“ A true devotee of the original classic muscle car, Cocoma bought his first GTO—a brand-new 1965 model—in 1964 as he arrived home from his time in the U.S. Army. “Nobody has ever had nine Ram Air IVs in one place at one time and owned all nine,” Cocoma stated. “The most I’ve seen with another collection was two. They’re rare cars.” Rare indeed. Reportedly fewer than 1,600 Ram Air IV cars were built between 1969 and 1970—the only years the Ram Air IV option was offered—and even fewer of those were Judge editions, or convertibles. No matter the options or body style, all of these cars were driven hard on the streets, and countless droves of them ended up totaled, becoming little more than footnotes in high-performance history. The few that survive today are treasures in any form, and Cocoma’s collection is a high-quality group encompassing several that are especially rare, from two Carousel Red 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge Ram Air IVs to the headlining 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge Ram Air IV Convertible in Orbit Orange that is one of just seven such automatics built. A true devotee of the original classic muscle car, Cocoma bought his first GTO—a brand-new 1965 model—in 1964 as he arrived home from his time in the U.S. Army. “I was always fascinated with them since I first saw the GTO in 1964,” Cocoma said. “A buddy and I were going up to Madison, Wisconsin, from Rockford, and I said, you’re 54 // MECUM.COM about to be passed. He was driving a ‘63 Plymouth with a 383 4-speed, and when this car came up alongside, he downshifted, and this GTO just left us in the dust. So, I said, I got to have one of them. And when I got home from the service, I ordered one.” He owned the car for a few years before selling it to his brother and replacing it with a 1968 GTO, a car that Cocoma still owns to this day and plans to bequeath to his oldest son as part of his will. In fact, each of Cocoma’s four children have a designated GTO within his current collection of 40-plus collector cars that he houses at his Rockford, Illinois-based business, Sales & Market Service Associates. A 60,000-square-foot warehouse across the street from the company’s office building houses the majority of his cars, while a smaller, carpeted 15,000-square-foot combined display and office space hosts both the company’s employees and Cocoma’s most finished and refined vehicles, including his Ram Air GTOs. “We have lots of visitors,” Cocoma noted. “People come by, they might be driving down the interstate and they’ve heard about the cars, so they’ll call and ask (to see them), and you try to be graceful. Sometimes you can’t, so you tell them: I wish I could, but I can’t.”
