In another era, car companies had “recommended” exterior and interior color combinations. If you ventured beyond their recommendations, it would not be unusual to have the factory bump the order back to the dealership to make sure there wasn’t an error.

So you have to wonder if that scenario occurred to the person who spec’d out this Mint Turquoise 1970 GTO Judge, or if it was a factory screw-up. Whatever the case, you gotta admit it works quite well.

1970 GTO Judge in Mint Turquoise paint came with the blue/orange/pink.

When the idea for the Judge was kicked around in 1968, it was going to be a Road Runner fighter based on the Tempest and called ET (for “elapsed time”). John DeLorean overruled his product development team and pushed them to make a super-GTO. The end result is what they considered a spoof – a Goat in a retina-burning color, equipped with stripes and spoiler, and named after a running gag from the popular TV show Laugh-In. If you’re like me and born after the muscle car era, none of it makes sense, but the Judge was intended to give GTO sales a kick in the tucchus; in that case, it was a success, with about 10% of GTOs being Judges.

Pontiac ad man Jim Wangers – ever the purist – always felt that the Judge was merely a promotional package and shouldn’t have returned for 1970. However, we have Pontiac product planners to thank for bringing the Judge back for a repeat performance. The Judge’s standard equipment stayed the same as before, with standard 400/366 “Ram Air III” motor hooked up to a manual three-speed transmission, spoiler, stripes, and Rally II wheels without trim rings. But a handsome facelift changed the GTO’s look entirely, so new stripes and spoiler were in order. While the ’69 was not a hasty aggregation of parts and paint, the ’70 could be considered a more fulfilled package, even wilder than before.

Out of all the colors available in 1970, Mint Turquoise is the second-rarest for the GTO with 774 built; only Orbit Orange is rarer (618), but that was a Judge-only color. How many Judges were Mint Turquoise? That number is not known; chances are it’s the rarest Judge color, so this car on eBay is pretty special. But check out the interior. Red? Turquoise and red doesn’t sound appealing, but catch a glimpse and you realize it works, no?

And as it is a Canadian car, the available GM of Canada documentation shows all the options, plus gives some stats like 1,866 GTOs were sold in Canada and, of those, 442 had the Judge package. They are also able to determine that 75 Canadian GTOs came in Mint Turquoise. It’s impossible to determine whether it’s really a 1 of 1 car as the seller claims because Pontiac didn’t keep records like that, but seeing that two 1969 Gulfstream Aqua Mustangs were built with red interior (source: MartiAuto.com), it’s probably not a good idea to assume anything other than this Judge is as cool as they get.