Pontiac Power

Spotter's Guide
1969 GTO Judge

Two little words, The Judge, it said it all. The GTO started it all and raised the bar year after year. The Judge. With its flashy side stripes, blacked out grille, huge rear spoiler and 370 ponies underhood The Judge had the muscle to back up its bold image.
The Judge was first designed to compete with the Road Runner, a bare bones car with a spartan interior and a big engine. Pontiac came up with the ET, for elapsed time. It was a base pillared LeMans coupe, with a chrome bumper, 3-speed auto or 4-speed wide ratio manual transmission, a 350 V8 with HO heads right off of the new RA III 400. The problem was that no one really wanted the 350 in any GTO. So, when it was all said and done The Judge wasn't a budget muscle car but rather the "ultimate GTO"

For $322 The Judge featured:

Blackout grille
Integrated rear-deck spoiler
Low-restriction mufflers
Rally II wheels minus trim rings
Special Slash Stripe
Carousel Red paint
Hurst T-Handle shifter
Standard 366hp RA III 400 V8

Visually, it came special tri- colored side stripes, The Judge decals on the front of the front fenders and on the top right side of the rear wing, and a blacked-out front grille. In the interior, a The Judge decal was placed on the glovebox door; however, the first 2,000 or so Judges do not have this decal. Judges also came with a Hurst T shifter handle. In order to really attract attention, the first 2,000 '69 Judges were painted Carousel Red, color that wouldn't be avaible on the GTO until the following year. Carousel Red Judges initially came with red-blue- yellow side stripes, but in late February 1969, the stripe colors were changed to black-red-yellow. Other exterior colors came with different stripe color combinations, but it was possible for the customer to order a Judge with side stripes of his or her own choosing. That aspect that really set off the first Judge from the whole muscle car industry at the time, was that beautiful, curving, three-color strip that swept from the top of the front fender, along the top of the door, and finally rose up to its termination on the front of the rear quarter. Believe it, no Pontiac had ever seen some- thing that looked like this. All Judges came with heavier trunk lid torque rods to compensate for the heavier deck lid.
The standard Judge engine was the Ram Air III, with the Ram Air IV optional. All regular GTO options were available. The Judge could be had in either a hardtop or convertible format. The total production of the Judge was only about 10% of all GTO's produced. The convertible being quite rare with only 108 built with the Judge option.

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