These cars may seem evenly matched at first but watch out because the GTO is here to win!
For decades the Corvette has been the pretty boy and favorite child of the GM lineup as it combined an ultra-light chassis with a wide range of V8 options to match. This translated very well to the sales floor, and GM secretly made a pact not to produce any models faster than their beloved sports car. However, recently enthusiasts are starting to take notice of the fact with just a minimal amount of modifications, usually just swapping out gear ratios. Many other performance cars of the time were perfectly capable of going toe to toe with the elite roadster. This was essentially the battle between sports cars and muscle cars, and who would be better suited to represent the competition than what is considered to be the very first muscle car?
Check out five things you might not know about the Pontiac GTO here.
That's right. This is a head-to-head race between a 1973 Chevrolet Corvette and 1969 Pontiac GTO. Under the hood of the GTO is a massive 400 ci Pontiac V8 which puts out 366 horsepower. That was more than enough to defeat the competition back in the day, but it is anyone's guess as to whether it will be enough to take down the Corvette's 454 ci big-block V8. While the 400 ci V8 produces far more power than the 275 horsepower produced by the 454 ci V8, the 'Vette is slightly lighter by about 100 lbs with the driver. The ultra-rare GTO sports both the RAM Air III package and manual transmission, making it perfect for this sort of racing. Let's see how these incredible cars compare to one another.
Race number one is an incredibly close call, with both cars finishing the quarter-mile in 14.63 seconds. However, the GTO was given the win as it finished just .004 seconds quicker than the Corvette. The two cars are pretty evenly matched, not to mention that the small-time discrepancy could be due to driver error. Round two saw a significant change for this curdling blue race, with the GTO winning again at 14.29 versus the Corvette's time of 14.68. Despite the competition being the best two out of three events, the owners decided to do one more pull together just for fun. The Corvette got a better E/T this time, but the GTO still won due to reaction time. These cars are evenly matched in driver ability and speed, but today, the GTO has been declared the winner!
