Family experiences highs and lows with GTOs
A father shares many special moments with his children. One joy is the experience of helping them pick out and purchase their first cars.
Jack Wall found himself there in the fall of 1968. He and his family were living on the South Side of Chicago and his oldest son, Jack Jr., was ready to go car shopping. They waited until younger brother Jim got home from school and then took off for the local Pontiac dealership.
Jack Jr. had his eyes on a 1968 LeMans. The rest of the afternoon was spent jumping in several different examples and buzzing around the block on test drives. Finally, a deal was struck and Jack Jr. was over the moon and eager to get cruising, but his father wasn't ready to leave after all that quality seat time.
"Being around those new cars - with their new car smell and feel - had dad thinking he was in the market, too," Jim recalls. Inspired by his son's enthusiasm, Jack Sr. was thinking he, too, would look fine behind the wheel of a shiny new LeMans.
Slyly aiming to push his dad in another direction, toward a more muscular model, Jim casually threw out: "You don't want to buy the same car Jack has." The salesman couldn't agree more. He quickly ushered the trio over to the other side of the showroom. There sat a gleaming (and much more powerful and expensive) 1968 GTO.
"My eyes got big but not as big as Dad's," Jim said. Jack Sr. couldn't resist and ended up buying it.
One warm evening shortly thereafter in the summer of 1969, the two brothers wanted to take in some baseball. The White Sox were in town and playing a doubleheader against the Yankees. There was one problem: Jack Jr.'s LeMans was low on gas. The boys asked their dad to borrow his GTO. Before long the pair was off and rumbling to the bright lights of Comiskey Park.
Jack Jr. dropped Jim at the will-call window to grab the tickets while he motored away to park the GTO. That was the last time either would see dad's green muscle machine.
After watching the Sox beat the Yankees not once, but twice, their cloud-nine excitement was turned to doom and gloom as they walked the parking lot, unable to find Jack Sr.'s four-wheeled pride and joy. During the game the car had been stolen.
Thinking quick, Jack Jr. turned to Jim. He "graciously" offered to call the police and volunteered his younger bro to break the news to their father. Jim hadn't been born the night before. He retorted: "I've got a better idea - I'll call the police, you call Dad."
Jack Sr. was understandably upset but more than glad the boys were safe. In the weeks to come, the vehicle never turned up. Once the insurance check arrived, Jack returned to the Pontiac showroom. There he purchased that LeMans he had been initially leaning toward.
"While completing all that tedious paperwork for the claim, he finally realized he was paying a premium for that sportier GTO," Jim said.
It is fond memories like these that still bring Jim joy and what led him to search for and buy his own GTO. In 2014, Wall, who now lives in Libertyville, purchased a cherry-red 1968 convertible sight-unseen off the internet from a farm in Iowa.
The droptop was in great condition but needed some work. It was also missing a key component: a Scooby Doo Christmas ornament.
"My dad had one hanging in his car," Jim said. "Mine wasn't going to be complete without one, too."
• Share your car's story with Matt at auto@dailyherald.com.