Many people don’t know that the 1974 GTO is among the rarest ever produced. It’s fairly obvious why. The muscle car era was over by 1974. Sadly, almost no one cared either. High fuel costs, rising insurance rates and shifting attitudes doomed the market for nearly thirty years. Only in the last few years have muscle cars made a real comeback.

Another interesting fact that few people know is that the performance of the 1974 GTO was not all that bad. In its May 1974 issue, Cars magazine compared 1974 GTO complete with four-speed manual transmission and 3.08 gears with a 1964 GTO with a 389 four-barrel engine, automatic transmission, and 3.55 gears. The cars were strikingly similar. The 1974 posted a best quarter-mile pass of 15.72 seconds at 88 mph, while the 1964 model was slightly quicker; turning 15.64 at 90 mph. Zero-to-60-mph times for the two were similar at 7.7 and 7.4 seconds, respectively. What really stood out to the testers was how much ride and handling had improved since its inception.

In ten years the muscle car market had come full circle. The last GTO was just as good as the first GTO. All in all, that was a good way to end the era.