Car Addiction at Its Finest: Man Waits Fifty Years To Get His Dream Car, a '66 Pontiac GTO

That’s the story of Gary Udany, now 66, happily married, and the proud owner of his dream car. I know the expression is often overused and abused, but in Mr. Udany’s case, this statement is as accurate as it gets. To understand why he doesn’t exaggerate one bit when talking about his love-of-a-lifetime car, we must travel back to 1966.

That year was a milestone for Detroit for several reasons: Chrysler put out the Charger and its renowned HEMI, GM launched the Camaro (for the ’67 model year), and Pontiac allowed the GTO to be its own model.

It proved a crucial moment for a ten-year-old boy from Chicago, Illinois; his father, Jack, decided to buy the family’s first brand-new automobile. What stronger father and son bond than a trip to a dealership to choose the car?

Fatefully, the showroom floor was dominated by the newly-launched GTO model, and young Gary was starstruck upon laying eyes on the beautiful Barrier Blue sports coupe hardtop. Typically, this story would happily end with this paragraph and the Udany boys going home in the muscle Pontiac.

But life is seldom a dream, and the car chosen that day was a Catalina for more practical reasons: Jack Udany needed – not wanted but necessitated – a larger automobile with a more spacious trunk. The GTO stayed in the dealership - and in Gary’s heart.

Five decades later, in 2016, the same Gary Udany, now 60 years young, got a call from some friends with a classic car restoration business. A matching-numbers 1966 Pontiac GTO hardtop was in their shop for a rebuild, and they weren’t sure the owner wanted it back.

At that precise moment, Gary Udany’s Planet Piston ceased to spin around the Sun. “If it’s ever for sale, I want it.” And the car came into his possession, ending a fifty-year-long wait and putting a ten-year-old boy’s dream into Pontiac metal.

The restoration – a frame-off project – resulted in what we can all admire In the video: a magnificent GTO of the first year of the model. The moniker was established as a General Motors performance institution in 1964 as a Le Mans package. It was 1966 that saw the first Pontiac brochures announcing the new standalone muscle car.

THE muscle car, to be specific – and it was one pretty much like what Mr. Udany is so radiantly smiling behind the wheel of, telling Lou Costabile the story of this unbelievable dream car. Can you imagine waiting fifty years for your dream to come true? This is serious piston dedication, and I can’t think of a more substantial proof of brand loyalty than this.

Usually, I would go on and tell a little about the four-speed GTO and it’s Tri-Power 389 CID (6.4-liter) V8. But there’s something else about this story that could melt the icecaps on both Poles. Mrs. Udany was no stranger to her husband’s Gary relentless search for the 1966 Pontiac GTO.

A piston addict’s spouse knows full well that this condition is incurable, and there’s only one treatment for it (it works wonders if appropriately applied). When Gary Udany went to take delivery of his newly fulfilled childhood dream, In 2016, he invited Sherry (his wife) to come along. The sight of the perfect automobile shining in the sun was enough to bring the lady to tears – or so her man thought.

In fact, Mrs. Udany had other reasons to shed tears of happiness. Gary soon found out when his beloved spouse handed him a check for $30,000. She had been saving secretly for a decade to help her passionate husband live his GTO dream.

And all there is left for the rest of the carburetor and clutch society is to stand up and ovate the Udanys. As for the GTO, the video proves that the car is not a disappointment. The saying “don’t meet your childhood heroes, or you’ll be heartbroken” couldn’t be more meaningless here.

The mighty V8 pulls like it just rolled off the factory floor (to make the dream perfect, this specific GTO was assembled in Pontiac, Michigan), and the tires happily oblige. Although the screeching accompanying the heavy launch might indicate otherwise, it’s all just part of the fun package.

Or, in engineering terms, the 360 hp and 425 lb-ft (365 PS/576 Nm) output of the three double-barrel carburetors sitting atop the small-block. Curiously, 1966 was the GTO’s best-selling year, with almost 97,000 units, and it was also the only year the car had louvered taillights. Whether it was this particular aspect that stole a kid’s heart in ’66 or not, it doesn’t really matter now – this restored survivor and its owner are living their best motorhead lives.