1970 Pontiac GTO - Pride of the Neighborhood

Local influences guided one man's mission for a spotless convertible Goat

Andrew Asaro calls the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn home. And when you get right down to it, NYC's most infamous borough doesn't exactly come to mind when a conversation about musclecar hangouts comes up. Jackie Gleason does, and a whole posse of bad rappers do, but burger joints and burning rubber? Alas, you must forgive our cynical New Jersey attitudes--because apparently the local boulevard bandits made quite an impression on the young Asaro.

"My neighborhood used to have a burger hop called Mitchell's," the 33-year-old contractor reminisces. "Every weekend the place was crawling with hot cars, and I always remembered the Pontiacs. I grew up in a neighborhood where you had Nunzi and several other well-known guys tearing around, so there were always street races and rumors of R/A-Vs where I lived."

Allow us a moment to drive home a point. Usually when you run across a story that claims a car owner was 'raised to love my XXXXX,' many times it ends up being nothing but garbled nonsense set in an attractive font. But Asaro's case involves much more than learned behavior and a few quotes--his attraction to GTOs is quite possibly predisposed.

"When I was 13 I didn't know much about cars, but the idea of owning a GTO formed in a one-week period. I was walking along with a friend when we happened upon a bronze '66 Goat. All of a sudden my friend went off, saying his uncle had one and it was the best car he had ever owned. A couple of days later I'm sitting in school, and some guy beside me is looking at a car magazine featuring a '64 GTO. That got me really thinking about them. And when another kid piped up a few days later about his father saving a '71 for him, I couldn't buy anything else when I turned 16."

Coincidence? We think not. And so began the search for a clean Goat that could be daily driven. Unfortunately for Andrew, it would be a long one.

The years passed, and Asaro couldn't find a GTO that wasn't either rusted out or wrecked. But in his senior year of high school, the neighborhood continued to cultivate his interest in Indian outlaws.

"I was hanging out with a friend one day in 1986 when I spotted a '70 GTO convertible driving past with a 'For Sale' sign," Andrew explains. "We quickly jumped into my friend's car and chased after it. I struck a deal with the owner for $3,500 and a week later the Pontiac was mine."

Asaro spent almost a decade performing mild modifications, dressing the ragtop in bright red paint, and hitting all of the cruise nights that he could. But in 1994 the Goat's originality could no longer be ignored.

"When I bought the '70 it was basically all-original, which meant the engine bay was a little rusty and dirty. I decided that I wanted to detail the engine compartment and motor. And that got me thinking about doing the whole car. If you remember the early 1990s, the frame-off restorations started getting real popular, and I knew I had the kind of numbers-matching GTO that would warrant one, so I started restoring."

Once ensconced in the Asaro garage, the droptop was immediately disassembled. The interior came out first, next came the nose, and the YS-code engine and automatic tranny were yanked along with the wiring. All of the glass was removed, and in preparation for a lengthy battle, Andrew built a body dolly to set the shell on once it was unbolted from the chassis. Asaro sandblasted the firewall and underbody, then sent the rolling shell over to Ron Hess' shop in Long Island for minor bodywork and a factory-correct paint job.

Andrew dismantled the chassis, and once everything was apart, each piece was sandblasted and detailed. POR-15 was used as a primer, then PPG black enamel was flattened to the correct gloss and applied to all of the components. During reassembly, urethane bushings and KYB shocks were combined with the stock front 1.125-inch and rear .875-inch stabilizer bars to upgrade the stock suspension's handling characteristics.

While Andrew was tackling the underside, Ron was repairing a few minor dents and small rust spots in the rear quarters. The all-original sheetmetal was then slathered in 15 layers of primer. Hess block sanded most of it off then applied four layers of custom PPG urethane Verdoro Green and four layers of PPG clearcoat. Once dry, the clear layers were wet-sanded for a perfect finish.

By this time Andrew had moved on to refreshing the factory 400, and a trip to the machine shop was made. 406 cubic inches are the result from the .030 overbore, and when Asaro got the block home he re-installed the refurbished factory 3.75-inch nodular-iron crank with TRW main bearings. Resized connecting rods ride on TRW rod bearings, and TRW pistons plug the holes. Next he installed a Crane cam modeled after a R/A-III grind but with more lift, which bumps at .454-/.480-inch lift and 216o/228o of duration at .050.

Bone-stock #13 heads received only a valve job, and Comp Cams' pushrods actuate the 2.11/1.77 valves via a set of their Magnum 1.52-ratio rocker arms, which add a little more lift over the factory 1.5:1 units.

A stock cast-iron intake manifold funnels air and fuel in with help from a numbers-matching Quadrajet with #72 primary jets that Andrew rebuilt. An AC Delco fuel pump feeds it, and the OEM manufacturer handles the ignition duties, as well. The points-type distributor is set for 32* timing at 2500, and it gets lit by way of a Delco coil. That fire winds its way through Delco wires to, not surprisingly, AC Delco plugs, and the flat-top pistons put the squeeze on at 10.25:1. Post-combustion, CAM2 fumes are purged through R/A-III exhaust manifolds and the stock exhaust system, which features factory-sized Walker Super Turbo mufflers. And to top it all off, every engine bracket got the same sandblast treatment that the interior pieces did. Once blasted, Asaro would cover the part in primer, then paint it a factory-look metal color. This way he gets away with a bone-stock look without having to worry about rust attacking again!

The 406's big torque oozes into a numbers-matching Turbo-400. Asaro relies on Level 10's 2400-stall converter to give the topless Goat a push, but otherwise the tranny is just as GM made it. The power twists through a restored stock driveshaft adorned with the correct red and white stripes to find a 10-bolt with 3.55 gears and Safe-T-Track waiting in earnest. Originally, 3.23s spun in an open rear, but Andrew found that 3.55s were the perfect ratio for highway cruising and boulevard bruising. And although that kind of torque multiplication really isn't to a radial tire's taste, the 245mm rear BFG T/As do the best they can.

Asaro's newly painted GTO body was rolled home to find a like-new chassis and drivetrain waiting. Once they were reconnected, the owner recovered the upholstery in factory-spec Comfortweave. He assembled new door panels at his kitchen table, then installed them as reproduction carpet went underfoot. The dashboard and console traveled to Just Dashes in California to be refreshed, and any trim piece not welded down saw the inside of Andrew's sandblasting cabinet, emerging brighter than before. Each piece of glass was reinstalled, and many repro and NOS exterior trim parts were added. The crowning touch, a new convertible top, was entrusted to an outside source. Along with the Verdoro Green paint, the top was the only aspect of the entire frame-off restoration that left Asaro's hands.

Andrew claims that the Verdoro Green exterior color isn't a popular one at the local car shows (where he regularly places first or second anyway), but he did receive a Concours Silver at the 1998 East Coast Regionals. He plans to retire it from concours judging to swap in a 455 and a correct Ram Air system sometime soon. With an unfinished Firebird project in the driveway and a basement full of Pontiac parts, he rarely finds time to drive the Verdoro Green beauty around the borough. But when he does, the Pontiac fans make it worthwhile.

"It's cool being stopped at a traffic light and having one of these old-timers pull up and say, 'Man, that's a great car, I haven't seen one of those since Mitchell's burger stand!'"