1966 Pontiac GTO in Charcoal Blue Paint & 389 Engine Sound

Phil Martin sold his 1965 GTO, regretted it, and bought this charcoal blue 1966 replacement in 1995 to fill the gap it left behind. Lou Costabile catches up with Phil and the car at Rosemont’s World of Wheels show, and the comments spend as much time praising the restoration work as they do debating whether 1966 or 1967 wore the GTO’s taillights better.

Some collectors chase the car they’ve always wanted. Phil Martin chased the car he already had, sold, and immediately regretted losing. Lou Costabile’s “My Car Story” catches up with Phil and his charcoal blue 1966 Pontiac GTO at the World of Wheels show in Rosemont, Illinois, and the backstory behind how he ended up here says as much about GTO ownership as the car itself does.

A Car Bought to Replace a Regret

Phil’s history with the model runs deeper than most owners at any given car show. He originally owned a 1965 GTO — the model’s second model year, one year removed from the car widely credited with kicking off the entire muscle car era in 1964. At some point, for reasons the video doesn’t dwell on, he let that car go. What followed was enough regret that by 1995, he’d gone out and bought this 1966 GTO specifically to fill the gap the ’65 had left behind, a decision that speaks to how singular the GTO ownership experience apparently was for him the first time around.

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From a 1965 GTO to This 1966, By Way of 1995

The color itself draws immediate, repeated attention in the comments — charcoal blue over a straight, well-prepped body, a shade multiple commenters single out as unusually striking for the model. One viewer describes a personal connection to a similar hue on a family member’s 1967 GTO, painted gold rather than blue, and admits this charcoal blue example is now genuinely competing with decades of nostalgic attachment to that earlier memory — high praise from someone who clearly wasn’t expecting to reconsider a lifelong color preference at a car show.

The Color That Keeps Stopping Commenters Mid-Scroll

Multiple commenters credit a builder identified only as “Mark” with the quality of the restoration work on display, with one going so far as to call him an artist rather than simply a mechanic or bodyman. That distinction matters in the muscle car hobby, where a technically correct restoration and a genuinely beautiful one aren’t always the same thing — straight body lines, correct panel gaps, and a paint finish deep enough to draw comments from strangers require a level of craft that goes beyond simply following a factory service manual.

The Builder Commenters Call an Artist

1966 sits in a specific, well-regarded window within the GTO’s model history. It carried over the redesigned coke-bottle body style introduced for 1966 — still part of the GTO’s first generation, with the true second-generation redesign not landing until 1968 — with its more sculpted sides and distinctive louvered taillights, a shape several commenters specifically prefer over the 1967 model that followed, citing that same louvered taillight detail as the deciding factor. That’s a real point of debate among GTO owners and collectors, one this video’s comment section reignites without any prompting from the host.

1966 vs. 1967: A GTO Debate That Never Really Ends

Beyond the paint and bodywork, commenters repeatedly single out the drivetrain details Lou highlights in the walkaround — specifically the power steering and brake booster setup, both period-correct additions that meaningfully improve everyday drivability over a base, unassisted GTO from the same year. For an owner who clearly intends to drive this car rather than simply trailer it between shows, upgrades like these matter as much as the paint color that gets all the attention in the comments.

Power Steering and a Brake Booster — Built to Actually Drive

One commenter goes further than simple praise, describing having met Phil in person and spending time with both him and the car, noting specifically that Phil doesn’t hesitate to share his knowledge of “all things Pontiac and GTO” with anyone who asks. That kind of firsthand testimonial, appearing organically in a YouTube comment years after the video’s original show appearance, says something the camera alone can’t fully capture — that Phil’s relationship with this specific car, and with GTOs generally, extends well beyond a single afternoon spent parked under the lights at World of Wheels.

Meeting the Owner Behind the Paint

It’s worth remembering just how much cultural weight the GTO nameplate was already carrying by the time Phil bought his first one. Pontiac’s John DeLorean and his engineering team essentially built the GTO by quietly stuffing a larger, more powerful engine into a mid-size Tempest body in 1964, sidestepping GM’s own internal displacement restrictions on smaller cars in the process. The gamble worked well beyond anyone’s expectations at Pontiac, selling far past its modest initial projections and effectively inventing the entire muscle car category almost by accident. Owning any first- or second-generation GTO, then, means owning a direct descendant of the car most historians point to as the one that started the whole era — which makes Phil’s specific journey, losing a ’65 and deliberately buying a ’66 to replace it, read less like a random purchase and more like someone trying to get back to the source.

The Nameplate Phil Was Really Chasing

World of Wheels shows like the one where Lou caught up with Phil serve a specific function within the hobby that’s easy to overlook. Unlike a static museum display, these indoor winter shows put owners directly in front of walking, talking enthusiasts and content creators for hours at a stretch, which is exactly the kind of setting that produces stories like Phil’s — the sale-and-regret narrative, the year-specific taillight preference, the shoutout to a specific builder’s name — details that a simple photo of the finished car could never convey on its own.

Why an Indoor Winter Show Produces Stories Like This One

Few owners get the chance to correct a decades-old regret this precisely — same model, same era, right down to a color that turns heads decades later.

That’s the real value in a video like this one — not just documenting a nicely finished GTO, but capturing the specific reasoning, regret, and second chance that put this exact car, in this exact color, on the show floor in the first place. Multiply Phil’s story by every other owner parked on that same show floor and it becomes clear why events like this one keep drawing enthusiasts back year after year.

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