Say hello to Ethyl. She’s a GTO tribute with a sexy body, powerful muscles, and a soft, sensual interior. In fact, in the beginning it was being built to be a race car, but ended up a restomod instead.

Ethyl began life as a ’67 Pontiac LeMans. Unlike a lot of GTO tribute cars you see, there is no Pontiac V8 with three deuces under the hood.

Power comes from a 408-cube LS with a carburetor and twin turbos, a combination you do not see every day.

Remarkably, this GTO tribute does have a carburetor — not to mention two turbochargers, and 408 cubic inches of “corporate” V8 — under the cowl hood. Yep, that would be an LS. It made almost 1,100 ponies on the engine dyno, plenty for good freeway merging or any other other kind of driving you may do.

Ethyl made 630 horsepower at 5,500 rpm at the wheels on 10 lbs of boost and the dyno showed the engine needed more fuel, so a bigger fuel pump is in order,” explained owner Robert Brown, who owns Bulletproof Powdercoating in Riverside, California.

The 408 on the dyno made 1,097 horsepower at 6,500 on 14 lbs of boost at the flywheel.

“She’s a thirsty girl with plenty of room to grow. It will need a much bigger fuel pump and some additional tuning,” said Brown.

The 408 was built by Hard Core Racing (Upland, California). It started with an iron LQ9 block and employed RaceTec custom dished pistons, Manley rods, a custom ground camshaft, and a set of 821 LS3 heads with Stage 2 CNC porting. Compression is 9.4:1.

Up top is a ported Edelbrock Victor Jr. intake hosting a Quick Fuel 950 cfm blow-through carburetor. CX Racing headers and GT35 twin-turbos make the boost — enough, the owner hopes, to have a reliable 1,000 rwhp when the combo is dialed in.

Making It All Work

Brown credits Enrique Arias at KP Tuning and Kevin Van Noy with Carburetor Solutions Unlimited with dialing in the carburetor and twin turbo combination. That he stuck with a carburetor in an era of fuel injection is rather unusual, but it is simple and it works.

Why a carburetor? Brown wanted to show that you could still make incredible, reliable power with the old-style fuel mixer, and save yourself a lot of money in the process. Not that the blow-through carb was inexpensive. Heaven knows it was not, but it was less money and also a lot simpler than EFI.

Von’s Transmission in San Bernardino, California, built the 4L80 automatic. A Circle D billet converter with a 3,200 rpm stall speed is a nice combination for street and strip use. A four-inch aluminum driveshaft sends all that power to a 9-inch Quick Performance rear with 3.20 gears and 35-spline axles.

“The 4L80 trans is bigger than the factory Turbo 350,” Brown said. “Looking back. I should have put in a custom trans tunnel.”

Of course, all horsepower and no comfort would make long cruises rather unpleasant. That would not do, so Robert turned the LeMans over to TMI Products (Corona, California), long famous for its seat and cockpit upgrades, and it did not disappoint. The work was fabricated by Michael Koldus and it is artful in its execution. TMI had just started doing custom installations and Brown was sure this was the way to go.

“I started piecing the interior together over a few years because this was a longer build. As I got to the end, I was buying pieces,” said Brown. “I picked everything out myself, and then I went to Michael and said you guys do installs? And I asked if they [TMI] were interested. He said yes and I figured, why not? At that point we got together and I showed him what I had. I had to buy a few pieces and they did the whole install.”

The TMI Low Back Sport bucket seats with hi-bolsters, molded fiberglass one piece rear seat, molded fiber glass door and quarter panels, headliner with new sun visors were all wrapped in premium charcoal black vinyl. The only thing TMI did not build was the center console, which is from Modern Concepts. Michael Ball of Modern Classics did all the customization to it.

The stereo is a RetroSound system with 6 ¼-inch speakers in front and 6 x 9s in the rear. There’s an iPad in the console that not only runs the tunes from the stereo, but controls the MSD ignition as well.

A nice touch is the wood inlay on the console is designed to match what would be original on the instrument panel of a ’67 GTO. Speaking of the dash, a full complement of Dakota Digital dials monitor the engine’s vitals.

Chassis, Suspension Upgrades

The power level is pretty much something undreamed of for a street car in 1967 and the interior would make a Jaguar of the day blush. That means driving dynamics were the final order of business. Brown kept the stock frame, but boxed it with a Hellwig FX frame kit. This provides improved stiffness; it also provides an extra body mount to secure the floorpan to the chassis for extra rigidity. Classic Performance Products (CPP)  tubular control arms bolt into the stock location up front.

QA1 single valve coilovers got the nod fore and aft.

For rolling stock, Brown used 245/45R17 Nitto 555s on Riddler wheels up front and 325/40R18s on 18-inch Riddlers out back. Naturally, those big meats won’t fit in the stock wheelswells, so minitubs were installed to keep everything fitting nicely.

Hiding behind the big wheels are 13-inch CPP Corvette brakes (fore) and 12-inch CPPs out back.

You’d never know it by looking at the Pontiac now, but the body was a complete mess, especially the rear quarters.

“It was blue, had no motor, and in very rough condition,” said Brown. “I’ve always liked ‘67 Pontiacs and the previous owners had already started the clone process.”

A fiberglass cowl hood keeps the sun off the engine compartment. Once the body was resuscitated, it was slathered in 2022 Camaro Vivid Orange Metallic paint.

“My friends and I love how the Pontiac purists hate the car — imagine if I cut up a real GTO? Some of the guys in the Pontiac clubs literally snub you and refuse to acknowledge the car. They have told me, ‘What you have done is bad ass … if it was in a Chevelle.’

“I say, ‘My car, my way.’ ”

A Lot Harder Than It Looks

Naturally, no build ever comes together as easily as it appears in a story. This one began in 2018, then there was that whole Covid 19 thing to slow it down. Then, Brown had a major health issue and he was out of commission for a year. Shortly thereafter, he started his powdercoating company and money was tight. He poured the greenbacks into the business instead of the Poncho.

Once the car was pretty much complete, Brown was more than just a little excited to get behind the wheel and pile on the miles.

“Driving the car after she hadn’t been driven for 30 years was like bringing her back from the dead,” said Brown. “I’m looking forward to longer, farther drives in the very near future.”

The only thing he wishes he added is air conditioning. “Living and driving in Southern California, I wish I had put air conditioning in it. It would be a huge plus on hot cruising and show night,” he said.

Ethyl made her show debut recently at Holley’s LS Fest West in Las Vegas. Without a roll cage, he limited his fun to the show field. And though he didn’t take home any awards, he did garner tons of positive compliments — more than he could ever imagine — which was very rewarding.

He said that has given him the motivation to finish all the small things on the car he needs to take care of. Except now he wants to go back and make it a race car again.

So much for the restomod scene for this GTO tribute.