They Don’t Like It; I Don’t Care
Ever since Apple and I climbed aboard the GTO and drove off into the sunset on Thursday afternoon, people everywhere have been staring at the car. On the way home from Orlando, we both noticed the constant glances it was getting from everyone from work truck drivers to teens in third-gen F-bodies. The SAP kit really adds a lot of that formerly missing “look at me” factor. But I think for the most part, people just don’t know what the goat is. Some probably think it’s a G6, some probably think it’s a Grand Prix and, if their smarmy comments are to be believed, some think it’s a Cavalier on steroids. But it’s attracting a lot more attention than I expected it to, given the car’s sleeper reputation. However, not all of it is good, as I am about to explain.
I went out to grab a quick bite for lunch this afternoon. This short, 30-minute round trip was the only time I actually spent with the car today. Part of this is because the traffic on Naples’ roads was terrifying. Not heavy, like Orlando, but morbidly barbarous. Just during my short trip today, I think I saw it all. There was the fool who had stopped his Jeep Wrangler dead in the middle of the boulevard while he made up his mind about which way to turn. There was the stupid bitch in the Escalade ESV (think Cadillac Suburban) who had not pulled into her parking space all the way and was completely blocking the aisle with the ass end of her behemoth. There was the old bird who drove diagonally across the parking lot and nearly hit my parked car with her Honda Accord, after I went to the trouble of parking way out in the boonies to avoid just such an occurrence. After all of this, I decided to go home and spend the rest of the day working, saving “car playtime” for tomorrow. Sunday is typically, after all, the day with the least traffic. It seemed appropriate.
Getting into our community requires a barcode sticker on your car’s passenger window. Since my car is new and it’s wearing only a temp tag from the DMV, I don’t have my barcode yet, so I have to go by the guard shack on the way in so they can verify I belong there. Today the Captain of the security squad was on station as I pulled in. “Hi, I’m a resident but I just bought the car, and haven’t got a barcode yet,” I explained.
The Cap’n (he’s a real young guy, maybe late twenties) gave my car a real weird look. I saw his eyes wander over it and seem to stop on the GTO badge behind the front wheelwell. Then the recognition set in. “Now, why not buy a ‘68 or a ‘69?” he asked. “This new one just isn’t the same.” He rambled on a bit more about the new GTO’s failure to live up to the legacy, it having undoubtedly slipped his mind that the original was nothing more than an equally bland Pontiac LeMans with a huge engine hiding inside. I was too bored of his viewpoint to say anything much in response, except for, “I’ve already got enough classic muscle cars, actually.” So he wrote me a one-week pass that would allow me to get through the gates without repeating today’s expository exercise, and I drove on.
It’s not much of a surprise to hear someone say something like this, in fact I went into this purchase expecting it. It also fails to bother me anymore. I just find it interesting that people are so apt to say to a goat owner’s face that they think his car is a bore and not worthy of wearing the GTO moniker, when the same folks just come in their pants at the sight of a Hemi Charger which shares nothing with its ancestry either except for the name, the number of cylinders and the hips in the rear quarters, all while adding two perfunctory rear doors and withholding a proper manual gearbox. But this is likely just due to the fact that the media has made it part of popular culture to bash the GTO, even after the biggest complaints about the looks of the 2004 had been addressed. There is no stronger evidence than the now-infamous Car & Driver compro between the 2005 GTO and the 2005 Mustang in which the GTO won every single category, so the magazine created a “Gotta Have It Factor” category in order to award the Mustang enough extra score to win the compro by a margin of one point.
I used to get pissed at stuff like that, but I don’t anymore. If anything, it makes the GTO an even less common sight on the roads — and that’s just the way I like it. 
Now that Saturday’s Google AdWord mania is over, I’m taking Sunday to relax and enjoy life before getting back to work on Monday. I need to leave my car out in the sun for an hour or so to let it heat up; the vinyl decals I bought adhere much better when the surface is hot, so I’m going to give that a try. Also planning to score some more pictures tomorrow, but most importantly I just want to drive the car. I wound the tach up a bit more during my lunch run and lusted after every moment of it thereafter. As one of the other guys on the GTO board said, “I’ve just been introduced to all 400 of the horses at one time, and I think we’re going to get along famously.”
Categorized as Cars, Cars/GTO, Cars/GarageBlog, Rants/Road Rage
Not relevant to your rant, but I had to share with you the best quote Forster and I overheard while at the Auto Show a couple of weeks back:
Guy Behind Us: (while looking at the Challenger prototype) “Man, that looks just like the Dukes of Hazzard car!”
Relevant to your rant: I admit that I wasn’t entirely bowled over by the GTO when it first came out. However, it looks a lot better now, especially when compared to all the total BLAND that is almost every other car out there. And I, too, cringe when people get all hot and bothered over the new “Charger”. To paraphrase Forster and I at the Auto Show — the new “Charger” is a Charger like the 80s Duster was a Duster (and, for that matter, like the 80s Charger — remember that monstrocity? — was a Charger). Lost in all the hoopla about Dodge bringing the Charger back is the fact it already came back once and sucked. They didn’t need to do it again, albeit with a bigger engine.
And as I told Forster: if the Challenger makes it to production, you know they’ll strip away everything that made it buzzworthy, stick the generic “Charger”/Ram/Magnum front end on it, give it four doors, and call it a masterpiece.
I think I had a point in there somewhere, but it got lost in the ranting. So, uh…looking forward to more pictures!
Hehehe, I totally forgot about that ’80s “Charger.” That was a complete travesty. And how about what the Charger metamorphed into after the end of the muscle car days? Check out this pic of a 1975 Charger, introduced that year as a rebadge of the Chrysler Cordoba. It looks more like a Ford LTD! Bah! Puke!
So you guys got to the auto show again, eh? That’s awesome. The guy behind you at the Challenger display, however, is not awesome. Heh. Actually the Challenger is badass, but you just know they’re gonna water it down for production (if it gets produced). I love the true coupe-style absence of a B-pillar, but it’s hard to make federal safety regs without a B-pillar. Hard to say what the production model will end up looking like, but I fear another large departure.
Yeah, I was pretty disappointed by the 2004 GTO as well, if only because it wasn’t aggressive enough. They’ve made it look a better since, but it took the sport appearance package to sell me on the car. With that whole package it looks spiffing. Not quite like it’s going to tear your throat out and eat it like the WS6 did, but it’s a different style of car — and really, the act of driving this thing makes up for the rest. It’s astounding.
BTW, I heard a counterbalance to Mr. Securitah Cappie’s remarks yesterday. I overheard an old couple coming out of the post office today (as I was going in to drop some letters in the box) going “Oohhhh, look at that caaarrrr, wooowwww!” The true comedy: These two were definitely of the “coffin car” driving age. Heh, ya gotta take your compliments where you can get them, right.