Muscle car buffs can be thankful that Pontiac never put the GTO badge on anything but V8-powered, rear-drive cars. Even if the 2004-2006 GTO was an Australian import with a Corvette motor, it still fit the proper format and, as a bonus, was the best-performing GTO ever.
Yet, there was a time when some felt Pontiac crossed a line by putting the hallowed GTO moniker on a 1974 Ventura. For a long time, this “little GTO” took some flack even from the faithful.
That was unfair. Though certainly not in the performance realm of the top GTOs, the ’74 was hardly a pretender. Rather, it was an honest, back-to-basics affordable and fun car at a time when midsize models had become bloated and tilted toward “personal luxury.” This misunderstood baby GTO should be viewed through that lens. The long journey to respect has paid off, and as evidence, ’74 GTOs are bringing some impressive sums at auction.
The 1974 GTO may have been down on power compared to its predecessors, but, at 3400 pounds, it was about 400 pounds lighter than previous mid-size models.Motor Trendcoaxed the newfangled Goat from zero to 60 in 9.4 seconds and through the quarter-mile in 16.5 seconds at 84 mph. New York-basedCARSmagazine enlisted legendary Pontiac performance tuner and drag racer, Nunzi Romano of Nunzi’s Automotive in Brooklyn, to compare the ’74 GTO to a ’64 model equipped with a 389 four-barrel, automatic, and 3.55:1 rear axle.
Nunzi wheeled the four-speed ’74 from zero to 60 in 7.7 seconds and down the quarter-mile in 15.72 seconds at 88 mph—very close to the 15.64 at 90 mph he got from the ’64. It wasn’t apples-to-apples with the ’74 4-speed stick versus the ’64 car’s two-speed automatic. Still, that was a good showing for the later car.