Without the VIN I don't think you will find it.
I assume the dealer is long out of business. There was a guy here that had sales records from his family's dealership from back in the '60s as I recall. What he had was way cool and extremely rare IMO. But unless you can locate a former owner and on the extremely unlikely chance that they kept the old sales records, that is just another dead end.
If you won the lotto and wanted to spend it on PHS records, you could purchase thousands of PHS records and try to find it by matching a record to what you do know.
Most likely a '65 sold in NJ was built at the Pontiac or Baltimore Plants, but even in a 3 month period, that is probably over 100,000 records to sift thru. PHS won't be able to help in the search, they will only send you the requested VIN records. The '65 Billing History Cards show the dealer code, but PHS can't search the records by dealer code, only by VIN.
You say you contacted GTOAA and got no response.
If you join GTOAA and also POCI, I believe you can run a classified in both publications seeking info about a car you are trying to find.
Most doing this post the VIN of a car they'd like to have back.
In your case, you would be asking about a GTO identified only by the original selling dealer and code and a description of the car.
If the car still exists maybe somebody would recognize it.
Do you have any good pictures of it?
I'm afraid you are very unlikely to discover the VIN. You already pursued the two best possibilities, DMV and the Insurance Co. Both may actually have records archived but even if they did, they aren't going to expend resources to sift thru them helping you find what you want.
But I would suggest posting pix of the car and as complete a description of it as you know right here at PY. Perhaps somebody will know of it.
By the early '70s, '65 GTOs were selling for a few hundred bucks (living in south Jersey I paid about $150 for a '64 GTO convertible from the original Phila dentist owner in '73) and suffered a lot of abuse at the hands of young drivers like me that bought them cheap and drove 'em hard. If it was being eaten up by NJ road salt, might not have celebrated its 15th birthday.
If it survived the '70s, it is more likely to still exist, by 1980 the GTO was already widely viewed as collectible and starting to appreciate in value.
One other thought. Contact/join the NJ state chapters of GTOAA and POCI. If the car remained in NJ, local guys are more apt to recognize it by pictures and description.
Good luck!
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