2004 Pontiac Gto Dash Colors Coded To Paint
Mention high-performance Pontiac engines and the name “Wilhite” anon comes to apperception amid those in the know. And appropriately so.
Tom Wilhite has fabricated his active architecture some of the arch Pontiac antagonism engines to anytime rip bottomward a annoyance strip. He not alone builds them, but both he and his wife, Sharon, chase them with ample success.
But not all of the Wilhite’s Pontiacs are congenital to run a division of a mile at a time. They advance an absorbing agile of street/show cars as well.
Currently, that agile is heavily abounding with what abounding accede the aboriginal American beef car, the Pontiac GTO.
“This is allegedly our admired one to booty on alley trips,” says Sharon, advertence a white 1965 GTO convertible with a atramentous top and atramentous interior.
“It’s aloof a nice driver, you angular aback and cruise,” said Tom.
They bought the car about 25 years ago from a friend.
“It was appealing abundant like it is now. We did some agent assignment and the interior,” said Tom.
The agent assignment complex acclamation the aboriginal 389 V-8 to a beefier 450 cubic inches.
But they retained the aboriginal 2-speed Super Turbine 300 automated transmission, which Tom is quick to point out “is not a Powerglide.”
A first-year convertible, their all-red 1964 GTO had been adapted to an automated chiral car by the time they acquired it.
“I capital a 4-speed,” said Sharon, who got her wish, acknowledgment to her husband. “I adulation to shift. When you booty ‘em out for a drive, there’s annihilation like banging them through the gears.”.
“Tom corrective the car himself,” she noted, and she begin the after archetypal Grand Prix wheels, already akin in a analogous red. Once a red brazier bench autogenous was completed, there was no advantage but to install a new red bolt top on the arresting convertible.
The third of their crop of GTO’s allegedly had been annoyance raced at some point in its life. But the ’65 GTO auto was able-bodied account extenuative because it was a attenuate Tri-Power car with options like a angle council caster and an electrically powered radio antenna, he said.
It, too, got a stroker crankshaft advocacy it to 450 cubic inches. The agent hasn’t been put on a dyno, but Wilhite estimates it now produces a stout 525 horsepower. All that ability is baffled aback through a Tremec 5-speed chiral transmission, accession at a set of 3:55 Positraction gears.
The auto was a appropriate adjustment acrylic cipher and was refinished in the able Omaha Orange hue, with custom pinstriping forth the belt line. Tom speculates the car may accept been ordered in that blush by a banker so it could be tiger-striped as a exhibit draw. It is able with advanced disc brakes and a Classic Air air conditioning system.
“The orange car is on the naked bend of actuality too abundant camshaft and too blatant (on the street),” Tom Wilhite explained.
The fourth car in the calendar is aloof the opposite, a calm, quiet 1957 Pontiac Star Chief, which looks gigantic compared to the GTOs. It retains the aboriginal 347 cubic inch V-8 beneath its massive hood, with alone a 2-barrel carburetor agriculture gas to the engine.
“It has a 4-speed automatic, which they alleged the Jetaway,” Wilhite acicular out. “It does accept bifold exhaust, but it allegedly didn’t appear that way.”
The Wilhites accept that a set of abundant vinyl seatcovers allegedly burrow the aboriginal 56-year-old upholstery that came on the car new. It is additionally one of the GM cars that came able with an underseat heater, as able-bodied as the added accepted boiler in the dash.
An all-white car, the Star Chief was in charge of some beginning acrylic on the roof, so the Wilhites absitively to acrylic the top the aforementioned abysmal rose blush as the ancillary trim, which gives it a bit added eye appeal.
“It’s a agreeable to drive,” empiric Sharon, who contest a agnate full-sized ’58 Pontiac on the annoyance strip.
The two altered types of cartage crave altered approaches.
“A annoyance car is not actual alive to put on the street, and a appearance car, you should not accept to accept one bottom on the gas and one bottom on the anchor to accumulate it running,” says Tom Wilhite.
When architecture a artery car, he added, “We try to aerate achievement after killing the backbone of the street.”
All four of their artery cars will be on affectation at this weekend’s Pontiac Uprising at Kansas International Dragway, and both Sharon’s ’58 annoyance car and Tom’s ’59 Catalina will be in activity on the strip.
