Question: What's the Most Ridiculous Use of "GT" Badging?

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

A Grand Touring car is— or used to be— a big, fast, luxurious machine made for long drives to high-roller destinations. Once automobile manufacturers figured out that they could stamp out GT badges just as cheaply as Brougham emblems, we started seeing some truly silly GTs on the street. Say, the Hyundai Excel GT. Or the Plymouth Scamp GT, which wasn’t even a car. Even with those examples to choose from, my vote for the most absurd GT has to go to the Pontiac Vibe GT. Do you think a decadent, Quaaludes-and- Chartreuse-addled Italian countess would have driven a grubby little badge-engineered Toyota econobox to Monaco at an average clip of 115 MPH?

Though, on second thought, the Scamp GT may have the Vibe GT beat for Least Appropriate Use of GT Badging. What do you think?

Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Slow kills Slow kills on Jul 12, 2012

    I am so glad that nobody nominated the Opel GT.

  • DannyZRC DannyZRC on Jul 12, 2012

    As others have pointed out, the Vibe GT started out as a manual only 8200RPM thing, which is fairly racy as far as modern powertrains go. They kept the model names, but when they went to the 2nd gen of the Vibe/Matrix they replaced the 1.8 with a 2.4, and lost the 6 speed, and even sold them as automatics. So not only did they ruin the vibe's good looks, but they shitcanned the fun and fizzy powertrain. We have an '03 Vibe GT, and it's awesome, so shut up. :p

  • CoastieLenn No idea why, but nothing about a 4Runner excites me post-2004. To me, they're peak "try-hard", even above the Wrangler and Gladiator.
  • AZFelix A well earned anniversary.Can they also attend to the Mach-E?
  • Jalop1991 The intermediate shaft and right front driveshaft may not be fully engaged due to suspected improper assembly by the supplier. Over time, partial engagement can cause damage to the intermediate shaft splines. Damaged shaft splines may result in unintended vehicle movement while in Park if the parking brake is not engagedGee, my Chrysler van automatically engages the parking brake when we put it in Park. Do you mean to tell me that the idjits at Kia, and the idjit buyers, couldn't figure out wanting this in THEIR MOST EXPENSIVE VEHICLE????
  • Dukeisduke I've been waiting to see if they were going to do something special for the 60th Anniversary. I was four years old when the Mustang was introduced. I can remember that one of our neighbors bought a '65 coupe (they were all titled as '65 models, even the '64-1/2 cars), and it's the first one I can remember seeing. In the '90s I knew an older gentleman that owned a '64-1/2 model coupe with the 260 V8.
  • SCE to AUX "...the complete Mustang model lineup to peruse"Will the fake Mustang show up, too?
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