Desirable Pontiacs

GM capped engine size in mid-size cars at 330 cubic inches. Pontiac's engineers found the rule only applied to base engines — and built the GTO as an option package instead.

The Genre's Starting Point, by Most Accounts

Few single models get this much credit for launching an entire commercial category almost overnight. GM had banned factory racing and capped engine displacement in its mid-size cars at 330 cubic inches in 1963, seemingly ending Pontiac's performance ambitions in one stroke — until chief engineer John DeLorean and his team noticed the rule technically only restricted a car's base engine, not its options. They quietly offered a full-size 389 cubic-inch V8 as an option package on the ordinary Tempest LeMans, borrowed the name "GTO" directly from Ferrari's own 250 GTO racer, and watched Pontiac sell over 32,000 of them in the first year alone against an initial sales target of just 5,000.

Car and Driver's own coverage even claimed the Pontiac beat its Ferrari namesake in a quarter-mile drag comparison — a genuinely audacious claim for a car built from a mid-size family shell and a rule-bending option package. GM dropped the displacement cap the following year, but by then Detroit's entire industry was already racing to copy the formula. Below is the model we've covered so far.

• Pontiac GTO Overview — Classic Icon