Once back in the business as GM's product honcho, Lutz swung wildly for the fences and like most homerun hitters, he struck out quite often. With almost as many hits as he had misses, it's hard to imagine how he was able to shoe horn a Holden Monaro through the GM pipeline in the early 2000's and rebadge it as a Pontiac "GTO" of all things. I admire the man for his passion, moxy and love of performance automobiles but from a business stand point, honestly, did he or the wonks at GM he convinced through the force of his charismatic personality honestly think that a homely and cramped Holden based coupe with GTO glued on its rear end was going to find buyers?
Back then, I was thrilled when I heard that GM and Pontiac were pushing out a Corvette powered 2+2 out on the heels of the departure of the late and not so great Gen 3 Pontiac Firebird. I was curious, though, as to why they replaced the Firebird with this instead of retooling the Firebird. Same goes for the even uglier, 2 passenger, truck based Chevrolet SSR that replaced the Camaro. If at any time in the long and tortured history of GM decision makers made decisions that made no sense, it was the early 2000's. No wonder GM went belly up less than five after this car debuted.
Shame of the matter was, the 2004 "GTO" was a fantastic automobile. Dare I say, the best thing GM sold at the time. It went like stink thanks to it's Corvette engine and was sure footed thanks to its Holden Monaro underpinnings. The front seats were the stuff of dreams.
The list of wonderful performance bits and pieces on the 2004 GTO was mesmerizing. 350 horsepower, 5.7 liter LS-1 V-8 straight from Corvette, 245/45 BF Goodrich G-Force T/A's, Akebono front pads and Bendix Mintex rear pads, struts up front and semi-trailing arms out back with an adjustable toe-in link. The 2004 GTO was the type of car that inspired you to do stupid things with it.
The 2004 GTO was not, however, without a serious number of "what is that"? The car after all was Australian; Australia is just like America only completely different. That goofy steering wheel, the console mounted power window switches, the Blaupunkt radio, odd HVAC controls and the huge gas tank mounted in the trunk. Quirky is one thing, quirks are what what made Subaru and Saab Subaru and Saab back in the day but all the "what is that's"? gave the GTO a weirdness factor that was hard if not impossible to shake.
And then of course there was the styling. Or lack there of. Try as I might, even after all these years, it's still hard to get my eyes around this thing and go, "yeah, I get it" because I don't. Not that I think there was anything to get, mind you. The original Holden Monaro was a charmingly generic appliance with the heart of a lion; festooned with GM's chintzy Pontiac design ethos fore and aft and the Monaro became a frankenstein esque Grand Prix fleet car.
Legend has it that Lutz and company were inspired to "GTO" the Holden Monaro after reading a positive review of one in an automobile publication shortly after the car's debut down under in the early 2000's. Bureaucratic GM red tape combined with federalizing a foreign car for sale in the United States delayed that process precipitously; there apparently was no time nor money to properly redesign it. So, a rear wheel drive Grand Prix like "blob" is what we got instead. Imagine what could have been.
The 2004 vintage GTO lasted through model year 2006 with just 40,000 sold in total. Pontiac and Bob Lutz lasted at GM through 2009. Lutz claimed one of the reasons he retired was because of an increasingly regulatory climate in Washington that was forcing GM to produce what Federal regulators wanted rather than what customers wanted. That sounds like a perfectly good reason for someone who really needed to work to quit, don't you think? Yeah. Judging by just 40,000 GTO's sold between 2004 and 2006, sounds more like what he wanted.
Words of advice, try and not work for people who really don't need to work. Unless of course you're just like them and you don't need to work either. Then you and your bosses can take your jobs as seriously as a high school yearbook staff does. You'll be passionate about the work but you don't have a financial stake in whether or not its any good.
The 2004 GTO was not, however, without a serious number of "what is that"? The car after all was Australian; Australia is just like America only completely different. That goofy steering wheel, the console mounted power window switches, the Blaupunkt radio, odd HVAC controls and the huge gas tank mounted in the trunk. Quirky is one thing, quirks are what what made Subaru and Saab Subaru and Saab back in the day but all the "what is that's"? gave the GTO a weirdness factor that was hard if not impossible to shake.
And then of course there was the styling. Or lack there of. Try as I might, even after all these years, it's still hard to get my eyes around this thing and go, "yeah, I get it" because I don't. Not that I think there was anything to get, mind you. The original Holden Monaro was a charmingly generic appliance with the heart of a lion; festooned with GM's chintzy Pontiac design ethos fore and aft and the Monaro became a frankenstein esque Grand Prix fleet car.
Legend has it that Lutz and company were inspired to "GTO" the Holden Monaro after reading a positive review of one in an automobile publication shortly after the car's debut down under in the early 2000's. Bureaucratic GM red tape combined with federalizing a foreign car for sale in the United States delayed that process precipitously; there apparently was no time nor money to properly redesign it. So, a rear wheel drive Grand Prix like "blob" is what we got instead. Imagine what could have been.
The 2004 vintage GTO lasted through model year 2006 with just 40,000 sold in total. Pontiac and Bob Lutz lasted at GM through 2009. Lutz claimed one of the reasons he retired was because of an increasingly regulatory climate in Washington that was forcing GM to produce what Federal regulators wanted rather than what customers wanted. That sounds like a perfectly good reason for someone who really needed to work to quit, don't you think? Yeah. Judging by just 40,000 GTO's sold between 2004 and 2006, sounds more like what he wanted.
Words of advice, try and not work for people who really don't need to work. Unless of course you're just like them and you don't need to work either. Then you and your bosses can take your jobs as seriously as a high school yearbook staff does. You'll be passionate about the work but you don't have a financial stake in whether or not its any good.
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