One of the things I was proud to be able to do when I was at JL was to convince the bosses that new castings would be good to spruce the line up. The 73 GTO, Hurst Olds, Cobra Daytona, and several other favorites (Hummer H2, Porsche 911 etc) all made their debuts in Classic Gold. This was as much to get new castings spread throughout the year, and to introduce worthwhile cars without getting trapped into a "theme" (ie Musclecars, trucks). It was also a way to resurrect some proposed cars (ie, 911) that would never have been done otherwise. I know there was some grumbling that the point of Classic Gold were that the castings were supposed to be classic, ie not new, and that neither the actual PT Cruiser and Hummer H2 nor the tooling for it were classic, but I'm glad that in the long run everything seems to have worked out...
jk