge Dart's 33 got you to 62 total Mopar points.
The 225 ci slant six was far torquier than the equivalent Ford and not to be disdained, for what it was.
Funny to see the classic Cuda exalted for its inherent wonderfulness and the modern GTO scorned for its poor sales. The '70-'74 Cudas were terrible cars AND did not sell, both. In particular they could not give away the Hemis and 440-6v's. That's why they're so expensive now
-- that Plymouth made so few of them when they were new. For example, only 11 '71 Hemi verts found buyers. I would guess that's one-tenth the number of Ferrari Daytona Spyders sold in that same model year. The modern GTO blew away the hi-po Cudas in sales, and will do the same thing in any measure of performance, comfort or utility. So it's funny to scorn the GTO just because Ma and Pa Yahoo preferred an Explorer in their driveway, unless you're going to apply the same yardstick to the classic Barracuda.
I don't know why this thought occurs to me, but the Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 remains one of the quickest Hemis of all time. It's 13.2 @ 104 --
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-- is better thanmost the magazine tests of 426 hemi cars "in the day." I guess thethought occurs because I'm in Cuda-bashing mode. Fraudulent and stupidcars.
Sorry if any of these points have already been made; I did not read every post in this thread.
Let me better define the concept. Family sedan with more punch that was based off an existing, domestically mass produced chassis with a high bang for the buck factor.
The Mustang chassis is exclusively for the Mustang. Want to add another point to argue?
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Whatever it is someone expects from a GTO, the last one didn't deliver it. The first one did. What was different between them? Care to answer the question this time or are you just going to ignore it again? It the question too hard for you to answer?
Not the same thing. One, the original GTO has a distinctly American Heritage, the other this most recent abortion, stems from the commonwealth, and shares as much in common with the distinctly American Heritage of the original GTO as the Lexus does...
It's good to know I'm not the only person who feels that way. When I think "GTO" an image of a '66 is instantly conjured up in my mind. A truly beautiful design, IMO.
For the "rebirth" of the GTO to have had any chance at all, it should have taken more styling cues from the 65-67's,... the "jelly bean" with a GTO emblem was ill-conceived, at best.
My argument is just fine... It's that in order to disqualify it the standards have to be increased to such a point that (practically) nothing made today can qualify for a classic name badge.
The 2005 Mustang did an outstanding job of living up to it's classic name badge. World class modern suspension and drive train, with plenty of well done styling ques from a long and successful distinctly American Heritage...
But it doesn't meet the requirements being applied in this thread to the GTO. For one, there is no mass produced compact that it shares significantly from as it did in original form or even fox body form.
It serves to show the gymnastics being done in this thread.
There is no logic to your position! The Mustang is not a reintroduction to a 20 plus year gone "classic name badge"! You are comparing apples to oranges here.
The 2005 Mustang is simply a very well done progression in styling change of an ongoing continuously built (since 1964) and sold car model. How can that (continuously live and ever changing car model) be compared to this travesty of an abortion GM did to the long dormant GTO with this reintroduction?
That is not what I was doing.
My point in bringing up the 2005 Mustang was simply to illustrate that if GM had done a similar (styling wise) thing with the Holden based GTO, instead of the nasty looking thing they came up with, (which by the way doesn't have a hint of the original GTO's styling) we would not be having this discussion now.
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