Ringbrothers spent more than 5,500 hours on its 2026 SEMA car. That’s more than two and a half years of one person working 40-hour weeks with no vacation, all poured into a single 1965 Pontiac convertible. The car is called Billie. It was unveiled November 3 at Gentex’s SEMA booth in Las Vegas, and the brief was personal.
A tribute, not a resurrection
Billie started as a 1965 Tempest convertible, not a factory GTO. That’s less of a cheat than it sounds. In 1965 the GTO was still an option package on the Tempest LeMans, not its own model, and the Fisher body tags on these cars decode as LeMans “including GTO”. The shell is the same. Only the paperwork is different.
The client asked for a car that recalls a GTO his mother was once given as a gift. In Ringbrothers’ announcement, co-owner Mike Ring said the client first suggested calling it GOAT. “We came back with BILLIE, as in billy goat, and that moniker stuck.”
Five inches you won’t notice until you do
According to Gentex’s release, Ragle Design handled the design. The fenders and doors were pushed out 2.5 inches per side, and the hood, door skins and front valance were remade in carbon fiber. Ringbrothers adds reshaped front fenders, wider rear quarters, longer rockers, carbon front wheel tubs and a carbon rear diffuser. The paint is a custom BASF Glasurit color called “Billie Goat Blue.”
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Co-founder Jim Ring summed up the job: “The challenge was widening the body five inches without losing the proportions that make a ‘65 GTO so recognizable.”
That’s the hard part of any widebody classic. Widen a car badly and it ends up looking like a cartoon of itself. The stacked headlights and Coke-bottle hips on a ‘65 are subtle, and they have to be moved without anyone noticing they’ve moved.
Power: 290 more horses than the best ’65 GTO offered
The best engine you could order in a ‘65 GTO was the 389 Tri-Power, rated at 360 hp. It sat on four-wheel drum brakes and 14×6-inch rims. Billie uses a supercharged 6.2-liter LT4 prepared by Wegner Motorsports, which Ringbrothers rates at 650 hp and 650 lb-ft. A Bowler Performance 10-speed automatic sends that to the rear wheels.
Those numbers check out. GM’s own spec sheet rates the standalone wet-sump LT4 crate engine at 640 hp and 630 lb-ft. The dry-sump and Connect & Cruise versions are rated at 650/650. So Billie’s figures are within what GM itself publishes, not a dyno-day guess.
Underneath is a Roadster Shop Fast Track Stage III chassis with Fox coilovers and six-piston Brembos at all four corners. The HRE G-Code wheels measure 19×10.5 inches up front and 20×13 inches in back, with 345/30R20 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires at the rear. The rear tire alone is 13.6 inches wide. Pontiac’s factory wheel was 6. The original body still looks like a ‘65 GTO, but almost nothing underneath it is original.
Inside, the details get stranger
Ringbrothers rebuilt the dashboard and moved it four inches forward and two inches lower. It now holds Dakota Digital gauges, with Vintage Air handling climate control. The factory radio stays but hides Bluetooth. The shifter handle is modeled on an olive-wood espresso portafilter, the kind of detail you only get on a 5,500-hour car. The engine block is painted Pontiac Sky Blue, so the GM engine at least wears Pontiac’s color.
The Gentex booth placement isn’t a coincidence. Billie uses Gentex’s GNTX-R mirror, a carbon-fiber auto-dimming rearview mirror sold through Ringbrothers’ own parts store. Ringbrothers builds cars, but it also sells parts, and SEMA cars like this one double as rolling catalogs for those parts.
Living with a car like this
Repairs: The LT4 is the easy part to fix, since it’s a GM engine with GM parts behind it. The body is the problem. Widened steel, bespoke carbon panels and a one-off taillight panel mean no reproduction-parts catalog will help after a parking-lot scrape. Damage gets fixed by fabrication, not by ordering a part.
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Insurance and buying: Guides price a ‘65 GTO convertible by originality and engine code, so a car like Billie needs an agreed-value policy backed by build documentation, or the payout could bear no relation to what the build cost. And if you shop for ’65s, the shared Tempest/LeMans body is a reminder to check the paperwork before trusting the badges. Billie is openly a tribute. Not every GTO badge is.
Mechanicals: A direct-injected, supercharged engine wants premium fuel and modern diagnostic tools. That’s a different upkeep routine from adjusting three two-barrel carburetors on a Saturday morning.
Billie won’t change how anyone values a numbers-matching GTO. It does show that a ‘65 GTO convertible can take nearly double the original horsepower and a much wider stance and still look right, and on this build that was the hardest part to pull off. You get one garage spot. Do you fill it with the 360-hp original or the 650-hp goat in blue?
Images Via: Classic Car Studios and The Ringbrothers
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