In the country where muscle cars were born, the Pontiac GTO was the first, and remains the most famous of all. Before 1964, the year that the GTO came onto the market, high performance cars were full sized hardtops and sedans fitted out with the biggest engines on the market. They were slow to get going, but once going, took off like a rocket, in most cases.

The Pontiac GTO changed all that. Back in the day, so called hot rudders knew that if you wanted to go faster, you had to go smaller and that is what General Motors did with the GTO option. The car maker didn’t even promote the car in the beginning, not even putting out a brochure on it until after it was a success. Sales of the Pontiac GTO caught car makers off guard and sent them scrambling to clone the success. Just one …