One aspect of the redesigned Pontiac GTO that sold our editors on its worth as Car of the Year for 1968 was its Endura bumper system. The body-colored, high-density, urethane-elastomer foam wasn't new that year, nor exclusive to the GTO. But the car was designed with this feature in mind, so that was a bit of a breakthrough. "For the first time in 20 years," noted our COTY feature article "intelligent cooperation between engineering and styling was possible." The Endura material could take minor bumps up to a half inch and "grow" back into its original shape in 24 hours. By this time, the GTO had become a grown-up muscle machine, one more about handling, braking, and comfort in addition to straight-line speed.
That said, Pontiac's latest 6.2-liter, 402-horse G8 GXP would handily toast the old goat. Even the mighty Ram-Air version with a four-speed transmission could muster only a 6.5-second 0-to-60 time, although that was with the rear tires burning through the first two gears.
Coverage: February 1968
A Pontiac adorns our cover this month and was all the news as Car of the Year winner 40 years ago, too. Honorable mentions, or "Cars in Category" winners as we called them back then, were the Chevy II (later Nova), the Dodge Charger (a Mopar design classic), the Javelin (nearly as good as it got for AMC), and a new production machine modeled after the Mako Shark II show car-which was called the Corvette.