Despite being viewed as a classic American muscle car, the Pontiac GTO’s name originates from Europe, with GTO standing for Gran Turismo Omologato in Italy.
In 1964, a legend was born when Pontiac dropped one of the 389 cubic-inch V8s from its full-size lineup into a lighter, mid-sized Pontiac Tempest. Its birth kicked off a tire-smoking, youth-driven craze that took the American automotive industry by storm until the early ’70s, making the 1964 Pontiac GTO a legendary part of muscle car history.
While the Pontiac GTO was a groundbreaking machine, its name was actually borrowed from another brand — the Italian one with the prancing horse on its logo. That’s right, the Pontiac GTO’s name was directly inspired by (or perhaps even stolen from) the Ferrari 250 GTO of the early ’60s. What do those three letters stand for? In the case of both the Ferrari and the Pontiac, GTO represents the Italian words Gran Turismo Omologato, or Grand Touring Homologated in English.
What does Grand Touring Homologated mean? Though the «GT» designation has always had a very loose definition, in the Ferrari GTO’s case, Grand Touring was a category of production-based auto racing (which the Ferrari GTO dominated). Homologation was the process of certifying a race car to meet the minimum requirements and production numbers to qualify as a road-going model.
