cars

[jthoma2@woh.]

what does gto stand for

[kempie]

Grand Touring Over, the IMSA category for production cars over 2500cc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mot or_Sports_Association

[Toureman]

Kempie is right but things like GTO, GT, TT. quatrraporte etc are only pasted on cars to make them seem better than they realy are!

[English Ford]

GTO stands for
Gran Turismo Omologata
It is the name applied to the Ferrari 250 GTO

The numerical part of its name denotes the displacement in cubic centimetres of each cylinder of the engine, whilst GTO stands for "Gran Turismo Omologata", Italian for "Grand Touring Homologated."

i.e. A car that was built to the specifications and numbers required for a racing series..

The nameplate was then used by Pontiac for their Muscle car and more recently by Mitsubishi.. But they were GTO's rather than Gran Turismo Omologata.

[English Ford]

Toureman..
Nameplate have far more significance than 'Making them seem better than they are'
GT on a Cortina for instance denoted higher power engines, bigger brakes, bigger anti roll bars...

Quatroporte means 'Four Door' and is a designation in itself when talking about Maserattis..

GTi Is a higher performance, Fuel Injected version of a standard car...

For instance The Golf GTi is certainly a better car than the Golf 1.3 and the differences are denoted by the badging

[kepla]

Yes, well just about ANYTHING would be better than a Golf 1.3 !
The really decent cars just don't need to play on the use of badging. There used to be plenty of silly 'boy racer' style badges all over cheaper new cars - for example '16v'. Well, just about all of the better cars have had foru valves per cylinder for ages, but you never saw '24v' or '32v' badges on the back of Jaguar, Mercedes, Rolls-Royce, etc did you ? It's all just junk marketing. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those little boy racers don't even know what their badges mean.

[English Ford]

Depends on what you mean by 'badging'
16v is not, I would suggest, a badge as such whereas GT is
Ok Jaguars don't have 32V badges but then they do it in a different way XJ is a standard saloon.. XJ-R is a supercharged saloon, The R is 'badging'
I'd agree with you about 'boy racers' though, it's amazing how many times you see a standard hatchback plastered in EVO-V6-GTI-Turbo badges.
Guess I'll just stick to my Zodiac Mk2 32v V8..