1964 Pontiac GTO Sunfire Red Serendipity

How many '64 GTOs have you seen in Sunfire Red with a column-shifted automatic? My guess is about as many as we have--none. Sure, Pontiac may have made a few more, but we have yet to see one.

The proud owners of this Goat are Herb Mastin and his son Mark, general manager of The Paddock Performance and Restoration in Knightstown, Indiana. The whole project began as a father and son activity that ultimately took over two decades to complete.

Mark spotted this '64 GTO in 1984 in Muncie, Indiana, on his commute to Ball State University. At the time, he was driving a '71 Buick GS, which had replaced his previous '68 GTO. "I wasn't really in the market for another car, especially since I was living at home and already using every bit of space my parents had," he says. Since his father really enjoyed going to car shows with him, however, Mark inquired about the Goat. He and his friend Mike Bratton were able to persuade his father to purchase the GTO with the stipulation that Dad would supply the funding and Mark would provide the labor.

The Car
Today $350 won't get you much more than a pair of taillight bezels. In 1984, however, it was enough to put a real '64 GTO in the driveway of the Mastin family's New Castle, Indiana, home. "It was your typical well-worn 20-year-old daily driver," Mark recalls. The original 325-horse 389 four-barrel engine was gone, and taking up the residence in the engine bay was a later Pontiac 350. Inside, a door panel was missing; outside, it was in fair shape and painted in a faded orange.

Mark's find was originally sold at Russ Regenold Pontiac in Anderson, Indiana. It came with a slew of factory options, including a tinted windshield, two-speed wipers with washers, a 3.23 Safe-T-Track rearend, a column-shifted Super Turbine 300 automatic, backup lights, whitewall tires, and deluxe wheel covers. It was an early build--November of 1963--before special orders from dealers were accepted, so it was a factory spec car, according to Mark.

Since the GTO was orange when he bought it, Mark checked the trunk to find an area with original paint to verify its factory hue--Sunfire Red (code N). This red was actually almost salmon in color, but contained orange and was an early version of metallic paint. "It had what pretended to be a metallic flake," Pontiac ad man Jim Wangers recalls, "but this was a new technology then, and Pontiac was having trouble keeping it on the cars."

Many owners and dealers complained that the color didn't look the way a new Pontiac's paint should. Because it appeared dull in certain lighting, some owners resorted to extreme buffing, which damaged the paint. Jim adds, "This resulted in an influx of warranty claims on the paint, so Pontiac made the executive decision to cancel the color. However, it was met with strong resistance from dealers. Back in 1964, dealers had a lot of clout and they were able to make Pontiac retract the cancellation after about 30 days, so the color finished the model year." While final production numbers aren't known, it's one of the rarest colors offered by Pontiac that year.

The Project Begins And Stalls
From 1984 through 2000, a lot happened in Mark's life. "I was married, had two children, finished the Buick GS, built a home, focused on work, and eventually divorced," he says. With all that, it's easy for even a fun project to be shoved to the back burner while real life moves to the front.

The project hadn't kicked off until 1990, and work continued periodically for 10 years until it went on hiatus in 2000. By this time, the GTO had made some great progress. The chassis and drivetrain were completed, and the body was repaired in primer and reattached to the frame.

Mark put his life in order and focused on his children, remarried, and remodeled his home over the next few years. He was preparing to restart the work on the GTO in 2006 when Herb fell ill.