GTO: Pontiac's Great One

by Darwin Holmstrom, David Newhardt

Overview

In 1963 Pontiac's Chief Engineer John DeLorean and his two favorite staff engineers, Bill Collins and Russ Gee, came up with an inspired way to keep Pontiac cars in the performance limelight: bolt a big engine into Pontiac's upcoming Tempest intermediate body. Thus was the GTO born. Through cunning, resourcefulness, and outright trickery the minds of Pontiac managed to get this rocket into dealerships and out onto America's highways, and to introduce that most iconic of American automobiles, the muscle car, to the nation’s most discriminating drivers.

This is the story of the GTO, of the people who made it a reality and a sales sensation, of those who owned and loved the cars. With color photographs, drawings, and detailed stats, this book is not so much the story of a historic car as an illustrated biography of American muscle.


See Motorbooks author David Newhardt interviewed by Jay Leno on JayLenosGarage.com: http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/jays-book-club-david-newhardt/1174466/

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610609456
Publisher:	Motorbooks
Publication date:	01/15/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	79 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Darwin Holmstrom has written, co-written, or contributed to over thirty books on subjects ranging from motorcycles and muscle cars to Gibson Les Paul guitars, including Indian Motorcycles, GTO: Fifty Years, Let's Ride: Sonny Barger's Guide to Motorcyclying,Top Muscle: The Rarest Cars from America's Fastest Decade, BMW Motorcycles, The Life Harley-Davidson, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Motorcycles. Darwin is the senior editor for Motorbooks. Prior to that he served as Midwestern editor for Motorcyclist magazine.

David Newhardt is one of the best automobile photographers working today and has provided photography for best-selling Motorbooks titles Muscle: America's Legendary Performance Cars, Corvette: Fifty Years, Mustang: Forty Years, Mopar Muscle: Fifty Years, and Shelby Mustang: Racer for the Street.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Review from Peter Lorenzo, Autoextremist.com “ A new and very large (10.5" x 12") coffee table book about the Pontiac GTO is making its debut this month, and I will warn enthusiasts right now: It's a must-have book, no matter what your particular auto passion is. Written by Darwin Holmstrom with photography by David Newhardt, GTO: Pontiac's Great One is the definitive record of how the legendary Pontiac GTO came about, complete with anecdotes by the people who were there and who made it happen. Holmstrom's entertaining, informative and appropriately irreverent writing style captures GM's "maverick" division well and gives one of the all-time great American cars ever built its proper due, and David Newhardt's beautiful images of famous GTOs completes the impact of the book. GTO: Pontiac's Great One is jam-packed with information, but as with any great automotive story it's the people who make the legend of the GTO that much more special. Given the death knell of Pontiac, the remembrances and stories of those times brought to life by Holmstrom are especially poignant.  I highly recommend it.”

Review from AutoNewsWire.net on May 22, 2009

"This is a great book, one that you can't put down and so well written that you find yourself skipping the photos and captions and having to go back and read it over again.  And that's what you will do with this anthology on the "Goat."  You'll pick it back up just to remember, to reminisce the good-ole days when the GTO was king of the streets, and G.M. was the king of automakers around the world. Reading Pontiac's Great One, GTO is like reading a letter from a long-lost friend.  It should be arriving in bookstores about now and we suggest you get a copy, find a shady seat under a tree, and take a few days off."

Editorial Reviews

Review from AutoNewsWire.net on May 22, 2009

"This is a great book, one that you can't put down and so well written that you find yourself skipping the photos and captions and having to go back and read it over again. And that's what you will do with this anthology on the "Goat." You'll pick it back up just to remember, to reminisce the good-ole days when the GTO was king of the streets, and G.M. was the king of automakers around the world. Reading Pontiac's Great One, GTO is like reading a letter from a long-lost friend. It should be arriving in bookstores about now and we suggest you get a copy, find a shady seat under a tree, and take a few days off."

Review from Peter Lorenzo, Autoextremist.com
“ A new and very large (10.5" x 12") coffee table book about the Pontiac GTO is making its debut this month, and I will warn enthusiasts right now: It's a must-have book, no matter what your particular auto passion is. Written by Darwin Holmstrom with photography by David Newhardt, GTO: Pontiac's Great One is the definitive record of how the legendary Pontiac GTO came about, complete with anecdotes by the people who were there and who made it happen. Holmstrom's entertaining, informative and appropriately irreverent writing style captures GM's "maverick" division well and gives one of the all-time great American cars ever built its proper due, and David Newhardt's beautiful images of famous GTOs completes the impact of the book. GTO: Pontiac's Great One is jam-packed with information, but as with any great automotive story it's the people who make the legend of the GTO that much more special. Given the death knell of Pontiac, the remembrances and stories of those times brought to life by Holmstrom are especially poignant. I highly recommend it.

From the Publisher