Button74/Wikimedia CommonsThere aren't many car models as celebrated as the Pontiac GTO. It was unleashed on the public in 1964 after then-Pontiac division chief John Delorean figured out a way to shoehorn a 389 cubic inch V8 into a car that weighed less than 3,500 pounds. The GTO immediately inspired a No.4 hit song by Ronny and the Daytonas that was later covered by The Beach Boys and Rodney and the Brunettes, a band fronted by Los Angeles DJ Rodney Bingenheimer. The model also appeared in hundreds of Hollywood productions from "I Dream of Jeannie" and Bullitt" to "Better Call Saul" and "Dazed and Confused."A special "The Judge" edition was released in 1969 as a tribute to a famous Sammy Davis Jr. character on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in." The GTO outlived the muscle car era, which fizzled out in the mid-'70s after new fuel economy and emissions standards drove American buyers into smaller and more fuel efficient cars.[Featured image by Button74 via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC-By 4.0]Pontiac made just under 14,000 2006 GTOsIFCAR/Wikimedia CommonsThe GTO saw generational updates in 1968, 1973, 1974, and 2004. The fifth and final edition of the GTO only lasted through 2006, at which point Pontiac was just a few years from extinction. According to Mark Quitter Racing, Pontiac built about 41,000 third-gen GTOs: 15,740 for 2004, 11,069 the next year, and 13,948 for its swan song in 2006. Despite that reasonably robust supply, fifth-gen GTOs aren't that easy to find these days. Classic.com currently indexes just 12 active listings for this model, and 125 sales in the last five years. The average transaction price was about $21,500 and ranged from $7,000 to $51,500.That supply and average value is dwarfed by the same benchmarks for the first-generation model. Classic.com lists 577 sales of 1964-67 GTOs in that same period, and 80 current listings. The average sale price for an original model is $59,701, and a 1967 convertible went for $225,500 in 2022.[Featured image by IFCAR via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | Public Domain]
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