<VV>Retro

[Russ Moorhouse]

Pontiac never intended for the new GTO to be a retro car.  It was their idea 
to produce the kind of car the GTO would have been today, had it remained in 
production all those years. Considering that the original GTO was a mid-size 
car with a big engine in it's day and the way the cars have decreased in 
size over they years and the styling changes since it went out of 
production, I think Pontiac hit the nail on the head.  It is a modern day 
mid-size car with a big engine and it's rear wheel drive, more than you can 
say about the new V8 Monte Carlo and Impala.  Why are people snapping them 
up when they are far from being retro.  The Impala's sure don't look 
anything like my old 58 Impala did.

Unfortunately, for Pontiac the fickled buying public wanted something retro 
instead of what the GTO would be like today.  Due to poor sales, the GTO 
turned out to be one of the best high performance car bargains you could 
buy.

I've often wondered why Chevy doesn't offer the Corvette as a retro version 
of a '57 or '58 Corvette, in addition to the existing Corvette.  Being a 
fiberglass body, it doesn't seem that it would be that difficult make a 
retro body and fit it on the same chassis and give the buyers a choice of 
the style they want.  It would be a great anniversary promotion.

Russ

> That's it in a nutshell.  If you're gonna do retro, the result has to
> express its identity.    The new T-Bird didn't do this.    Neither did the
> new "GTO" which had no ancestry at all outside its Holden Monaro legacy,
> which has its own performance car image.
>
> This is similar to what happened in '74 when some moron at GM decided to
> use the Chevy Nova (already plagiarized by Pontiac as the "new" Ventura)
> as the next GTO...
>
> What's old became new again.
>
>
> tony..