Car and Driver, in 1984, published an article on the 1964 Pontiac GTO. What perforance statistics did it include.
Executive summary
Car and Driver’s 1984 revisiting of its 1964 “GTO vs. GTO” material recirculated the magazine’s original performance claims for the Pontiac Tempest LeMans GTO—most famously a 0–60 mph time of 4.6 seconds and a quarter‑mile of 13.1 seconds at about 115 mph—but also reopened debate that those figures were produced on press cars later alleged to have been “ringer” examples fitted with larger 421‑cubic‑inch engines (or otherwise prepared) rather than standard 389‑ci production powerplants [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What Car and Driver published in 1984: the archive framing and the numbers it reprinted
The 1984 Car and Driver piece is a retrospective that republished and reflected on the magazine’s earlier 1964 head‑to‑head conceit comparing a Pontiac Tempest GTO to a Ferrari 250 GTO; in doing so the archive material reiterated the dramatic performance figures that made the original story notorious—specifically the sub‑5‑second 0–60 and low‑13‑second quarter‑mile runs attributed to the Pontiac [4] [5].
2. The headline statistics often quoted: 0–60, quarter‑mile and trap speed
The performance numbers most often connected to Car and Driver’s original test—reappearing in the 1984 retrospective—are a 0–60 mph in 4.6 seconds and a 1/4‑mile elapsed time of 13.1 seconds with a terminal speed around 115 mph; these are the stats that fueled the magazine’s claim that the Pontiac could embarrass exotic competition in straight‑line runs [1].
3. Why the figures are contested: the “ringer” allegation and engine swaps
Multiple later accounts and enthusiasts’ histories stress that the two GTOs supplied to the press may not have been strictly stock: contemporaneous anecdotes and later reporting say the cars tested by writers sometimes housed 421 high‑output blocks or other nonstandard components, and historians note that Pontiac had a history of supplying specially prepared press cars—an admission that undercuts a literal reading of the headline numbers [2] [3] [1].
4. Contrasting published test data from other outlets and factory specs
Published 1960s test numbers from other magazines and factory spec sheets present a different picture: period Motor Trend and other sources list more sedate 0–60 and quarter‑mile numbers (for example, Motor Trend’s figures cited elsewhere show 0–60 around 7.7 seconds and a quarter‑mile near 15.8 seconds for comparable Tempest/GTO configurations), highlighting that published performance depends heavily on which car and which test one cites [6] [7].
5. How Car and Driver’s 1984 article framed controversy and legacy
Car and Driver’s archive reprints and commentary in 1984 and later retrospectives treat the episode as both a publicity‑making stunt and a touchstone for the GTO’s mythos: the magazine acknowledged the provocative nature of the original comparison while readers, rival publications, and later historians debated whether the spectacular numbers represented a fair evaluation of production GTO performance or an extraordinary press‑car anomaly [4] [5] [3].
6. What can be confidently cited from the available reporting—and the limits of the record
It can be stated from the sources that Car and Driver’s archived material (reissued in the 1984 retrospective) publicized the 4.6‑second 0–60 and 13.1‑second quarter‑mile/@115 mph figures and that significant contemporaneous and later pushback exists claiming the tested Pontiacs were atypical, possibly fitted with 421 HO parts; beyond that, the sources do not provide a definitive, universally accepted correction or single authoritative laboratory retest that reconciles all conflicting numbers [1] [2] [3] [6].