Tag: My 1967 Pontiac GTO

Memorial Day

This is a day of observation, not celebration. This day was created to honor the memory of those in the military who died while in service. For the history of the US that number is about 1.5 million.

On a personal tangent…this “holiday” has been very bad for me twice. My marvelous mom had her first heart attack during Memorial Day weekend. A few years later she had a second one (not during Memorial Day weekend) that led to multiple bypass surgery from which she never truly recovered.

During another Memorial Day weekend my first fiancée’s cat bit me near my left thumb. My entire left arm became infected, which led to blood and pus draining out of my left armpit. I had to see a tropical disease specialist in order to get the infection under control.

Needless to say, that was the end of the engagement. In that instance, it was short-term pain for long-term gain as my wonderful wife and I are not too far from our 22nd anniversary. Still, at the time it was most unpleasant.

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Not to make light of this day, but I am thinking about my first car:

 

 

I submitted a different picture of the car in the hopes it would be used in a #DriveDownMemoryLane segment during a Mecum broadcast. This picture showed me in the drivers seat. Wouldn’t you know they actually showed the car?! It was quite a thrill to see the car on TV. My ugly mug, not so much. I did enjoy when the lovely Katie Osborne referred to me (via my Twitter handle) as “a friend of ours in the Mecum community.” If only I could figure out a way to get Mecum to hire me, crunching numbers and writing in a part-time or consulting role.

 

I am probably taking a break from posting for the next three days or so. I hope you’re still reading when I return.

 

#MemorialDay2021

#My1967PontiacGTO

#somanycarsjustonelife

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Yet Another Weird Dream

Maybe this was inevitable since I slept 9 1/2 hours last night, which is most unusual for me. I had a strange dream that involved my buying or test-driving a car. The longer the process continued, the less I trusted the person with whom I was dealing. My fears were realized when this person gained access to the interior of the car through the roof while I was driving. WTF?

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I apologize if I have written about this topic before on this date. On this day in 2009 General Motors announced it would be ending the Pontiac make. Note that this announcement was made before GM actually filed for bankruptcy, which happened on June 1.

As I (and others) have noted before, Pontiac was axed and Buick was spared largely because of the latter’s popularity in China. Here is a table showing US sales only of the two makes from 2000-2008:

 

  Buick Pontiac
2000 404,612 542,427
2001 373,924 456,664
2002 370,549 441,203
2003 259,348 408,673
2004 309,639 474,179
2005 186,140 395,312
2006 170,064 353,220
2007 130,822 323,968
2008 91,803 246,659
Total 2,296,901 3,642,305

 

For 2000-2004 Pontiac ranked third in US sales behind only Chevrolet and Ford. Even with its popularity relative to Buick, apparently Pontiac was not making huge profits, if any, so that also played a role in its demise during the period when the federal government was the de facto decision-maker at General Motors.

Pontiac has played a huge role in my life. As everyone reading this should know, my first car was a 1967 GTO.

 

 

This was my GTO photographed outside one of my college dorms. I LOVED that car and losing it due to an accident that wasn’t my fault–I was rear-ended while sitting still at a red light–was something that haunted me for quite some time.

The car I’ve owned the longest (as of now) was also a Pontiac although not one with the same impact as a Goat. From partsopen.com (not a secure site) a picture of a 1995 Grand Prix in the same color as mine:

 

See the source image

 

My Grand Prix did not have a spoiler and, to be honest, was not my first choice. I went to a Buick/GMC/Pontiac dealer in San Diego–where I had just taken a job with the San Diego Padres–because I wanted to buy a Reatta. I wasn’t following automobiles that closely then and didn’t know the Reatta had been out of production for awhile. The salesman, not the friendliest I’ve ever encountered, didn’t want to find me a used Reatta even though I have learned since then that, just in the context of a sale, profits are usually higher for used cars than for new ones.

The Grand Prix was the best looking car to me in the showroom, so I bought it. I still think it’s a handsome design. I owned the car for nine years, selling it when I bought my first Corvette. A small part of me wanted to buy a Vette then, but ultimately I just didn’t want to spend the money. The base MSRP for a 1995 Corvette coupe was about $37,000; I paid half that for the Grand Prix. Ironically, I am now quite the fan of C4 Corvettes of 1995-96.

As much as I loved my GTO, the only way I would consider buying one now is if my wonderful wife and I won the lottery. Not only would money not be an issue at all, but neither would storage as we would buy a house with a large garage or, perhaps, buy a custom garage in one of these garage complexes that are so popular in the Phoenix area.

Long live Pontiac!

 

#YetAnotherWeirdDream

#TheEndOfPontiac

#My1967PontiacGTO

#My1995PontiacGrandPrix

#somanycarsjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

If you like this blog please tell your friends and share the blog URL (https://disaffectedmusings.com). Thanks.