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1970 Pontiac Gto Convertible Original Ram Air Iii Car on 2040-cars

Year:1970 Mileage:93000
Location:

San Diego, California, United States

San Diego, California, United States

Every now and again, a car becomes available to the collector car community, whose caliber, condition, originality, and story is sure to create a stir. This is one of those cars. For those of you who have followed my auctions in the past, purchased cars from me, and/or are familiar with the quality and the significance of the cars that I have had the privilege of owning, this has been a favorite and my personal driver for the last nine years. I truly did pull this car out of a barn in 2005.

Up for auction is a very original 1970 Pontiac GTO Ram Air III convertible. No, it is not a Judge per the build sheet, but has displayed Judge Livery since the mid 70’s and after thoroughlyexamining the car; one might draw the conclusion that this particular car might have been “cloned” at the dealer when new.

To understand just how rare this car is, please review 1970 GTO production numbers at www.gtoheaven.com. Of the 40,000+GTOs that were manufactured in 1970, only a scant 114 were convertibles built with the RAIII 366hp motor and an automatic transmission. Only 31 of these RAIII automatic equipped convertibles were built with air conditioning. Marry this production information to the list of factory documented RPOs that went into building this car, you start to realize that this car could be one of the fabled “one of one” cars that we car collectors salivate for… and to top it all off, an original Red/Red car.

As documented by the factory build sheet, this GTO came equipped with the following:

4BBL R/A (RAIII motor) Yes, the original, born with motor, with all original components

Safe-T-Track

Radio P/B

Mirror-Remote

Cruise-Control

Clock-Elect

Power Steering

Tilt Steering Wheel

Power Driver’s Seat

SPG SHKS-R/H

Power Door Locks

Turbo Hydromatic Auto Transmission

G78X14 WW FG

Tape-Stereo

Wheels-Rally 2

Tach-Hood Mount

Console

Power Disk Brakes

Glass-S/R-AL

Deck Lid Remote

Air Conditioning

Battery HD

 

This is one of the most heavily optioned GTOs that I have ever seen. And to be clear, other than a repaint years ago, this car is all original sans the following:

Driver’s seat has had a panel replaced

Red center caps instead of black (I have the black ones but not on the car)

Lock buttons

Hood pins

Wing

Stripes

Front Spoiler

15” wheels (They just look better)

Aftermarket Stereo

Top

Water pump and timing chain. I saved original pump

I have a tape deck and mounting hardware; not original to car

 

IP was replaced with rally cluster, I have documentation of mileage when it was done. Ironically, both clusters had similar mileage showing so 93K is close to original mileage. I have put on close to 15K miles since I have owned the car. I have the original cluster.

 

If you examine the mounting of the wing and the installation of the hood pins, it is clear that it was professionally done and most likely done at the dealer when the car was new. The car also has door edge guards installed that appear to have been on the car since new.

 

The car photographs extremely well but it is a driver. There are nicks in the paint. The endura bumper has imperfections and stress cracks. The red interior has dark shading in spots and a small tear in the weave on the driver’s seat.


All that being said, the car is an awesome driver, great cruise night show car and is very reliable. The car can be enjoyed as is for years to come. Conversely, if this car was restored, it would be a solid six figure car at any auction. Period. The quandary of the car guy… restore or preserve… I have decided to let the next owner make that decision.

 

The car has little to no rust as it has been stored most of its life. There has been some slight work done behind the rear wheels as shown in the pictures and there is some bubbling on the hood. This car retains ALL original sheet metal and all sheet metal is good. There is some filler in the trunk lid. If one decides to restore the car, no sheet metal needs to be replaced other than perhaps the deck lidThat decision would have to be made once the car is stripped.

 

This car is seriously for sale but will only be sold if the reserve is met. I am a car guy, it’s not my first rodeo, so please do not email me with your opinions on price. It is my car and I know what it is worth to me. That being said, the reserve is fair and there will be “meat left on the bone”, should you decide to restore it and auction the car.

