Fave Car Ads: 1971 Pontiac GTO

Does a low-compression engine mean the end of GTO?

1971 Pontiac GTO advertisement The tone of this GTO advertisement is rather analogous to exactly how some dining establishments presently brace consumers for poor solution before seats. You’ve most likely seen such signs posted near the door of your favored restaurant the last time you went out for lunch or dinner. Today, restaurants are emulating labor shortages. In 1971, Pontiac was taking care of low-lead gasoline.

Labor-shortage restaurant indicator A Lot More Favorite Car Ads Really, fuel wasn’t the only trouble. Pontiac, and also every purveyor of muscle mass vehicles, was being challenged in the showroom by increasing insurance policy expenses. Seems the wisdom of putting a high-school youngster behind the wheel of a very finely camouflaged big-bock drag car had been brought into question.

The real trouble here– the issue Pontiac is attempting to attend to with this ad– came in the type of pending exhausts policies. A function of the Federal Air Quality Act, the lead content of fuel was to be reduced in stages beginning in 1973.

Considering that the Twenties, tetraethyl lead had actually been contributed to gasoline to elevate the fuel’s octane ranking, which enabled higher compression ratios as well as, as a result, boosted engine efficiency as well as fuel economic situation. As evidence regarding the threat of lead in the environment– particularly to children– accumulated, the EPA as well as various other world governments began to crack down on its usage in fuel.

The advertisement revealed here appeared in 1971, the initial year the GTO was furnished with “low-compression” engines which were tuned to operate on low-lead, lower-octane fuel. Pontiac was actually a little ahead of the game, as lawsuit protected against the low-lead mandate from kicking in till 1975.

Providing vehicle advertising types fits were the horsepower ratings for low-compressing engines. For 1970, for instance, the base Pontiac GTO 400-cubic-inch V8 was rated at 350 gross horse power. For ’71, that base GTO powerplant was rated at simply 300. Muscular tissue autos had, since the late Sixties, been sold mainly on their prodigious power scores. With those numbers now in decrease, Pontiac launched the advertisement seen below.

Check out the text in this ad, it’s quite exposing. As well as it’s worth keeping in mind that the real gauged performance of the GTO was very little lessened for 1971, nevertheless sales were. Seems the one-two punch of insurance coverage costs and lower power results was too much for even smart ad duplicate writers to blunt.

Evaluation Flashback! 1974 Pontiac GTO