The birth of the muscle car revolution can be summed up in three simple letters: G-T-O. The release of Pontiac’s GTO rocked the performance car world in 1964. Sure, hot rodders had been dropping large engines in intermediate cars for decades, but never before had an automaker installed such a powerful engine into such a lightweight platform. Even though advertising support was practically nonexistent, the GTO quickly became Pontiac’s hottest seller, and the cars literally flew off the lots. In GTO, Pontiac ’s Great One, author Darwin Holmstrom explores the environment that allowed the creation of the prototypical muscle car. He tells the inside story of what happened at Pontiac to change the division’s offerings from stodgy old coots’ pedestrian transports to zoomy, hip factory hot rods. In the process, the division was whisked from the edge of oblivion and propelled to the rank of the nation’s number three automaker. It wasn’t all easy though.

As the muscle car wars escalated, Pontiac soon found it challenging to keep pace with other manufacturers’ offerings due to GM’s draconian policies limiting displacement and forbidding factory involvement in racing. By 1974, wheezing under government-mandated pollution control equipment and staggering insurance increases, the writing was on the wall for GTO. GTO, Pontiac’s Great Oneincludes an illustrated, fold-out timeline and photographer David Newhardt’s lavish images, which leave no detail uncaptured.