As with many restoration projects, a person can go too far and end up rebuilding and refinishing every piece of a vehicle. A domino effect takes place and a plan can spiral out of control. For example, once the headliner is replaced, the carpet starts to look bad. Fresh carpet is installed, but now the seats look like they need some attention, and so on. For some, the task becomes too daunting and they end up selling the vehicle or letting it collect dust in the garage. For others it's an opportunity to rebuild an entire car the way they think it should have been built in the first place.
Charles Hamly bought this '70 GTO in 1985 and it served as his daily driver for about seven years. With everyday use and almost 30 years of service, the car was starting to become difficult to maintain. In '92 he decided to restore it to its original grandeur, but halfway through Hamly realized he wasn't simply replacing old parts, he was upgrading them to modern standards with a lean toward high performance. It took him over six years to get the driveline and exterior into the shape they're in today, and he spent another year and a half setting up the audio and visual components.
Interior
Take a peek at the interior of the car and notice the lack of switches, knobs and buttons. The in-dash touchscreen controls almost every function of the GTO, including the power windows and climate control. Hamly even did away with the radio and ashtray to keep the look clean and unobstructed. Admittedly, a few buttons on the steering wheel act as supplemental controls when driving, but during shows the system can be instructed by remote.
Head Unit/Rear Seat Hidden Tuners/Hidden Cd Changers
The Sony XR-C900 head unit and signal wires were positioned as far as possible from the engine's high-power ignition system. The head unit info is displayed on the dashboard-mounted screen and the trunk monitor. Two Sony CDX-T60 CD changers are mounted inside the armrests of the rear seat. Hidden inside the rear interior panels are a Sony XT-40V TV tuner that handles the video signals and a Sony XM Radio tuner as well.
Exhaust
This GTO had to have a crazy sound system to compete with the incredible thunder that escapes from the lightly baffled Flowmaster 3" inlet and outlet mufflers with Jet-Hot coated mandrel-bent pipes.
Kick Panel Speakers/Door Speakers
Supplying the front stage, a pair of Boston Acoustics Pro 4.5 separates are mounted in sealed fiberglass kick panel enclosures painted to match the exterior of the car, while a pair of Boston Acoustics 6.5LF midbass drivers fill the doors.
Subwoofer
As a retired pro installer, Hamly had two decades of experience to draw from when creating the car's audio and visual accoutrements. "I wanted to build an enclosure that would prove to people that any woofers could be used in a set of three," Hamly says. He built a 2.5ft3 enclosure to house three Boston Acoustics Pro 12.5 4-ohm woofers wired in parallel.
Amplification
With signal divided up by a PPI FRX-322 crossover, a chromed 100 watt x 4 PPI PC4800 amplifier supplies power to the front kick panels and midbass door drivers. The other amp is an 800-watt PPI PC1800 that runs the woofers. It receives its signal via the lowpass outputs of the head unit. The trunk was designed to match the interior and the amps are mounted in a fiberglass panel painted like the body.