Check the early ads for the R/T and they reference Road/Track. This all happened
in the mid to late 60s.
The GT in amaerican usage goes back to Studebaker who used the GT designation on
the Hawk coupe in the 60s. I think even beefore Pontiac used GTO.
KW
Shaun.Hendricks@bergenbrunswig.com wrote:
> I would disagree with this definition. I'm not a total car historian or
> anything so I'm not so certain of my own information. I understood that the
> R/T and G/T names went back to the late 30's car racing in Europe. There were
> two "styles" of races conducted: pure winding track races and "road" races
> that went all over the place over all kinds of roads (paved, cobblestone,
> dirt). The cars had to be totally different to race in these different races.
> The races were classified as "Rally Turismo" and "Gran Turismo" (Rally
> Touring & Grand Touring) thus the cars became classified as R/T and G/T. The
> R/T cars were tough, and accellerated like mad (good street cars). The G/T
> cars were smooth handling, low, and had more mid to high end power as their
> track velocities were much higher (sports cars). This is why you tend to see
> sports cars called "G/T" and muscle type cars called "R/T". To this day both
> of these types of races still exist and are extremely popular internationally.
> Here in the US only the G/T circut enjoy's continued following. R/T races
> seem to have been replaced by pure 4x4 or offroad events. I think the SCCA
> still holds some R/T style races here in the states.
> Now, this other definition may be correct from a US manufacturers view, but
> Europe has long been designating R/T and G/T on their cars, and I figured the
> US manufacturers just followed suit.
>
> Shaun H.
>
> ----original message-----
> This goes back to the late 60s when GM and Ford had names (and image)
> for their muscle cars. Mopars had quick cars like the 383 B bodies, 426
> street wedges, and of course the Street Hemi but they didn't have a
> catchy name and therefore had little image with the street crowd.
>
> In 67 Plymouth came out with the GTX and Dodge came out with the R/T
> which stands for Road / Track.
>
> KW
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:09:50 EDT