1964 Pontiac GTO Hardtop

The first Shawnee GTO was associate degree possibility package for the Shawnee Tempest, offered with the two-door automobile, hardtop, and convertible body designs. 

The US$295 package enclosed a 389 capacity measure (6 l) V8 rated at 325 bhp (242 kW) at 4800 revolutions per minute with one Carter AFB four-barrel mechanical device and twin exhaust, chromed valve covers and filter, seven-blade clutch fan, a floor-shifted three-speed manual transmission with Hurst shifter, stiffer springs, larger diameter front sway bar, wider wheels with seven.50 × fourteen single out tires, hood scoops, and GTO badges. nonobligatory instrumentation enclosed a four-speed manual, Super rotary engine three hundred two-speed transmission system, additional powerful "Tri-Power" carburetion (three two-barrel Rochester 2G carburetors) rated at 348 bhp (260 kW), gold drum brakes linings, limited-slip differential, heavy cooling, ride and handling package, and therefore the usual array of power and convenience accessories. With each offered possibility, the GTO price concerning US$4,500 and weighed around three,500 lb (1,600 kg). A measuring instrument was nonobligatory, and was placed within the so much right dial on the dash.

Most modern road tests like automotive Life criticized the slow steering, notably while not power-assisted steering, and inadequate drum brakes, that were the image of those of the traditional Tempest. Automotive and Driver incited dispute once it written that a GTO that had purportedly been tuned with the "Bobcat" kit offered by Ace Wilson's Royal Shawnee of Royal Oak, Michigan, was clocked at 1 / 4 mile time of twelve.8 seconds and a entice speed of 112 mph (180 km/h) on sport slicks. Later reports powerfully recommend that the automotive and Driver GTOs were equipped with a 421 capacity measure (6.9 L) engine that was nonobligatory in full-sized Pontiacs. Since the 2 engines were troublesome to differentiate outwardly, the misrepresentation wasn't in real time obvious. In Jim Wanger's Glory Days he admitted when 3 decades of denial that the red drag strip GTO had its engine swapped with a 421 Lynx rufus unit. Since the automotive was broken throughout the testing, and Wangers failed to wish anyone wanting underneath the hood, he used the blue road course GTO to flat tow the red GTO one,500 miles back to port. Frank Bridge's sales forecast verified inaccurate: the GTO package had sold  ten,000 units before the start of the 1964 civil year, and total sales were thirty two,450.

Throughout the Nineteen Sixties, Ace Wilson's Royal Shawnee, a Shawnee dealer in Royal Oak, Michigan, offered a special tune-up package for Shawnee 389 engines. 

Several were fitted to GTOs, and therefore the elements and directions may well be purchased by mail, further as put in by the dealer. several of the Pontiacs created offered for magazine testing were equipped with the Lynx rufus kit.

The name "Bobcat" came from the impermanent  badges created for the changed cars, combining letters from the "Bonneville" and "Catalina" nameplates. Adhesive stickers were additional to advise onlookers of the actual fact that these GTOs were "Royal Bobcats".

The precise elements of the kit varied, however usually enclosed items to switch the timing of the distributor, limiting timing to three4–36° at no quite 3,000 revolutions per minute (advancing the temporal order at high revolutions per minute for redoubled power), a agent copper gasket to lift compression to concerning eleven.23:1, special manifold gaskets to dam the warmth riser to the mechanical device (keeping it cooler), larger mechanical device jets, and protection rocker bats to carry the hydraulic valve lifters at their most purpose of adjustment, permitting the engine to rev higher while not "floating" the valves. Properly put in, the kit may add between thirty and fifty HP (20–40 kW), though it needed high-octane superpremium gasolene of over one hundred hydrocarbon to avoid spark knock with the upper compression and advanced temporal order.

The performance manager at Royal Shawnee was Milt Schornack.

Optional with the Lynx rufus package was an in depth re-machining of the cylinder heads and block to "blueprint" the engine—that is, fastidiously machine the elements so their essential dimensions met the initial metric weight unit works blueprint specifications.