Double-Chopped 1969 Pontiac GTO Is the Wide Track King with a 1,000 HP Crown

As we’ve implied in the past, we’d take a chopped car over one featuring a widebody any day. But who said we can’t have both? Certainly not the shop that built this 1969 Pontiac GTO, which features a double chop, while adding some serious real estate in the fender department.

By the 1969 model year, Pontiac had already introduced the second iteration of the GTO (MY68) that built on the massive success of the original, which was one of the first 1960s machines to mix an intermediate body with a monstrous engine normally destined for a full-size vehicle.

And the Gen II was lower than the car it replaced, while losing the latter’s vertical headlight layout in favor of a horizontal setup. Thus, we could say this project draws inspiration from the automaker’s own effort, even though traditionalists will probably disagree.

That’s because this Poncho is quite far away from home and this is where we explain that double chopping part. For starters, the roof has lost 3 inches (7.6 cm), but, if we look at the middle section of the body, we’ll find an additional 4.5 inches (11.4 cm) missing.

Moving on to the extra width, the widebody approach is quite restrained and certainly not enough to host the monstrous wheels and tires now fitted to the muscle car. However, if we look past the said bit, we’ll find the wheel wells are now a full 7 inches (17.8 cm) wider.

As a result of all these changes, the ’69 GTO looks surreal, as if it was stepped on by a dinosaur that was somehow careful not to ruin the muscle icon.

The shop that came up with this Poncho has a thing for chopping and then some

This project was put together by Pennsylvania-based Pro Comp Customs, who has a bit of a history with chopping classic muscle, as well as other sorts of machines.

For one, the specialist did the $500,000+ Twin-Turbo 1931 Chevy “Sho Bird”, which grabbed the Ridler Award at the 2022 Detroit Autorama show.

The project, which I had written about back in 2020 (I called it “GTO Shortie”), landed in the specialist’s hands back in 2019. However, the car seems to have reached, or at least gotten closer to its final form, for this January’s World of Wheels Pittsburgh 2022.

As you can notice in the intro photo (lens tip to Steve Parsons Photography), the GTO is now covered in a fiery shade of orange. And while the info related to this fresh version of the 1969 Pontiac GTO is limited, I can only hope its maker has managed to complete all the steps it had prepared for the slab of GM.

An equally manic tech side for the muscle car

After all, the GTO was set to ride on an Art Morrison GT-Sport chassis, whose inner-angled frame rails that tuck under the body. As for the firepower, we’re looking at 1,000 hp coming courtesy of a V8 supplied by Sonny’s Racing Engines.

So the Pontiac can probably hit triple-digit speeds quicker than it takes for one to wrap his or her mind around the uber-wide look of the monster, which, by the way, seems to fit the “Wide Track” slogan the defunct automaker introduced back in the late 1950s to emphasize its sporty image within GM.

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