The 73 GTO brought about a big change in the way this idealized muscle car was to be designed going forward. Because of the fact that the American muscle car era was going down, Pontiac was forced to take a different approach and work a little more on its car’s character. They wanted to make it look more European instead of continuing with the stoplight drag star, and they aimed to have it look closer to the exquisite lines of a sport sedan. Having that plan in their minds, they began by inspecting other car manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes, Volvo and Audi as preferred targets.
Up until that time, all of the Pontiac models were being created solely on the design directions of William L. Porter. The people helping him were his assistant, Wayne Vieira and other senior designers like Charley Gatewood, Ted Schroeder and Geza Loczi.
One of the things that the GTO program had to stick to was the fact that their new car had to be based on General Motors unique body color nose, a new revolutionary idea which was introduced in 1968. Thus there were a few brainstorming sessions that Porter and his assistants had been going through in order to come up with their best ideas. They sketched a car model that ultimately proved to be the end of the GTO as it was known.
The rest of the details of this nice concept car were later worked by Gatewood who was a great artist and because of this he had successfully designed a full size rendering of the front end which looked amazing. This sketch was hung on the opposite wall of the studio’s entrance. The main idea around this was to have the vice president of General Motors, William L Mitchell impressed when he would walk in. When Mitchell saw that design he was so impressed that he actually screamed aloud in excitement.
But even those the soft nose designs were already produced the technology needed in order to have Grand AM’s soft front end finished, was still not available. Luckily there was a 174 days strike during that year which gave the opportunity to General Motors to deal with the soft front end problem.
Thus in no time the engineers and designers got to work and soon there would be a new GTO model on the market which would be very much expected by a lot of buyers and enthusiasts alike.