I

N THIRTEEN years of selecting Top Performance Car of the Year candidates, flogging them on the open road and under controlled test track conditions and finally selecting the Top Eliminator, never has our job been easier. It is the first time that one car has emerged— head and shoulders —above every other entry. In fact, you might even say it wasn't a contest. Pontiac came, saw, and conquered. With its all-new GTO, Pontiac challenged all of Motown to a supercar showdown. And, when the smoke had cleared, it appeared that the GTO—once again—was King of the Street.
      The supercar may be dead and buried in other quarters but, for some strange reason, the message hasn't been received in Pontiac, Michigan. In an era of decreasing performance, marginal styling and an overall "ban the bomb" attitude, Pontiac has gotten its act together in one of the most exciting, genuine performance intermediates ever to come out of the Motor City. The 1973 GTO, which is better than the original Tiger in every conceivable way, is alive, well and available from your friendly Pontiac dealer. At a time when every other manufacturer has forgotten the enthusiast/performance car market, Pontiac has combined the best features of the 1964-'67 GTO with the most modern technology and safety features to produce the all-new GTO, our choice for Top Performance Car of the Year honors.
      The all-new GTO is what it is because of a group of forward-thinking product planners and engineers who spent untold hours surveying the demographic breakdown of older GTO buyers and of the status of the current marketplace. What they learned, basically, is that there were two groups of GTO buyers: young adults who were primarily interested in performance and older affluent professionals who wanted the performance image with all the comforts of a luxury car.
      The net results of the survey netted the market place with a Grand Am for the luxury-performance car buyer and a genuine supercar—in every sense of the word—for the enthusiast. The GTO was then positioned for the marketplace with an "as low as possible" base price to attract the young buyer, and with a great power-to-weight ratio, and suspension that would mesmerize the buyer interested in no-nonsense handling characteristics and a good, solid base powertrain. There you have the 1973 GTO.   NEXT >