When minimalism (and performance) sold cars – the 1965 Pontiac GTO

Pontiac print ad courtesy of ProductionCars.com.

As ads go, this print piece for the 1965 Pontiac GTO would be deemed wholly ineffective by modern standards. The car’s make and model is called out in a surprisingly small font, and the only title refers to an undefined “our Thing,” with fine print specifications beneath. Worse, perhaps, is that there’s no obvious call-to-action: Submit this to a professor in a college-level communications class, and a grade of D- is likely the best one could hope for.

Things were different 50 years ago, and readers of magazines likely to publish this ad needed no further coaxing to head to their nearest Pontiac dealer. In fact, a full page photo of the 1965 GTO spraying gravel, sans text, would have been just as effective at getting muscle car buyers into dealer showrooms with cash in hand, waiting to drive away in a new Wide-Track Pontiac.

The minimalist approach communicated effectively to enthusiasts, its fine print pointing out that the base 1965 GTO came well equipped with features like a 389-cu.in, 335-horsepower V-8; a three-speed manual transmission with a Hurst shifter; dual exhausts with low-restriction mufflers; heavy-duty springs, shocks and a stabilizer bar; and 7.75×14 premium tires. Those with larger budgets could choose from a sizable menu of performance accessories, too many to be named in the limited space below the photo, which is why readers were advised, “to be continued in our special GTO/2+2 performance catalog, free at any Pontiac dealer’s (sic).” Perhaps there was a subtle (but effective) call-to-action after all.

The “our Thing” piece was hardly Pontiac’s most understated ad of the mid-1960s. In 1964, Pontiac marketed its range of 421-powered cars by showing an empty garage with the caption, “There’s a tiger loose in the streets.” Nowhere did the ad depict or call out a specific model, but instead relied upon copy that proclaimed, “Suddenly a rising moan overrides the rumble as a bunch of extra throats get kicked wide open and start vacuuming air by the cubic acre. The moan gets drowned out in its turn by a booming exhaust note that someone ought to bottle and sell as pure essence of Car.”

When was the last time that print ads said so much, with so little?