This is the first time I’ve taken a car out of The Road Crew to replace it with another. I’ve never had a need to do that because The ‘Crew can be of unlimited size, since there are no time trials or tournaments to run; it just a fleet of cruisers. Even so, there is a limit to how many copies of the same body I want to have on my table, and there is one more issue; I’m starting to run out of parking space!
As you know, I’m a big fan of all the Model Motoring reboot’s 1967 muscle cars, and none more than the Chevelle Malibu and the GTO. I’ve been thinking about getting one of these gold “GeeTO Tiger” models for a while but just never saw the hurry, until one of my usual vendors who has always had them let me know they were running low, and if I wanted one I’d best get one. So I did. And I elected to steel the chassis from the most recently added ’67 GTO, the candy green model. I decided to put that one back in “The Body Box”, at least for now.
Will run again someday, I’m sure, but for now, I already had 3 of them in The Crew and didn’t think I needed a 4th one, so here is the GeeTO Tiger with white sides on a pristine and great running NOS Aurora Thunderjet 500 chassis wearing the Vincent chrome 5-lugs and Jel Claws rear slicks. Looks good, eh?
This body was also made with black sides, and I couldn’t decide which one I wanted so of course I bought them both, but for now the black sided model is also in The Body Box and the white-sided model is on the HO Highway.
All of this brings up yet another fascinating topic of muscle car history! Pontiac’s engineering and styling skills in this era were equaled by their marketing skills, and early in 1965 they pulled out all the stops, blitzing the consumer world with GTO and “Tiger”-themed products, ad campaigns, and music! PMD marketing manager Jim Wangers assembled not one but two “bands,” who were created out of whole cloth to sing about the car.
Its the first one that everyone remembers, Ronny & the Daytonas, who recorded the awesome tune “Little GTO” late in the year of the car’s debut in 1964, an ear worm so infectious that you can still here it on occasion on FM radio. Less well remembered today is the 2nd such band, The Tigers (imagine that!) who sung “GeeTo Tiger” in 1965, another song which, while now mostly lost in the sands of time, was released as a 45 RPM single and got plenty of airplay in its day (a 3rd GTO-themed song, “My Mighty GTO” by Jan & Dean, was not a Pontiac-funded promotion, although I’m sure they appreciated it). The release of the song was wrapped up with a big promotional contest for a beautiful 1965 model painted in what was, at that time, a unique shade of gold. The contest-and the car that was the object of it-achieved so much public notoriety that it led to Pontiac offering a similar paint color for the 1966 and ’67 model years, a color called (what else but) “Tiger Gold.” It is this color which is imitated on the little tabletop model you see here!
Sure it’s a drag car that I’m driving on the street, but its my highway so I can do anything I want. If that’s a problem, let the cops try and catch me!