Mr. Wangers is best known for his work with GTO, of course, and the bulk of Glory Days is focused on his role in the creation and marketing of Pontiac's runaway hit version of the GM A-body. No great GTO bombshells get dropped, but the reader gets the inside story on such GTO-centric matters as Wangers' early work with Royal Pontiac to create special-edition drag cars and his role in the creation of hit song "Little GTO," a marketing coup so spectacular that Volkswagen ripped it off two decades later.



We also learn that Wangers, though he is indeed a gearhead, is first and foremost an advertising man, with all the adman's traditional disdain for hair-splitting ethical dilemmas. One of his very first promotions took place while he worked for the student newspaper at the Illinois Institute of Technology; the winner of a contest was to receive a new 1949 Ford… which turned out to be a toy car ("We were accused of being cheaters, but from my point of view we had done nothing wrong. Nobody lost any money"). Of greater interest to musclecar fanatics is his confirmation of the oft-rumored "ringer" engine in the press car given to Car And Driver for their review of the new '64 GTO; sure enough, C&D really did get suckered into believing that the balls-to-the-wall 428 that moved their Goat down the quarter-mile in 13.1 seconds was a dead-stock 389 (it also helped that C&D used an old-fashioned hand-held stopwatch to determine times).
Then there's the long decline and fall of the GTO, as well as the beginning of the larger, slower decline of General Motors. We learn quite a bit about the organizational dysfunctions within GM that ultimately helped bring the company to its knees; GM lived in fear of being broken up by antitrust regulations as recently as the late 1960s, and the idea that its vast resources couldn't buy its way out of any trouble died hard on the 14th Floor.

By the mid-1970s, Wagners had his own company, Motortown, and that's the point at which Glory Days became most interesting for me. Motortown was behind such Malaise Era tape-stripe-and-spoiler hits as the Mustang Cobra II and Pontiac Can Am, but the Motortown concepts that failed to get any takers in Detroit are even better. The Boss Pinto! The SPacer AMC Pacer-based custom van!

All in all, a good read even for those who don't have any particular love for the GTO. Wangers is a pro writer, so you won't end up clutching your head in incomprehension or groaning at yet another passage in generic ghost-writerese, and you'll come away from the book with a much improved understanding of the way marketers create our cars. Four-rod rating; Murilee says check it out!
[Bentley Publishers]



Reprinted with permission from Glory Days, © Bentley Publishers, all rights reserved

I've been reading Mr. Wangers' memoir (review coming soon), and I've learned about some of the tape-stripe-tastic Malaise Era machinery he helped create for American automakers. His company, Motortown, produced the Foghat-approved '76 and '77 Mustang Cobra II and the shaker-scoop equipped Can Am option package for the otherwise lackluster '77 Pontiac LeMans. They're genuine, limited-edition classics now, the sort of of-their-time machines that just ooze transmission fluid history… and you can get 'em cheap!

The Malaise Era was all about harsh limits on cars, but the Can-Am racing series was all about tossing limits straight into the nearest trash can. Why not name a dressed-up '77 Pontiac LeMans after the series? Once Motortown got through making with the tape stripes, spoilers, Trans Am shaker hood scoop, and 200-horsepower Pontiac 400 V8 (or the Olds 403 for California-bound cars), the boring LeMans had been transformed into a Quaalude-enhanced sled that was sure to wow the valets at Studio 54. Fewer than 1,500 Can Ams were made, so you'd think a project-grade example would be tough to find… but wait! Here's one in oxide-friendly Vermont (go here if the listing disappears), and it seems to be more or less complete. The shaker scoop is gone, but that's a common-as-herpes-at-the-disco Trans Am piece; as for drivetrain stuff, you can practically buy those parts at 7-11! The seller knows he's got a real rarity and he's not talking price yet, but we're pretty sure the sight of your cash- not to mention the latest news from Wall Street- will make him eager to hand over this classic Pontiac at a reasonable price!

Was the Pinto-based Mustang II worthy of the Cobra name? Of course it wasn't, and with a 302-cubic-inch V8 under the hood it went pretty well for a Malaise machine. Not all of the first round of Cobra IIs (which were created at a tape-stripe-and-hood-scoop operation headed by Wangers) got the 302, but this one in Arkansas (go here if the listing disappears) is conveniently engine-free; you'll be able to build a Gerald-Ford-grade 134-horsepower 302 for it, or maybe even upgrade to more power if 100% correctness isn't your obsession. It's got the right Motortown colors, the interior components are mostly there (if on the icky side), and it's only 1,500 bucks. Imagine the withering glares respect you'll get when you roll up to the Mustang show in this little fastback!