Quote:
Originally Posted by PontiacJim1959
The '72 nose is a design failure. It is one of the least attractive front nose applications that could have been used on a GTO. I can see why the GTO faded away. The designers must have been grasping at straws or were purposely installing a cumbersome and gawdy front sheet metal treatment to steer people over to the Trans-Am and Firebird line. The body shell has a rounded shape, then they throw an exceptionally too wide, too long, and too flat pair of scoops. Then they extend the grille and put the grilles at a conflicting angle instead of flat and parallel to the car, and slap on an afterthought of a bumper and paint it body color while the rear bumper is chrome showing no balance to the design thinking. Heck, the nose arrives 10 minutes before the car does! And air extractors or brake cooling vents? Why? That 4,000 lb A/C car could never get going fast enough to need them. Horrible.
The '72 Lemans & GT-37 have a far better "muscle" look than the mamby pamby look of the GTO. Could you see those bogus scoops on a '72 TA? Sales would have plummeted. How about a Formula? Awful. A similar scoop was used in '76 on the Formula, but it was scaled back, better proportioned, and blended in with the rest of the nose design. The '72? The designers blew it on that one.
My opinion is that the GTO line ended in 1970. After that, it was all down hill and proof of that was the GTO went out with a whimper and a lipsticked up Nova called a Ventura with a 350 said to be a GTO. This is why the '72-'74 GTO's don't have a big following (unless higher horsepower optioned with 4-speeds) and won't command the prices the 1970 and earlier GTO's can. I would take a '72 Chevelle over any '72 GTO and I am not a Chevy guy.
I'll stick to the real '64 - '70 GTO's, thanks for the suggestion.
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IMO, the 72 Lemans front end is gaudy at best. Having said that, the 71/72 GTO front end is my least favorite. 66 & 69 would be my favorites.
In terms of the GTO going down hill in 71, well, a lot of muscle cars started to do down hill about that time. The 71/72 Chevelle front ends got quite ugly very fast, then 73 Chevelle's came along, just lol at that styling.