The 1964 GTO was an option package on the Tempest LeMans which added the 389 cubic inch V8 from the full-sized Catalina to a car that weighed less than 3,500 pounds. John DeLorean and his design team had to work around a GM policy requiring all of its cars to weigh 10 pounds for every cubic inch of displacement, so the LeMans was offered with a 330-inch V8 as the base engine and the $295.90 (a little under $3,000 today) GTO option got buyers the 389.
That brought the cost of the GTO to $2,776, which equals just over $28,000 today when accounting for inflation. For that investment, GTO buyers got a car that was powerful yet still well-balanced enough to be relatively easy to handle, even when driven hard. With the standard Rochester four-barrel carburetor, the GTO’s 389 produced 325 horsepower and 428 lb-ft of torque, but choosing the tri-power (three two-barrel carbs) option boosted output to 358 horsepower. In 2003, Motor Trend ran a tri-power GTO through the quarter mile in 13.29 seconds, with a finishing speed of 107 miles per hour.
[Featured image by Greg Gjerdingen via Wikimedia Commons|Cropped and scaled|CC-By 2.0]
