Jay Leno Fires Up a 1979 Trans Am — And Everyone Forgets This Was the ‘Bandit’ Car’s Biggest Year Ever

Jay Leno takes the wheel of a 1979 Pontiac Trans Am on loan from the Audrain Automobile Museum — the same black-and-gold decal car most people know from the movies, but with a mechanical story that’s easy to miss. According to fans in the comments, this was the year Pontiac’s W72 400 actually out-accelerated the Corvette. Watch Leno find out if the reputation holds up.

Jay Leno has driven nearly everything with wheels over the course of his career, so when he says a car still feels genuinely special decades after it left the factory, that reaction means something more than typical car-show enthusiasm. This time it’s a 1979 Pontiac Trans Am on loan from the Audrain Automobile Museum, a car most casual viewers associate almost entirely with a black-and-gold decal and a movie stunt driver rather than any real engineering high point. Except, according to the specific numbers buried in the comments section of this very video, 1979 wasn’t just the Trans Am’s most culturally famous year — it may genuinely have been its fastest. Leno is about to find out exactly why longtime Pontiac fans still make that claim.

The Year Everyone Remembers for the Wrong Reason

It’s nearly impossible to talk about the 1979 Trans Am without Smokey and the Bandit coming up almost immediately, and the comments prove it beyond any doubt, with viewers quoting Sheriff Buford T. Justice line for line and openly mourning the loss of Burt Reynolds years after his passing. That cultural weight is entirely real and helps explain the car’s enduring fame, but it also tends to overshadow a more interesting mechanical story sitting quietly under that iconic shaker hood scoop.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The W72 400: Pontiac’s Last Real Muscle Engine

That mechanical story centers on the W72-code 400-cubic-inch, 6.6-liter engine, widely regarded as Pontiac’s last genuinely aggressive muscle car powerplant before downsizing took over the lineup. Commenters who actually owned these cars note the tachometer’s real redline sits at 5,000 rpm, with the orange caution band beginning at 4,500 rpm — specific, first-hand detail that reveals just how far Pontiac’s engineers pushed a basic V8 architecture that traced its roots back to the 1960s, long after most competitors had abandoned similar designs.

Faster Than the Corvette That Same Year

One recurring claim across the comments is genuinely striking: the 1979 W72 Trans Am reportedly out-accelerated the Corvette within GM’s own broader lineup that same model year. For a brand whose performance halo is almost always assumed by default to be the Corvette, that detail flips the usual internal GM hierarchy on its head and explains why Pontiac loyalists still bring it up, unprompted, in comment sections decades later.

Shaker Hood, T-Tops, and a Formula Nobody Needed to Improve

Visually, the car needed absolutely no aftermarket help to stand out on the road. T-tops, a screaming eagle hood decal, a functional shaker scoop, flared fenders, and a large rear spoiler all came directly from the factory as part of the package. As one commenter puts it plainly, these late-1970s Trans Ams “didn’t need customizing” — a rare case of a factory design fully nailing the exact look buyers wanted without a single aftermarket modification required.

A Car People Still Own Decades Later

The comments also reveal a consistent pattern of genuine long-term ownership rather than typical collector flipping. One couple bought a 1977 T/A four-speed thirty-five years ago and still owns that same car today, while another owner reports a 1978 TA with the TA 400 still running strong at 150,000 original miles. That kind of multi-decade personal loyalty is uncommon even among enthusiast-favorite muscle cars, most of which change hands repeatedly across generations of collectors.

Unrestored, and Leno Notices It

Leno specifically notes that the museum’s example carries “no modifications, nothing — just like the way it drove in ’79,” and that detail matters considerably more than it might initially seem to a casual viewer. A completely unrestored, mechanically original Trans Am now more than four decades old is a far rarer find in any museum collection than a nicely done restomod version, and it lets Leno experience the car essentially exactly as a first-time buyer would have back in 1979, throttle response and all.

The End of an Era for Pontiac Performance

The 1979 model year arrived just before tightening federal emissions regulations and Detroit-wide downsizing gutted American performance across the board in the early 1980s, which makes the W72-equipped ’79 arguably the last real gasp of genuine big-inch Pontiac muscle before the brand leaned increasingly on turbocharged four-cylinders and considerably smaller V8s for the remainder of the decade.

Why the Audrain Museum Matters Here

The Audrain Automobile Museum’s willingness to loan out a genuinely unrestored, numbers-matching example for a segment like this one matters more than it might seem at first glance. Museum pieces are frequently kept static and untouched specifically to preserve their condition, which makes Leno’s opportunity to actually start it, drive it, and put real miles on it a meaningfully different experience than simply viewing the same car parked behind velvet rope.

1979: The Trans Am’s Best Sales Year Ever

Pontiac’s Trans Am nameplate had already survived one near-cancellation earlier in the decade, when a crippling 1972 strike at the Norwood assembly plant had GM seriously weighing whether to kill the F-body outright. Pontiac fought to keep it alive, and by the time Smokey and the Bandit hit theaters in 1977 the Trans Am was outselling anything the division had ever projected for it. That history makes the 1979 model, sitting at the absolute peak of Trans Am popularity and sales volume, something of a high-water mark the brand would never quite reach again — Pontiac sold more Trans Ams in 1979 than in any other single year of the model’s production run, a sales record tied directly to the very movie fame that this article’s earlier paragraphs suggested was overshadowing the car’s engineering.

Museum Ownership vs. Private Collections

Watching Leno interact with the Audrain museum’s example also highlights something easy to overlook: how differently a car this culturally famous gets treated depending on who owns it. A privately held, numbers-matching 1979 W72 Trans Am in this condition would typically be driven sparingly and shown even less, while a museum-owned example loaned out specifically for a segment like this gets both the preservation benefits of institutional ownership and the rare chance to actually be exercised on camera the way its original engineers intended. That distinction, more than any single spec figure, is why this particular walk-around carries more weight than a typical dealership test drive ever could. It is the difference between admiring a legend from behind glass and actually hearing it come alive.

Watch the full video above. Share your thoughts in the comments below.