When you sell your Goat and your new Road Runner is a lemon
Photo by author.
In the August 2017 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines, 1966 Pontiac GTO owner Jim Zievel discusses the events that led to him trading his GTO convertible for something that, in the end, was far more unreliable.
Jim Zievel bought a 1966 Pontiac GTO convertible brand new in the spring of 1966. It was optioned right: Tri-Power, four-speed, 3.55 Safe-T-Track rear, console, power steering and brakes. You can read all about it in Issue #168. (Buy this issue here.)
He loved it. But Jim swears that he was hit by the “new car bug,” and fell under the influence of a Mopar. “I was going to school, and a guy that parked near me had a ’68 B5 Blue Road Runner. I liked it. One day the family went for a ride, and we somehow ended up at a Dodge dealership. They had a ’69 Charger there—B5 blue, automatic transmission, and Sure Grip … it was incredibly fast! I don’t know if that car was a freak or what, but I could take on 440s and eat ’em alive.”
But that Dodge ate something else: Jim’s patience. “Stuff that shouldn’t have gone wrong was going wrong. I picked the car up on a Friday, didn’t drive it Saturday, and on Sunday it blew out a water pump. Six windshield wiper motors in a year, the second of which broke the linkage twice. You’d hit 60 mph coming out of a tollbooth, and it would just shut off for 20 minutes. You could time your watch to it. Out of nowhere, all of the instrument needles would peg the high side of the gauge at the same time, and then gradually come floating back down.” Every incident made Jim regret the decision to sell his GTO more.
“Here’s the last straw: I had the family in the car—my wife and our son in his car seat. We were leaving the Kroger, I made a left-hand turn in the parking lot, and heard a small explosion. The power-steering gearbox blew up like an egg. If that happened at speed, something catastrophic could have resulted. To boot, it was just out of warranty. I was pretty upset: I had it flat-bedded to the Dodge dealer, and I was so mad I called the factory. They sent a rep down, and discovered that while the dealer charged me full freight to fix my car, they charged it to another car on the lot and got warranty money from Chrysler. All hell broke loose. It was fixed, but my wife wouldn’t even drive it anymore.”
Jim traded it in on another Pontiac GTO—this time a well-optioned 1970 model, and a car that he has held onto since purchase. (You’ll read about that GTO in a future issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.)
Have you ever succumbed to temptation and been wooed away from a particular marque only to be taught a hard lesson? (I know some of those here at Hemmings sure have.) C’mon. Let’s confess: Share your stories with us.