A classic rock radio station would call today’s Lot Shots feature a “two-fer,” but we’re not talking about a Led Zeppelin “Heartbreaker/Living Loving Maid” mashup here.
Instead, we’ve got a classic 1967 Pontiac GTO heading off for restoration atop a vintage International Harvester (IH) S-160 flatbed truck.
First, the GTO. It’s apt that the Goat is riding on an “International” as it was John Delorean’s vision to give the Goat a global prestige when borrowing the acronym G-T-O from Ferrari.
GTO stood for “Grand Turismo Omologato,” an Italian reference to the various racing classes that require a vehicle to be homologated before it can compete.
“Homologated” is a fancy way of saying auto manufacturers had to make a street-legal version of their race car available for sale to the public. That regulation gave us the Plymouth Superbird, Ford RS200, and Lancia Stratos.
Suffice it to say, we like the homologation rule.
Internally, Pontiac used the G-T-O acronym as “Grand Tempest Option,” as the GTO first appeared in 1964 as an option on the Tempest coupe.
Pontiac carried its international theme through to the engine, becoming an early-adopter of metric displacement figures. It touted the 389 Pontiac V8 as 6.5 litres—yes, even spelling it “litre” to double-down on its European namesake. That trend continued through the late 1970 Trans Ams equipped with Pontiac or Oldsmobile 6.6 “litre” engines.
While we’re assuming this tired Goat is off for a restoration, it looks mostly complete. If the IH truck is any indication, this once-potent Poncho is in good hands.
Speaking of the truck, it’s an International Harvester S-160 in the cab-over-engine configuration. We don’t know the year exactly, but we’re guessing it’s from 1956 or 1957. We can’t tell you if the flatbed portion is stock either, but the wood bed certainly looks period correct.
Regardless, the rig is definitely designed for work. It’s wearing Maine plates, the Goat’s got Oklahoma plates, and they were both spotted at the Summit Racing retail store in Ohio.
That’s quite a road trip for a hauler built a decade before Jimmy Page met Robert Plant.
We couldn’t jump high enough to peek inside the cab, but we’re hoping there’s a Led Zeppelin II cassette jammed in the deck.
This is my grandpa’s restored truck he used to have a restoration company but he retired and restored this truck and a bunch of other cars. He has restored that GTO, an El Camino SS, a Chevy Nova, and some others. He restored the truck and drove 1121 miles and moved,to Maine and took 3 loads making 6000 miles. The bed is not stock, but cost on made by him with a tilting hydraulic tilt and winch. Right,now he is in Maine painting dome big barges. I remember when I helped him restore that truck.