 

I am also more than happy to answer emails or speak to you on the phone or show the car, but please, don’t waste my time and I won’t waste yours. If you are a true car guy, love Pontiacs, and have some money, this is an awesome car.

 

 

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2020 Porsche 911 Speedster spied with an angry driver

Wed, Feb 13 2019

Porsche gave us details and showed us a concept of the 911 Speedster at the Paris Motor Show. Today, we bring you spy shots of what appears to be the production version of that concept with a few changes on board. They're rather minimal modifications, but the Speedster's driver appears especially angry with our spy photographer as he extends his middle finger directly toward the camera. Sorry, not sorry, Mr. Test Driver. Public testing of pre-production cars always comes with photo risks, and Porsches tend to attract more attention than others. You'll notice what appears to be a Cayenne Coupe prototype we've previously spotted running around with the 911. The Speedster Concept we saw in Paris had epic retro mirrors and fuel cap on the front hood, but both those design touches are absent from this pre-production car. It's tougher to see, but we lost the vents in between the two humps, as well. Everything else appears to have made it to production-spec. We can't say we're surprised these concept car features probably won't show up on the production car, but it is a tad deflating. You'll notice the Speedster is based-off the 991.2 generation of 911 and not the new 992. Porsche did a similar thing when the 997 generation was coming to an end with a Speedster model paying tribute to that car's life. The chassis is said to utilize parts from the 911 GT3, and the wonderful naturally aspirated flat-six engine gets carried over from that car, too. Porsche didn't specify if power will be exactly the same as the GT3, but we'll be expecting about 500 horsepower and a 9,000 rpm redline. We were told the six-speed manual would be offered on the Speedster in Paris, too. Let's just say that we strongly approve of that combination. Production will be limited to only 1,948 cars and begin in the first half of this year. We'll expect a reveal with a full spec breakdown soon, possibly for the upcoming Geneva Motor Show. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Junkyard Gem: 2010 Pontiac Vibe

Wed, Apr 17 2024

Just over a month before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2009, General Motors announced that the 83-year-old Pontiac Division would be "phased out" by the end of 2010. Only three Pontiac vehicles were sold as 2010 models in the United States: the Solstice, Vibe and G6 (new G3s were sold here during 2010 but they were all 2009 models, while the G5 was available as a 2010 model only in Canada and Mexico). Today's bit of junkyard automotive history is one of the very last Vibes ever built, found in a yard near Denver, Colorado. This car is significant not just as one of the final vehicles to bear Pontiac badges but also as one of the last cars built by the New United Motor Manufacturing Incorporated GM-Toyota joint venture in California, better known as NUMMI. The NUMMI factory began life as GM's Fremont Assembly, which built its first vehicle (a C-Series pickup) in 1963 and closed in 1982 after building its final vehicle (an Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera). Rebooted as NUMMI, the first 1985 Chevrolet Nova (an Americanized AE82 Toyota Corolla Sprinter) rolled off the line in December of 1984. A quarter-century and better than eight million vehicles hence, NUMMI shut down production after its last Corolla was finished on April 1, 2010. While there was some noise about the Oakland Athletics building a new stadium on the site at the time, Tesla ended up buying most of the site soon after that. Tesla now builds more vehicles per year there than NUMMI ever did. The Vibe was co-developed with Toyota and based on the same platform as the ninth-generation Corolla. The Toyota Matrix was mechanically identical and was built in Canada, while the Japanese-market version (known as the Toyota Voltz) was built on the same NUMMI line as the Vibe and shipped across the Pacific. The Vibe/Matrix/Voltz got a redesign for the 2009 model year, but few noticed due to all the turmoil in the GM world at the time. The final Vibe was built in August 2009. This car was built in July of 2009, just before the end. It was living in West Texas just prior to coming to Colorado. El Paso is about a ten-hour drive from this car's current location. Once in the Centennial State, it got parked somewhere it shouldn't have been and ended up being auctioned to Pick Your Part. An occupant of this Vibe had time to sample some of the local agricultural products before that happened.

Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

Tue, Jun 23 2020

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.