He shakes his head a bit at the thought now, but Keith Weyers almost passed up his chance to own his fabulous 1964 Pontiac GTO.
The resident of rural Navarino, Wis., had a first-year “Goat” at the top of his bucket list for years, but the timing and circumstances never seemed to work out, and ’64 GTOs don’t exactly fall out of trees.
“I had a 1964 Catalina when I was 21 and I liked it, but then I saw the GTO,” recalls Weyers. “I thought the front end looked a lot like the Catalina… The Catalina was a two-door sedan. I put the Tri-Power on it and tried to make a GTO out of it, but it was just a bigger, heavier car.”
“I sold it, the frame was rusted ahead of the back wheels, and then I bought a ’65 GTO. I did a redneck paint job on it because, you know, you don’t have any money when you are 21 years old. I had it a couple years, then we started having kids, and it’s hard hauling kids around in a two-door, so I sold it to my brother-in-law. I always wanted [a ‘64] but as time went by they were getting a lot harder to find and getting more expensive.”
Weyers restored a 1967 Chevelle SS that he originally bought for his son, then found another hot ’70 Chevelle SS that would be the pinnacle of most guy’s fleet. But he still lusted after a ’64 GTO.
“Finally a few years ago a friend of our said, ‘Hey, there is one in Milwaukee for sale. And we went and looked at it and the guy wanted a lot of money for it and it needed a floor and a trunk floor and I was ready to say I’m going to pass on it. But she and one of our friends said ‘You wanted one of those forever!’ We probably paid too much for it, but …”
The Marimba Red hardtop coupe had bounced around the country a bit before landing in Wisconsin. It was sold new in North Carolina, eventually twice passed through a collector car dealership in Florida, was bought and sold several times, and finally wound up with a man in Illinois who did some restoration work on the car.
“It was bought by a guy and woman in Florida, from what I was told, and they didn’t like it because it didn’t have A/C, so they returned it. Then the guy from Illinois bought it. [The Milwaukee owner’ bought it to sell it. I don’t know how long he had it. It probably wasn’t a year. The previous guy from Illinois had the engine out of it. It’s bored .30 over and it’s got a bigger cam in it. He was buying everything he could buy for it. We’ve got all the receipts for the bunch of stuff he bought for it.”
After going to see the GTO in person, Weyers finally talked himself into buying the car, even though he didn’t get to drive it. The test ride as a passenger and the thought of passing up on his big chance to own a ’64 — even if it needed a little work — finally convinced him.
“It had a few things wrong with it. The hood wasn’t on right and the door was hitting the fender, and the bumper was way off center, but it was presentable. And it had been repainted once,” he noted. “The guy took me for a ride it. I didn’t drive it, and I know why! He loaded it on the trailer to bring it home, and when we got it home and got in it to move it and the clutch wasn’t adjusted right. We had a hard time moving it. But that’s just a minor adjustment thing.”
The Great ‘Goat’ Arrives
Frequently referred to by fans and enthusiasts as the first “true muscle car”, in the sense of being a midsize car with a big-block V-8 engine, the original GTO was not really a model at all. Due to General Motor’s fall 1963 ban on divisional participation in high-performance marketing, Pontiac was prevented from putting an engine with more than 300 cubic inches into an intermediate-size model. That’s why Pontiac’s “Young Turk” executives and ad man named Jim Wangers snuck the GTO into existence as an extra-cost package for the Tempest LeMans.
Late in October of 1963 the Grand Turismo Omologato package was announced for the LeMans coupe, hardtop and convertible as a $ 295 option. GTO equipment included a 325-hp/389-cid V-8 with a special camshaft, special hydraulic lifters and 421-style cylinder heads. It had a single Carter four-barrel carburetor. Also included in the option were specially valved shock absorbers, a seven-blade, 18-inch cooling fan with a cut-off clutch, a dual exhaust system, special 6-inch-wide wheel rims, red-stripe nylon low-profile tires, GTO identification medallions, twin-simulated hood scoops, six GTO emblems, an engine-turned dash insert, bucket seats, special high-rate springs and longer rear stabilizers.
