I registered to reply to this, but am not here to troll.
Both sides of this debate have good points, but I feel that I must add a few:
Us GTO owners often feel that our car is over scrutinized by almost everyone, enthusiasts and the general public alike. It’s more than understandable that we get defensive at times, even though the GTO is an excellent car, and easily earns its name (what makes a car a GTO, rear-drive performance and a V8, or stripes and Ram Air?)
While some people here on Stangnet feel that there is a massive influx of GM goons, there have been numerous unprovoked attacks on the GTO on our forums, and many of them were Mustang owners (so this is where many become leery of threads like this, which is one of the more civil ones I’ve seen). We have a number of great members who are Mustang owners also, though, who can objectively discuss and compare cars and understand that there are several factors that are relevant when gauging a car’s worth. People like that are welcome anytime on our boards, regardless of their preferred mode of transportation.
The vast majority of GTO owners aren’t stuck up elitists, either. The same has been said of Corvette and Cobra fans as well, but we know this isn’t true. We just get tired of having our car universally hated when in fact it’s a wonderful machine that doesn’t deserve the incredible amount of negative attention it’s received.
A little background on why I chose this “Grand Prix on steroids” (which had no problems eviscerating my friend's '01 Lightning
):
I traded my 2000 Trans Am for the GTO and haven’t regretted it since. Almost everything the T/A did the Goat does better, and the things it lacks in are so minor that they are easily outweighed by the positives. I find it’s styling to be subtle and graceful, and definitely draws less attention than either of my T/A’s did (which is a huge plus when you’re hauling posterior). I don’t hate Mustangs or Fords, it’s just that I happened to fall for the F-body and the LS1.
A few points of interest about the GTO and it’s lineage:
The ’05 GTO’s MSRP is expected to be $33,690 for the manual, and $34,295 for the auto. For your money you get a car with as much power as the ’03-’04 Cobra, a plush (but not flashy) interior, and no squeaks or rattles, which was a big reason I couldn’t take my T/A anymore. While definitely more money than a ’05 GT, I wouldn’t think twice about dropping the extra cash.
The GTO is indeed based on the Commodore, which is a Bathurst winning car year after year. It seems to have been a smart decision on Holden’s part, though, as the many rebadgings of the Monaro are praised by the international press (Top Gear even picked the Vauxhall Monaro VXR, which is a HSV GTO, over a Jaguar. These guys hated the C6 and belittled the ’05 Mustang, by the way. Visit
www.hsv.com.au and check out the great hi-po stuff that the Aussies whip up).
As far as the C&D article, we should all be able to agree that the numbers they got out of their GTO are lower than expected. 400hp should do more damage than 13.3, especially when ‘04’s are running lower than that.
Route666 - We have several Holden owners on our GTO board and they're all very polite. Everyone at LS1.com.au is also very respectful and well spoken. It could just be that the ones you remember are the yahoos (I do believe your country coined that term, no?)
It all comes down to what you like. I really wish the GM/Ford divide wasn’t so wide, though. Us rear-drive domestic V8 guys should stick together, there’re EVO VIII’s and STi’s out there that need our attention
.
Thanks for the airtime and sorry for the verbose nature of this post.