Oliver is a highly experienced motoring journalist, with a background in editing and writing for some of the world’s biggest car magazines and publications. His love of cars goes back to when he was a boy flicking through his dad’s Autocar and Motor magazines, to loitering at Castle Combe and the British Motor Show, progressing through to tinkering with hot hatches that were often well past their best before date.
Not many letter combinations can prick the ears of muscle car fans quite like “GTO” does. Pontiac will forever go down in American automotive folklore as the pioneer of the muscle car genre, with engineer John DeLorean spearheading the team that dropped a 325-horsepower 389 engine into a prototype ’64 Tempest. The resulting LeMans GTO inspired pretty much every American carmaker to quickly concoct a powerful V8 coupe or two to hoover up the eager muscle car customers in the GTO’s wake.
But by the early ’70s, the muscle car party was starting to thin out with a new oil crisis and creeping emissions regulations, not to mention a pinch in insurance costs for younger drivers. Sales figures were down on models that once sold themselves in the showrooms, and American manufacturers were left scratching their heads trying to work out a way out of the situation. The problem probably wasn’t helped by the fact that companies such as Toyota had also entered the sports car market too, bringing out its own contemporary version of the muscle car to great acclaim.
Pontiac had an idea, and it would take the GTO in a completely new direction – the last ever for the brand. Today, the last golden-era muscle car wearing the legendary GTO nameplate is ridiculously affordable.
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By Raunak Ajinkya
The 1974 GTO Is A Hidden Muscle Car Bargain
The Ventura II GTO was a product of the oil crisis and emissions regulations, with a Pontiac 350-ci V8 that produced just 200 horsepower, which would have been nothing in the ’60s. It was smaller, less powerful, and, shudder, more practical, so it never really captured the public’s imagination like the rock ‘n roll originals, but that’s a good thing. This means that prices are still low, and nudge, nudge, wink, wink, the Ventura will easily fit a 400 or 455 V8. But, for the sake of tradition, keeping the 200-horsepower 350 seems like an equally tempting thing to do, especially considering a sub-nine-second sprint to 60 mph time will mean that you will easily stay up with modern traffic.
The ’74 Is A Cheap Entry Into The GTO Market
Hagerty’s Valuation Tool puts the price of a coupe Ventura GTO at $16,500, with the hatchback going for $18,100. The low retail price of the ’74 GTO is $9,700, says J.D. Power, with an average of $17,400, and a high of $32,100. The fourth-gen GTO may not have the rumbling menace of the most badass ’60s versions, but at that price, at least most of us can dream of affording one.
The problem for anyone wanting one is actually finding any on the used market — they are extremely scarce. With just over 7,000 units produced, many would have been crashed and trashed, and the car is now a rarity. This ’74 GTO is going up for sale at Kissimmee in January 2026. For comparison, a ’69 GTO with a 350-horsepower 350-ci V8 has an average good condition price of $35,300, says Hagerty.com.
The ’74 Pontiac GTO Was A Desperate Car For Desperate Times
On the surface, things were going pretty well for the Pontiac GTO at the end of the ’60s. The second-gen GTO ran from 1968 to 1972, and for 1969, Pontiac introduced “The Judge” package, a nod to a comedy routine from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In TV show. But while the bright orange paint and funky graphics gave the GTO a newfound confidence and swagger, the truth is this car marked a bright orange warning that this was the beginning of the end. Sales had dropped from 72,287 in 1969 to 40,149 in 1970 (according to Hagerty), and for the following year, the number of GTOs finding customers was a quarter of that number, and by 1972, the GTO was nothing more than an option of the LeMans, with sales down to 5,807.
Smaller Cars Were In For ’74
The truth was, customers were being tempted out of huge muscle cars by lighter and more modern cars. AMC had launched the novel AMX, a shorter, more compact version of the muscle car, and Plymouth’s Duster 340 was proving a sales success. Pontiac decided that this was the route to take the GTO, and turned to the Ventura II, which was the company’s X-Body platform take on the Chevrolet Nova. The Ventura was given a hatchback option in 1973, and was selling well, with 96,500 units shifted in 1973.
The Ventura was made available with a GTO option for 1974 (for both coupe and hatchback) and was fitted with a Pontiac 350-ci V8 packing a four-barrel carburetor and twin exhausts. Power may have been 200 horsepower, which was nothing by OG muscle car standards, but the new ’74 Ventura GTO was a lighter car. Had Pontiac changed the game again, just like it did with the original GTO? Well, not quite…
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By Raunak Ajinkya
The Ventura GTO Wasn’t Going To Be Beating Any OG Muscle Cars Any Time Soon
For anyone hoping that the Ventura was going to bring back the GTO name in all its glory, they were sadly mistaken. But that didn’t make the ’74 GTO a bad car. For between $414 to $461, you could upgrade your Ventura to GTO spec (depending on whether it was a coupe or hatchback, and the trim). That L76 Pontiac 350-ci V8 was good for 200 horsepower and 295 lb-ft of torque, which was nothing compared to the near 500 hp that ’60s muscle cars were flaunting. However, at 3400 lbs, it was around 600 lbs lighter than a late ’60s Dodge Charger, and that stood for something.
The Ventura GTO Wasn’t That Much Slower Than A ’60s Version
The question of whether the new, dinky GTO could stand up to a Golden Era muscle car must have been on everyone’s minds in the ’70s, especially as the Ventura has come in for some criticism for not doing justice to its illustrious name. To settle the issue, Cars magazine pitted the four-speed manual (and 3.08 gears) Ventura GTO against a ’64 GTO with a 389 four-barrel engine and an auto for its May 1974 edition.
Pontiac guru Annunziata Romano of Nunzi’s Automotive in Brooklyn, New York, was at the wheel, posting a quarter mile of 15.72 seconds at 88 mph for the newer car, with the ’64 model posting a time of 15.64 at 90 mph. The ’64 just beat it to 60 mph, but only just, eclipsing the ’74’s 7.7-second time by stopping the stopwatch at 7.4, although admittedly the older car was an automatic.
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At this point, we could look at the Ventura through a different lense. This baby GTO had a hatchback as an option — so are we looking at one of the world’s first hot hatches? The 1973 Simca 1100TI is often cited as starting that category, but it only had 82 horsepower. AMC also had the 1972 V8 Gremlin, which also had a hatch, and when you start thinking of these machines as practical, usable vehicles — rather than monster coupes like the muscle cars of old — they get a bit more kudos and understanding. A 200-horsepower V8 hot hatch? We’ll take that any day of the week.
Did The Ventura Kill The GTO?
The Ventura has the dubious honor of sending the GTO badge to the great scrapyard in the sky, for a few decades at least. That doesn’t mean it was a complete disaster sales-wise. Pontiac shifted 7,058 units (Hagerty), which was an improvement on the 1973 LeMans coupe with a GTO badge. But the Ventura GTO only lasted a single year, before Pontiac decided to retire the hallowed three letters seemingly for good.
The name, which was cheekily borrowed from the 250 GTO (where it stood for Gran Turismo Omologato) became a reminder of the glory days of muscle cars (and how they ended) until 2004 when the GTO returned as an Australian-sourced car, being based on the Holden Monaro, which was produced near Adelaide, Australia. With a 5.7-liter V8, this was the real deal, but it still wasn’t enough to save the Pontiac GTO name (or the company), with the carmaker going out of business in 2010.
