We live in a different day and age. In the 1960's, a small car with a big engine was really a novelty. The whole muscle car/sports car/pony car concept started in 1963. It was absurd to have any other car other than the Corvette with a huge engine in a compact chasis. As the GTO started with a Bonneville 389 in a little granny Tempest, it made people in the car business go "whoa!". And in that time, remember, GM, Ford, and Chrysler were the only cars you could buy in the States. So challenges could be met with relative ease. Today, a car in that same bracket faces competition they never could forsee in the 1960's. While it is a little dissapointing that the new GTO wasn't designed and built from the ground up in Detroit, Michigan, USA, it's still a creation of a General Motors subsidiary. That is still enough to be proud of. It's not like GM went to Honda and asked them to build the car.