[6 Grrrs]

Some cool stories in this thread.

Here's mine:

I know the history of my '66 from 1982. My father bought it from a local guy who was bringing cars/trucks up from the south. This car was brought up to PA from Highpoint, NC. It was sold new at Bob Neill Pontiac in Winston-Salem, NC (I just noticed that the selling dealer's name is the same as my mother's maiden name - Neill, kinda interesting). When my dad bought this car, it had a Pontiac 350 with a Qjet on it, ralley IIs, 3.90 rear gears, and glasspacks. My family had been on a trip to the World's Fair in Tennessee (with the exception of my dad - he owned his own business & decided to stay home to get a big job done). When we were unloading the luggage out of my Grandfather's Cadillac, here comes this beautiful red '66 GTO up the street, sounding mean & looking sweet (I was 12 years old - this is exactly the type of car a 12 year old is interested in). Low & behold, my father is driving it. I was in love with this car then & knew that I wanted a '66 GTO right then. For the next 3 years, my father did his best to restore the car to factory specs. There was no PHS then, but my father had somehow known that this car was a tripower car & he built a 389 with trips on it, put 3.36 gears in it (for driveability), repainted it & installed the original spoke hubcaps with whitewall tires. In the pic below, it had ET aluminum wheels with the whitewalls, but he later changed it to the spokes. Also in the pic below, the car wears the same paint as when he got it. His heavily modified '73 El Camino is sitting next to it. It had a complete Pontiac Grand Am interior, drivetrain, 400 RAIII, 4spd, '77 El Camino front end, Trans Am fender vents, shaker, etc, etc. He is a Pontiac guy through & through. He wants to put a Pontiac motor in his 4wd Chevy pickup.

Picture taken sometime in 1982, possibly early 1983, at the Pittsburgh Convention Center during a car show.



During the first 3 years he owned it, it had 3 different engine fires (2 small ones that he had fixed in the same day & one large one that took the car off the road for 20+ years). The last fire was in June of 1985. He then decided to do a frame-off resto & then he was hurt in a bad car accident in 1987, so the GTO just sat in his garage until December 2006, when I uncovered it & pulled it to safety, so to speak. In August of 2007, his house was struck by lightning & burned to the ground. I saved the '66 from the fire by a mere 8 months. My website takes over from this point. www.akvalley.net/~ss/1966GTO.html

What it looked like when I got it...



What it looks like now...



My father was into GTO's from when they first came out. He had bought a '64 GTO new in 1964 (3x2, 4spd & pretty much stripped otherwise) right after my parents were married (his first "new" car). He only owned his '64 for 18 months & he said it was a POS that was back to the dealer all the time. He ended up trading it in on a '65 Olds full size convt, for my mother & he went back to driving Studebakers.

I bought a GTO new in 2004 (my first "new" car, also), 40 years after my father bought his. I bought a Quicksilver/Redhot 2004 with a 6 speed. Gorgeous car, but it was a POS & had many visits back to the dealership, as well. I traded it in on a family car when we found out my son was on the way. I kinda miss the '04, but I'm happier that I was able to save this '66 from it's untimely death.

my 2004...