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How I Became “The Pontiac Guy”
by Stewart Cole
It all started when I was 15 or 16 or so. My parents had bought a house in Benicia at thetop of a hill. One day, while walking home from school, I took a different route home past a guy putting a ‘for sale’ sign in a white GTO at the bottom of my hill. I stopped, knowing I need a car, and asked him how much? He said $5500 and offered to pop the hood. Now I knew nothing about Pontiacs, GTOs or anything else from Chevy or Ford. When he popped the hood I had my first introduction to tri-power carburetion. It was a beautiful thing! I immediately went home to work on my parents. After all their laughing died down I was informed that if I wanted a car that I had to buy it myself and I couldn’t have a loan. Needless to say I didn’t get the white
GTO.
However the GTO mysteriously had the ‘for sale’ sign removed and it sat on the side of the guys house for 5 years. During that time I wound up racing VWs and got pretty good at synchronizing carbs and such. After a few blown motors I decided that 4 cylinders were not going to make me happy, so I sold all my VW stuff and bought a Honda Accord and a ‘58 Chevy Pickup with a ‘68 Corvette 327 motor in it. Finally I had a taste of V-8 power and how much fun it could be!
My mom was proud that I had a ‘sensible’ car to go to college with. But, 6 months later, that same white GTO had another ‘for sale’ sign in the window. I stopped by and this time noted it was a ‘65 hardtop and it was still priced at $5500. Remembering the laughter from my parents the first time I had asked for a loan, I went to my Grandfather and told him I need the car to get more girls!
Bing, bong bing, I had a winner! Sold my sensible Honda and the GTO became my daily driver (I had blown the 327 in the truck when I missed a shift at 7000 RPM - Whoops). I fell in love with the torque that this car produced and kept trying to to get it to idle better.
I took the car to a guy named Rick, who had built a 9 second Super Comp Firebird, for tuning help. We discovered that I had several bad valves and needed to have the heads rebuilt. We pulled off the heads and discovered the 389 I had bought was really a ‘69 350 engine. Also discovered that the block was cracked in the number one cylinder bore. I was devastated and thinking I would be riding the bus to college forever.
Fortunately Rick, sensing my desperation, sold me a 428 block and crank for $100.00. After a couple of weeks and a drained bank account, I was back on the road with a much faster car than before. After breaking-in my motor I started screwing around racing my friends. At first I thought they were being nice to me by letting me win, but soon I realized that I was just faster than they were. So naturally I added a
N.O.S. kit to my car and headed for the clandestine world of illegal drag racing. I’ll admit I won considerably more than I lost and eventually saved half of my down payment for my house out of my winnings. Unfortunately I also developed a reputation of being “The Pontiac Guy” and couldn’t get many races anymore.
Still, it was good while it lasted. I made it to Sears Point once to try to tune the car but got kicked off the track for running an 11:98 without a roll bar. Oh well, just another time I broke the rules. Now
I'm content to drive hard and try to figure out new places to go and do new things in the car.
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