Pontiac GTO

Pontiac Concept GTO

DETROIT - What would the Pontiac GTO-a car many credit for launching the 1960s muscle-car era-look like if it were still around today? That's precisely the idea behind Concept GTO, a modern-day interpretation of Pontiac's legendary performance car.

Looking like a cross between a customized Pontiac Trans Am and the Batmobile, Concept GTO's young designer (who wasn't even born when the GTO was in its heyday) makes no apologies for borrowing design cues from old "goats" of the past. Such recognizable features as a pronounced beak, ram-air hood with exterior-mounted tach, side strakes with hunched rear quarters and honeycomb wheels trace their roots to GTOs of the '60s and '70s.

As GM's excitement division, Pontiac has a history of outrageously styled concepts that never see the light of day in dealer showrooms. But many design elements from those concepts have found their way onto production Pontiacs, so GM is fishing for public input on this one.

Simply a design exercise to explore future possibilities, Concept GTO is not a working mechanical prototype. But it doesn't take an overactive imagination to see that this shapely styling buck could easily be adapted to today's current Firebird/Camaro F-body platform or, better still, based on the new C-5 Corvette chassis. With the rumored demise of GM's F-body cars at the end of the 1999 model year, a Corvette-based GTO might not be too far-fetched an idea for Pontiac to pursue.