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YOSH MIYAKOS’S 1967 GTO
My interest in automobiles began when I was 14 years
old. I taught myself how to drive on the family car. By the time I was
old enough to get my license, I was an expert driver. My father could not
understand why the transmission would not stay together on the '50 Ford
for more than a few months. He finally decided that if I was going to
break the car all the time, I better be able to fix it. He bought me my
first car, a '50 Chevy club coupe and found a part time job for me at the
garage where he frequented. The car was gutless so I immediately began
hopping it up by boring the engine, installing a full race cam, and
adding three carburetors. I used to drag race on the streets but it
became too expensive because I had twelve tickets in one year and my
license suspended twice.
I started going to the drag strips on Sundays at
Little Bonneville in San Jose and Kingdon in Lodi. This was the time when
'Gasser' Rhonda was just beginning his drag racing career and the 'Glass
Slipper' from Sacramento ran the quarter mile in 10 seconds flat. Believe
It or not, it was one of the fastest dragsters around. I have owned many
other cars, a '50 Olds club coupe, a '54 Olds hardtop, and a '57 Chevy 2
door hardtop with six Stromberg 97 carburetors, a Duntov cam and lots of
other goodies.
Half Moon Bay and Vacaville drag strips opened up, so
now I was in blacktop heaven with a lot of places to do my thing.
Gotelli's dragster from Champion Speed Shop in San Francisco was burning
up the local drag strips at that time. I also had a '58 Chevy Impala, a
'62 Pontiac Catalina which I installed a McCulloch (Paxton) blower and an
Iskynderian cam with only 500 miles on the odometer. I went through a ‘62
Corvette and many full sized Pontiacs. I bought my first GTO in ‘65 and
another in ‘67. About this time, I had it with fast cars, so I bought a
‘73 Pontiac Grand Prix with an automatic transmission and all of the
creature comforts.
The following years were pretty much the usual thing
that most people go through. Get married, buy a home, have a child, and
finally retire from work. Somewhere along the way, I ran across a ‘67
GTO which was in terrible condition. The upholstery was torn and
tattered, the paint had oxidized and turned to powder. When I drove it, I
could see the blacktop on the street through the rusted out floor. I
spent a couple of years restoring it to a numbers matching Tyrol blue
show car - thanks to Ed at the Goat Farm.
Although I had no intention of getting another GTO, I
would look through the classifieds to see if there were any advertised.
If I found one, I went to look at it just for the heck of it. That is how
I ran across my ‘67 GTO which I am driving now. Since the car was
corralled inside a lot that had a fence around it but no gate, I could
not test drive it. The thing that sold me was that it had only 24k miles
on the odometer and looked like it. We had to tear down a section of his
fence to get it out. I took it to Ed at the Goat Farm, where to my
surprise, he told me that Bruce, the previous Goat Farm owner, had sold
it to the old man whom I purchased it from. Ed proceeded to tell me some
things about it and said that the mileage on the odometer was for real,
and guess what, he even had the original warranty booklet with the
identification plate that matched the VIN number of the car, stashed away
in his files. The car has the original Montego Cream color paint with
black interior and black vinyl top. The engine is a 400CI, 360HP HO. The
running gear has a 4-speed transmission with a 3.55 positraction rear
end. I’d like to paint the car a different color and do some things to
the engine but many of my friends have discouraged me from doing it.
I sold my other GTO to a fellow club member and am
having fun attending many of the club events.
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