[johnta1]

Yes, PY shrinks them a lot when uploaded here.

[north]

Counterintuitively the compression seems to degrade old low grade images far more than very clear originals.

[north]

I thought you guys would find this interesting, I took the most common pattern Judge combo (4spd no AC) and converted the prices to 2025 dollars:

69 GTO hardtop: $29,445(base price)

4 speed manual: $ 1,724.18
HD Safe-T-Track: $ 589.56
AM Radio: $ 569.97
Remote mirror: $ 98.24
Custom belts: $ 117.93
Hood tach: $ 589.56
Console: $ 520.80
Gauges & clock: $ 471.63
Power steering: $ 982.63
Power disc brakes: $ 599.45
Soft-ray glass / all: $ 343.90
The judge: $3,144.39
Shipping: $ 933.00 (based on $100 in 1969 dollars)

Total: $40,130.73

This helps us perhaps better understanding why, so few cars were loaded with options back then. Even more so, a fully optioned automatic AC Judge would have cost over $53k in todays money.

[trishieldchief]

Nicely done North, great comparison to todays money /option.

[Baron Von Zeppelin]

4200 - 4300 for a 4spd Pattern car was fairly stiff money.
That was about the same money as a 427 COPO Camaro ,,,, without luxuries.
In honesty the COPO would have been my choice of the two, as a 69 new car buyer.

I see a lot of invoices on various 69 Pontiacs that are nothing that I would have wanted, in the price range of a Pattern Judge.

[johnta1]

Found another pattern Judge!

Zone 6 DON 00032

Pattern Judge Sort

[johnta1]

I was figuring that if there were 2000 pattern Judges, out of total HT Judges it Pattern Judges would be 30% of total.
North's percentage of pattern PHS' is probably about 30% of his total Judge's PHS?

[johnta1]

We should get Tim - 69 RA GTO, to see if he has more pattern Judges?
His 69 registry is pretty massive, don't know if he tracks the DON's on the PHS?

[Baron Von Zeppelin]

He probably doesn't track the order numbers.
Most of us threw in the towel on those things years ago as just insignificant data.

Pretty cool to me now - that they actually tie into something that we can understand.

[turbo69bird]

Originally Posted by Baron Von Zeppelin

4200 - 4300 for a 4spd Pattern car was fairly stiff money.
That was about the same money as a 427 COPO Camaro ,,,, without luxuries.
In honesty the COPO would have been my choice of the two, as a 69 new car buyer.

I see a lot of invoices on various 69 Pontiacs that are nothing that I would have wanted, in the price range of a Pattern Judge.

For comparison sake my RAIV 69 bird was $4182 .

[Keith Seymore]

For comparison sake my 63 GP was $5100.

K

[north]

I have 602 Judge invoices and 23.7% are pattern cars. Calculated into total Judge production of 6,833 that would mean about 1,600 pattern cars produced. However, I suspect my collection is a bit biased with pattern cars lately so maybe 1,500 is a better guess.

BTW, of the non-pattern Judges in the collection 59.8% are CR so out of all judges CR paint represents 69.6% or about 4,750 CR Judges built.

[north]

I think the pattern cars were a good idea by Pontiac. They obviously wanted to cement the image of the Judge as a more hardcore muscle car than the typical GTO of the time to attract a younger demographic. So having a bunch of Judges initially in circulation that all had the high impact color, rally wheels, Ram Air, consoles, limited slip, fat tires etc really contrasted with your typical regular GTO of the day, mostly greens with mostly automatics, vinyl tops and AC etc. I think they struck a nice balance with the pattern cars being much sportier than your average goat but no so hard core (ala early RA cars with 4.33 gears and mostly no other options) that you'd lose too many potential clients.

An indication that they succeeded are the following stats. For each option I list the option take rate on regular GTO's and then Judges:
Bench seat: 5.9% - 1.7%
AC: 41.4% - 11.5%
4 speed: 38.4% - 73.4%
STT: 48.7% - 78.1%
Vinyl top: 55.1% - 8.4%

They clearly succeeded in attracting a different buyer base.

[johnta1]

I used 6725 as the total HT Judges in comparing the pattern Judges. (No convertible Judges made)

[johnta1]

Added another pattern Judge : Zone 24 DON-00108

Pattern Judge Sort Table

[Baron Von Zeppelin]

Car 108 in Zone 24 is another one that shipped out to dealer later than my 02C Non-Pattern Orange car.

Insignificant factoid/question , but wondering if they allowed dealers to order Non-Pattern Judges before the Pattern cars in local reserves were all sold.
Car 50 in Zone 16 implies that they did .
Also a little odd that car 62 in Zone 16 shipped to the same dealer as car 50 - a week earlier than car 50 did.
Car 50 shipped later than my car also - in same Zone 16.

Not insinuating they would have considered bringing a Zone 24 car to NC. fwiw

[johnta1]

Here's another page I made to show another interesting item on Pattern Judges.

Pattern Judges with versions

[Baron Von Zeppelin]

Very cool addition.
Need a type E - M13 3spd
Only recall a few of those here and there.
Cannot recall an M13 car with AC , but we might find one someday.

Car - Zone 16 #30 from Frank Woods was M13
That was Oscar Maness's car.

And did 4spd AC still get HD STT ?
I have no files to see for myself.

[johnta1]

BVZ, I re-checked the page and had to correct a lot of the 'C' items. Evidently I copied the wrong letter.


Most were 'D'.

Anyhow, here is a 'D' and it does not have the HD 361 option. (the other one doesn't either)




Still interesting data.





Would be nice to see a lot more of the pattern Judges' (and PHS).

[north]

HD STT was only on 3.36 and numerically higher ratios. All AC cars for this reason would have had the regular STT because of the 3.23 axle ratio of AC cars.