2006 Pontiac GTO: the final model year

The 2006 GTO continued with the same LS2 V8 at 400 hp and 400 lb-ft on the SAE net standard, and this record's own overview states that it was also the final GTO year: Over-Drive Magazine gives 13,948 built for 2006 and June 14, 2006 as the date the last car was built on the Australian assembly line. MuscleCarClub's own separate production table splits that 13,948 into 8,764 manual and 5,184 automatic cars.^1,2

Over-Drive Magazine additionally gives a combined 2004-2006 total of 40,808, but this record's own production notes flag an arithmetic gap: the three individual yearly totals used throughout this record, 15,740 for 2004, 11,069 for 2005 and 13,948 for 2006, sum to 40,757 rather than 40,808, fifty-one cars short, and this record states plainly that the difference is not reconciled by any source consulted rather than silently adjusting one of the three yearly figures to force a match.¹

This record's own production section again carries an unusually granular breakdown beyond the plain transmission split: forty-four individual exterior-color, interior-color, transmission and wheel-size combinations, all sourced to Mark Quitter Racing's own vehicle-build-combination tables, with each color's own combination rows summing to that color's separate production total. Two wheel options are documented, 17-inch wheels under RPO PZ9 with 7,043 installations and 18-inch wheels under RPO N87 with 6,905, summing to 13,948 and implying every car carried one wheel size or the other.³

A retrospective review from The Drive gives a GTO coupe base price of $31,290 when new, though this record cites it only as that single retrospective source's own stated figure rather than as a factory price list. The LS2 itself is documented at a 10.9:1 compression ratio for the year, alongside a standard axle ratio of 3.46 and a maximum trailering capacity of 1,000 lb, the latter two drawn from the factory specification sheet rather than the secondary fact sheet used for most other figures in this record.^4,5

Seven exterior colors are documented for 2006 with their own production counts: 1,175 Brazen Orange, 1,546 Cyclone Gray, 1,577 Impulse Blue, 1,803 Quicksilver, 1,794 Spice Red, 2,079 Torrid Red and 3,974 Phantom Black, the single most popular finish by a wide margin. Three interior leather colors are recorded, 10,930 black, 767 blue and 2,251 red, with the same swatch-pairing note describing black as available with every exterior color and blue paired only with Impulse Blue, leaving black leather as by far the dominant interior choice across the model's final year on sale.^3,5

This record's own conflicts section carries no logged disputes for 2006, and its performance and identification sections are both empty, a documented gap in period-test and VIN-decoding detail for the GTO nameplate's final model year rather than an assumption that neither exists for the car. Specification detail otherwise includes a 109.8-inch wheelbase, 188.98-inch overall length and a reported 3,791-lb weight on a basis this record's own note states is not specified, leaving the engine, transmission, wheel, color and pricing detail already described above as the full extent of this record's coverage for the GTO's last model year.¹