# Significance of GTO being described as a "Goat"...Please enlighten me



## hssaini (Jul 9, 2005)

I am not sure how did the GTO became to be known as "GOAT". Whats the background? story?

Curious...... arty: 

Thanks
Rinku


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## Mikey (Feb 16, 2005)

Some old stuff never dies. Don't call your beautiful new machine a goat. It's degrading. Did you ever smell a real goat?


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## 05GTO (Oct 6, 2004)

hssaini said:


> I am not sure how did the GTO became to be known as "GOAT". Whats the background? story?
> 
> Curious...... arty:
> 
> ...


*When Is a Goat Not a Goat?​*

With The Great One theme on the screen and in print, the GTO for 1967 took on a new air of sophistication. Pontiac positioned the GTO to still appeal to the street enthusiasts, but older buyers, professionals and women were targeted as potential customers. One theme Wangers was never able to sell to GM management was the name that still endears itself to the GTO—The Goat. Wangers put together an ad showing a young man standing in his driveway, a pail under his arm, posing with his freshly washed bright red GTO. The ad was titled, "A Boy and His Goat," and by submitting it to the corpo-ration for approval, Wangers, who always had one ear to the pavement, was to discover just how out of touch GM management was with the language and the culture of high-performance enthusiasts.

"At that time, they (GM) had already initiated a corporate committee for all of the divisions to submit their advertising and get approval on everything before we could run it," Wangers recalled. "They were sort of policing the division to make sure we didn't break any of their policies."

Wangers felt the "Boy and His Goat" ad met the criteria. "The ad suggested that everyone ought to have a GTO in order to complete their life cycle," Wangers said. "The ad was very much in line with the pride of ownership image. We felt we had been very successful in capturing that and thought this was an ad that set itself completely within the framework of what the corporation wanted and did for us what we wanted."

The corporate committee rejected the ad based on its perception of what the word goat defined. "The guys downtown told us a goat is the butt of a joke or the butt end of a mistake," Wangers commented. "And they said they certainly understood it enough to know they wouldn't approve it."

Wangers put together a study that quoted enthusiasts in the field, and assembled magazine articles that referenced the GTO as The Goat' and presented it to the committee, explaining, "You've got to give us the benefit of the doubt here, that we know what we're doing. The word Goat is an accepted nickname of the GTO in the field. The people who are living with this car and love and respect it have assumed that the word GTO stands for Goat. Allow us the professionalism of knowing our market. That's why we're successful."

The committee refused the appeal, responding that GM was not going to allow Pontiac to demean the name of their car by referring to it as a goat. Pontiac no longer had the freedom to image and market its products without corporate approval of all advertising. It was the end of a grand era of Tigers, and Wide Tracking would never be the same again.


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## AmesGTO (Aug 3, 2004)

I’m not an old GTO owner so I don’t how it was back in the day, but I was told by one that it really started because GTO owners didn’t like saying *G-T-O* all the time, too many syllables (3), so they just added a letter and presto *goat * with only 1 syllable.


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## zog (Mar 22, 2005)

There are a lot of stories, I think. I read one somewhere that said, in effect, they didn't advertise the package at all for the first two years, and it sold like hotcakes. So they called it a goat because they didn't have to feed it, it just ate.


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## huskerGTO (May 8, 2005)

I agree, GOAT is much easer flowing than G_T_O. Either way, I think Goat is appropriate. BLU GOAT = plates


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## RiceEater (Jun 21, 2005)

There are a lot of stories as to how the GTO picked up this name. Mainly though, what AmesGTO and zog said are the main reasons as to why it started. Don't be fooled though, calling the GTO a goat is in no way dirogatory to it, it's been known as such since it came out and it is considered a respectable name by pretty much any enthusiast that admires the GTO.


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## roadracer (Oct 31, 2004)

Just like a goat, it will eat up anything.


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## Tom (Nov 1, 2004)

Mikey said:


> Some old stuff never dies. Don't call your beautiful new machine a goat. It's degrading. Did you ever smell a real goat?


does a goats exhaust smell any better than the exhaust and tires of an old goat? which is what most people smelled with the old goat.

I will call my gto a goat, my firebird a firechicken, and my porsche will continue to be pronounced poooor sha (empnasis on the "poor" there is a reason poor is in the name. you may not be when you get one, but you will be). 

It is not degrading anything. especially since I have a picture of my firechicken (not included in the ebay sale) signed by jim wangers with the inscription "it's a goat by any name". 

thats not degrading.


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## hssaini (Jul 9, 2005)

hmmmmmmmm......interesting......glad to hear the different views......

Any more?

Rinku


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## drowssap (Jun 18, 2005)

Tom said:


> my firebird a firechicken


over here we call it Fire Galinha (Portuguese)


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