1967 Pontiac GTO: Three Carburetors Out, 400 Cubic Inches In

The decision that shaped the 1967 GTO was made above Pontiac. A General Motors management ruling reserved multiple carburetors for a favored few Chevrolets, and Tri-Power, the three two-barrel setup that had been the GTO's signature option since 1964, was gone. The sources differ slightly on the exemption. Over-Drive Magazine's fact sheet says only the Corvette kept multiple carburetors; Ate Up With Motor names Chevrolet's Corvair and Corvette. Either way the rule reached across divisions: Oldsmobile's Tri-Carb 4-4-2 option was dropped under the same edict. Pontiac had to find its performance somewhere else.^1,2,3

It found it in displacement. The 389 was bored to 4.12 inches, which with the 3.75-inch stroke made 400 cubic inches, and Over-Drive records new cylinder heads that moved the combustion centers over the bores and cut the valve-stem angle to 14 degrees. A single Rochester Quadrajet four-barrel replaced the triple carburetors. The fact sheet lists four 400s for the GTO, all rated SAE gross: a 255 hp two-barrel economy engine sold only with the automatic, the standard 335 hp four-barrel, a 360 hp HO, and a 360 hp Ram Air engine that reached its peak at 5,400 rpm rather than the HO's 5,100.^1,4

The rest of the car changed in ways a driver felt more than a spectator saw. The two-speed automatic gave way to the three-speed Turbo Hydra-Matic, which could be ordered with a Hurst dual-gate shifter, the 'his and hers' lever that let the driver leave it in Drive or pick the gears by hand. For the first time a GTO could have front disc brakes, alongside a new dual master cylinder, and a tachometer could be mounted on the hood for $54. A collapsible steering column, energy-absorbing wheel and padded instrument panel became standard. Outside, the grille trim was reworked, the taillight louvers gave way to eight lamps, and the badges moved down to the sill moldings. The paint chart kept the advertising theme alive: among its 18 colors was code O, Gee-To Tiger Gold.^1,2

Over-Drive gives the reason the sheet metal barely moved: the introduction of the Firebird and the new body coming for 1968 held the GTO to minor styling and unseen improvements. Pontiac's own pony car was the year's big news. The compiled table credits the first-season Firebird with 82,560 cars, 67,032 hardtops and 15,528 convertibles, and Car and Driver described one of its five engine-defined models as the Firebird 400. The GTO now shared the showroom with a smaller, sportier Pontiac that could also be ordered with a 400, and the newcomer's first-season total came out slightly larger than the GTO's 81,722.^1,5,6

The order form still started low. The compiled factory prices were $2,871 for the sport coupe, $2,935 for the hardtop and $3,165 for the convertible, and Car Life printed the same $2,935 hardtop list price. The four-speed was listed at $184 and the Turbo Hydra-Matic at $226 in the secondary fact sheet. Car Life put the Ram Air engine at $263.30 over the standard 400 and power front disc brakes at $104.79. The smaller items read like a catalog of the era: a $37 Safe-T-Track limited-slip, an $84 Rally gauge cluster, a $68 console, and $343 air conditioning.^6,4,1

Pontiac built 81,722 GTOs for 1967, according to the compiled table: 65,176 hardtops, 9,517 convertibles and 7,029 sport coupes. That was 15,224 fewer than the record 96,946 of 1966, a drop of about 16 percent in the year the Firebird arrived. The hardtop took an even larger share than before, nearly 80 percent, while the convertible slipped to about 12 percent and the pillared sport coupe to under 9 percent. How many buyers chose the HO, the Ram Air engine or the economy two-barrel is not recorded in any attributed source found, and those counts remain unknown.^6,7

The field around it kept filling. Chevrolet's SS 396, in its second year as a separate series, counted 59,685 sport coupes and 3,321 convertibles in ChevelleStuff's tabulation. Oldsmobile's 4-4-2, now without Tri-Carb, came to 25,333 in Over-Drive's table. Chrysler answered with a new rival: Plymouth's first GTX, a Belvedere hardtop or convertible with a 375 hp 440 as standard and the 426 Hemi as its only option. Its production table lists 12,690, with the caution that those figures were estimated from dealer sales. Ate Up With Motor puts the GTO's 1967 total at almost 82,000, well clear of each of them.^8,3,9,2

Car Life answered the question the missing carburetors raised. Its October 1967 test, headlined 'Hail to the King! The Super/Supercar,' used a Ram Air hardtop with the Turbo Hydra-Matic and a 4.33 limited-slip axle, which the magazine said came standard with Ram Air. Loaded to a 4,180-pound test weight, the car ran 0-60 mph in 6.1 seconds, 0-100 in 14.0 seconds, and the quarter mile in 14.5 seconds at 102.0 mph with driver and passenger aboard. In one pass with only the driver, it ran 13.9 seconds at 102.8 mph. The figures belong to that one car, gearing and all, but Car Life's headline did not read like a eulogy for Tri-Power.⁴

The same test showed what that speed came wrapped in. The 4.33 gears limited the car to 107 mph, reached at 5,600 rpm where the valves began to float, and it returned 8.9 mpg under test conditions and 8 to 12 in normal driving. The car carried California emission equipment. It listed at $2,935 and was delivered for testing at $4,422, with Ram Air, Turbo Hydra-Matic, power disc brakes and steering, power windows and antenna, AM-FM radio, vinyl top, tachometer and instrument cluster, styled steel wheels and limited-slip. The options added almost $1,500, about half again the list price, to a car whose appeal had begun with a cheap base.⁴

The 1967 car closed the first chapter. It was the last GTO on the 115-inch wheelbase listed in the 1966 and 1967 production tables, and the 7,029 sport coupes were the last of that body in the first-generation run. The following year brought the new 112-inch-wheelbase body with an Endura nose, the pillared sport coupe was dropped, and production recovered to 87,684. Over-Drive's 1968 fact sheet lists five 400 families for the new car, topped by a 366 hp Ram Air II. The ruling that ended Tri-Power did not end the GTO's climb; it moved the argument from the number of carburetors to cubic inches and cold air. For 1967, 81,722 buyers accepted the trade.^10,11,6,7