My First Car: 1964 GTO
For most people their first car holds a lot of special memories. Saving your hard earned money, the search for what you thought would be the perfect car, and the purchasing experience. Then you do all the little things to it to make it yours. Most guys like to start customizing their cars right away.
Saving The Hard Earned Money
In Idaho in 1972 you were allowed to get your drivers license at the age of fourteen. This was a necessity back then as a large percentage of people were farmers and ranchers and needed their kids to be able to drive. On our farm we were driving on the country gravel roads and around the farm before age twelve.
I was pretty hard on mom and dad’s pickups and cars as I seem to have been born with a lead foot. I also thought I was too cool to be riding the school bus so I had to get some money saved to get my own wheels.
For most sixteen year olds saving up enough money to buy that first car can be a daunting task, but it was pretty fortunate that I was able to work part time for a neighboring farmer and also help a friend whose dad had a hay hauling business on weekends or whenever I had free time.
At one dollar an hour it took a lot of hours to save any money while still spending on all the other things a teenager has going on in their life. Working on the family farm was a big help in this savings endeavor at about the same rate per hour. It took nearly a year to save up $500 which I was hoping could buy a pretty decent car.
Finding The Perfect Car
Buying your first car was quite a lot different in 1972 than it is today. There was no Craigslist, Thrifty Nickel, Facebook or any of those types of places to look. It was newspaper ads, bulletin boards in grocery stores and probably the best way was by word of mouth.
I had an idea of what I wanted, something like my older brothers 1963 Chevy Impala. His was a 283 cubic inch V8 with the three on the tree, not very fast or really eye catching. I remember looking at a lot of cars that probably wouldn’t last for more than a year or two, or just didn’t meet the criteria that I had in mind.
One day my dad came home from picking up some parts at the auto parts store in town and told me about a mechanic there that had a decent car that he wanted to sell. My dad described it as a Pontiac with a V8 engine. I was thinking that it was probably a big old Bonneville or a station wagon as we drove into town to look at it.
Purchasing The Car
When we arrived I couldn’t believe what my dad had found. It was a gold 1964 GTO with a 389 V8, 4 speed, custom spider web paint job on the hood and trunk lid. It was the most beautiful car I believed I had ever seen in my life.
The great part of the whole deal was he needed to sell right away and only wanted $500. This was my dream car, no negotiating or dickering– I had to have this car. I couldn’t peel off the $20 bills fast enough. My parent’s problem was solved and my problem of finding my perfect car was solved– all for $500.
How To Describe My New Car
If you have ever driven a muscle car with a big V8, Muncie 4-speed with a posi-trac 411 rear end, you know just how quick a car like that can be in a quarter mile. My friends and I loved to race, and back then you could go on any side road to race and not be bothered. As most everyone says who has owned a fast car, I don’t ever remember losing a race.
The interior of the car was beautiful with bucket seats, gold carpet, 8 track stereo and was in great condition. It had a nice center console that finished out the interior very nicely.
The owner of the car had brought it here with him when he moved to Idaho from Southern California. It was while he was living there he had the custom spider web paint job done on the car. I wonder now if I was the only one in Idaho who had this type of paint job, because neither I or anyone I knew had never seen one before.
| Body | 1964 GTO |
| Engine | 389 4 Barrel |
| HP | 325 |
| Transmission | 4 Speed manual |
| Differential | 411 Posi-trac |
Wrecking My Car
The first wreck we ever have driving a car is something we never forget. On an ice covered road I had a car pull out in front of me and I couldn’t get stopped so we had a head on collision. Luckily I was only going about 25 mph when we hit but it crinkled up my bumper and hood pretty bad.
Back then a car had to suffer pretty significant damage before the insurance companies would consider them a total loss. It was in the body shop for a few months with the problem being that they could not get the spider web paint job to keep from cracking. I learned later from the original owner they had put on twenty clear coats in a very warm paint booth to keep it from cracking in California.
I eventually had to accept the car with hair line cracks in the spider web paint but when you are sixteen you just want your car back.
Blowing The Engine In My Car
The problem with being young and racing a car without a tachometer is you can easily over rev the engine and cause serious damage. That’s what I did to send a rod out the side of the block. The engine was destroyed and I didn’t have the money for another big block Pontiac motor so I settled for a 326 out of a 65 Tempest for $75.
This took all the fun out of my GTO. With this engine swap I lost approximately 100 horsepower and lost the love for my car. I decided it was time to part ways with the GTO and get something a little toned down and more dependable.
Selling My Car
Lucky for me I had a friend who wanted to buy my car. He didn’t care about the engine swap, he just wanted my car which was great for me as I had totally lost interest in it. I can’t recall exactly how much I sold it to him for but it seems it was around the $400 range.
It was only a few months later that he totaled it. It sat behind an auto body repair shop for a lot of years. They slowly stripped it of parts and it eventually found its way to being crushed.
Read more about the 1964 GTO in this post
Final Thoughts
How often do you hear the term “if I only knew then what I know now”? I’m sure lots of us say that about cars that we owned when we were young. Whoever thought these cars we rodded around in would someday all become valuable collector cars. I’m just glad of the memories I have of my beautiful gold 1964 GTO.
The Tool Box
Heres a couple of tools that would have been great for working on my GTO:
sources: wikimedia commons
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