[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by gtoric

An inside source at GM tells me that this car is still alive! It is now fully restored back to its original Plum Mist color and resides in the GM Historic Collection.

This brings to mind a story connected to the Plum Mist GTO. This was late in the winter of 2004. The new GTO was just beginning to show up on our shores, and I was asked to participate in an enthusiast's focus group for GM Styling. Myself and about eight other local Detroit area GTO/Pontiac enthusiasts were asked to gather at the Tech Center to give the management, marketing and design groups some of our "consumer-side" opinions on a new GTO design study. After an initial gathering at the Tech Center Design building, we traveled to a satellite facility located just blocks away from the Center. After a presentation by marketing and design, we were walked into a large studio room where we were shown a full-sized design mock-up of a potential 2007-08 GTO. Also in the room were a new Mustang GT and a very respectible Plum Mist '67 GTO hardtop. We were told the '67 was part of GM's vehicle collection fleet. I didn't realize the historical background of the Goat; it was just another restored GTO at the time. I just recently learned that this is the same beat-to-heck GTO, pictured above, that was used at the DPG for tire and wheel testing. Hard to imagine chosing this car to restore, but having spent most of its lifetme at the Mesa facility, it probably had no rust problems and very low mileage.

I realize it's almost unbelievable, but I just received confirmation via email from the GM Heritage Center that this Plum Mist '67 is, in fact, the tire test car from the DPG:





K