OCEANSIDE -- General Motors is killing the Pontiac line, cars with 102 years of history. But in a garage just off North Avenue, the past is washed, waxed and ready to roar back at the turn of a key.
Jim Wangers keeps his collection of 13 Pontiacs on the garage's squeaky-clean floor, behind an office of the automotive consulting firm he founded in 1981. Five are GTOs, whose 1964 model is widely cited as Detroit's first "muscle car," a class that has included Chevrolet's Camaro and Ford's Mustang. Wangers helped Pontiac sell about 500,000 GTOs as marketing director for the brand in the 1960s.
A deep red 1965 GTO on the floor belongs to the Royal Bobcat limited edition made for a dealership in Royal Oak, Mich. The 1969 GTO "Judge" next to it is orange and has a spoiler -- radical styling for its day. Three other GTOs were at car shows last week.
As Wangers tells it, the GTO exemplified much of what made American cars successful in that decade: GM let Pontiac and its other brands operate much more autonomously than in later years. For a time, Pontiac built cars with wider bodies and wider wheel bases than other GM divisions.
"Where it was most repsected was in the packaging, putting the right engines in the right vehicles and putting in the right options," Wangers said of Pontiac.
Wangers said he was able to pitch the GTO as one-of-a-kind.
He contrasted that situation with that of the Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, which came to share many of the same parts and, from a distance, couldn't necessarily be distinguished from one another. Auto industry analysts say buyers have been confused by such pairs of similar cars, sometimes sold by the same dealer in neighboring buildings.
GM said in April that it would end the Pontiac division. The automaker plans to focus on Chevrolets, Cadillacs, GMC trucks and Buicks, while selling off its Saturn, Hummer and Saab brands.
GM entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 1, but analysts have sensed a reckoning for years, as GM, Ford and Chrysler lost more and more market share to Japanese brands. Wangers hinted at GM's slide in the 1998 book "Glory Days: When horsepower and passion ruled Detroit."
In recent interviews, Wangers recounted his own glory days as marketing chief for Pontiac. The first baby boomers who reached driving age in the mid-60s were a ripe market for such muscle cars, but Wangers said he took extra care to push the car into popular culture. A 1964 song commonly known as "Li'l GTO," by Ronny and the Daytons, made it onto the Billboard chart. A popular line of shoes included one called the GTO.
The Judge, which debuted in 1969, was the first to incorporate pop art style. Wangers said the car benefited from popular line on the television show "Laugh In" -- "Here comes the judge."
"The Monkees" television show in the late 1960s also featured a highly customized GTO.
"We made damn sure that the Monkeemobile was going to be a GTO," Wangers said. "They were really zany looking, but they had GTO front ends on them."
Call staff writer Chris Bagley at 760-740-5444. Read his blogs at bizblogs.nctimes.com.