Desirable GTO options included a center console, Hurst-Campbell four-speed manual shift linkage, custom exhaust splitters, no-cost whitewall tires, special wheel covers and a Tri-Power engine option with three two-barrel carburetors. The Tri-Power version of the 389-cid V-8 produced 348 hp at 4900 rpm.
In January 1964, Motor Trend magazine found a four-speed GTO convertible capable of doing the quarter-mile in 15.8 seconds at 93 mph. The same car’s 0-to-60 performance was 7.7 seconds and it had a 115-mph top speed.
Car & Driver did a thorough review of the GTO buying and driving experience and came away immensely impressed, even though it could be a bit of a challenge for potential buyers to order the exact car they desired. “Driving this car is an experience no enthusiast should miss,” the magazine opined. “Unfortunately, few Pontiac dealers will have GTO demonstrators with the proper equipment on them, but if you can get your hands on one like we tested, it’s almost worth stealing it for a few minutes of Omigod-we’re-going-too-fast kind of automotive bliss. One expects the acceleration to be spectacular in first and second, but none of us were ready for the awful slamming-back-in-the-seat we got when we tromped on it at 80 in fourth.” The review concluded by saying “The Ferrari GTO is a racing car that costs upwards of $ 20,000 dollars new. Therefore, we are not surprised that it will go around a road racing circuit several seconds faster than our Tempest GTO. What does surprise us is that we found the Tempest GTO a better car, in some respects, than most current production Ferraris.
By the year’s end, the GTO was considered a huge sales success. Pontiac records showed production of 7,384 GTO coupes, 18,422 two-door hardtops and 6,644 convertibles.
A STAR IS REBORN
According to Pontiac Historical Services documents, Weyers’ ’64 hardtop was a late-production model that rolled off the assembly line on July 29, 1964.
“I remember that because it’s my sister-in-law’s birthday,” he jokes. “It’s actually got ’65 doors on it because they ran out of ’64 parts in August. It was one of the last ones built. It was built in Pontiac and sold in North Carolina.”
Weyers is a retired GM mechanic who could certainly handle any of the engine and drivetrain issues the GTO might have been suffering from when he bought it, but he has had to do very little with the engine. Instead, it was the body, floors and interior that got most of his attention.
“When I when I opened the trunk I found there was Bond-O worms in there… And there was some of them in the doors, too,” he says. “It needed a floor and the driver’s side window quarter window was broken because they had a tinted window in there. It must have got full of water because the floor is rotted out — pinholes here and there.”
“It needed the quarter panels behind the back tires up to the body line… So I replaced them, just to the body line. And it needed a trunk floor, and a floor in the body from the shift lever on back. I hadn’t done that before, but I looked at videos and asked around and got ’er done.”
Weyers says he did all the restoration work himself except for the repaint, which was handled by a local body man. He even got to experiment with hydro dipping, which he used to get a nice woodgrain look on the steering wheel.
Aside from adding a correct rearview mirror to the driver’s side, Weyers says the GTO is now back to the way the Pontiac assembly plant built it in the summer of 1964 — or at least as close as he can come to it. He’s even forsaken a little smoother ride to go with classic redline bias-play tires.
“It’s good on a smooth road, but if you get on a rough road and it’s challenging because of the tires. Radials would help a lot, but I like the looks of these. It’s still drives pretty good,” he says. “But it still rides nice. You know, I like the B-body MoPars and I rode in a couple of them. I’m not throwing stones, but man they are all over the road. And that’s my favorite body style of the MoPars, those B-Bodies … but they’ll keep you awake.”
Weyers sold his ’65 GTO to his brother-in-law years ago, and he jokes that his sister-in-law wants to buy his ’64 some day. “But she doesn’t know what it’s worth,” he chuckles.
After waiting for about 40 years to land his prized Pontiac, it’s a sure bet that it won’t be leaving the family anytime soon.
“It’s fun because it makes other guys jealous,” Weyers notes with a grin. “It does something for your ego.”
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