Pontiac Firebird 1967 350 Convertible

Pontiac needed an answer to the Camaro and it needed one immediately, so the first Firebird arrived only weeks after its corporate cousin, sharing bones but tuned to feel like a Pontiac rather than a rebadged Chevrolet. Fewer than 16,000 buyers chose the convertible that first year. The engine lineup, meanwhile, does not match what most people assume about early Firebirds, and one commonly claimed engine was not available at all.

General Motors had a difficult internal problem in the mid-1960s. Ford’s Mustang was selling in numbers that made every other division’s product planners uncomfortable, and Chevrolet was already deep into developing a response. Pontiac, meanwhile, had been pushing for a two-seat sports car of its own and had been repeatedly told no. The compromise that emerged was that Pontiac could have a pony car, but it would be built on Chevrolet’s new F-body platform, it would share doors and glass and a windshield with the Camaro, and it would arrive after the Camaro did. What Pontiac did with those constraints turned out to be considerably more interesting than the arrangement suggests.

The Engine That Had Not Arrived Yet

The first thing to clear up is the engine, because it comes up constantly with these cars. No 1967 Firebird left the factory with a 350 cubic inch V8. That engine did not arrive until 1968, when it replaced the 326. A factory-correct first-year Firebird runs one of five powerplants, and a 350 sitting under the hood of a 1967 today reflects either a later engine swap or a period-style upgrade performed at some point in the car’s life. That is not a knock on the car, since these swaps are extremely common and often well executed, but it does matter for anyone evaluating originality.

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Five Firebirds, One Body Shell

Pontiac marketed the initial lineup as five distinct models built on one shell, and the range was unusually broad. The base Firebird used a 230 cubic inch overhead-cam six producing 165 horsepower. The Sprint took that same six, added a four-barrel carburetor, a hotter camshaft, and a higher compression ratio, and reached 215 horsepower. The Firebird 326 ran a two-barrel V8 at 250 horsepower, the 326 HO added a four-barrel and better breathing for 285 horsepower, and the Firebird 400 sat at the top with a 400 cubic inch V8 borrowed from the GTO parts bin, rated at 325 horsepower.

Beaten to Market by Its Own Cousin

The car reached showrooms on February 23, 1967, roughly a month and a half after the Camaro. Pontiac used the delay productively, giving the Firebird its own split grille with a prominent beak, its own taillight treatment, a stiffer rear suspension setup intended to control axle tramp better than the Camaro’s, and its own interior. The two cars share a great deal of structure but drive and look meaningfully different, which was very much the objective. For the shortened 1967 model year Pontiac built 67,032 coupes and 15,528 convertibles, priced from $2,666 and $2,903 respectively.

The Overhead-Cam Six Nobody Remembers

The overhead-cam six deserves more attention than it gets. In an era when American six-cylinder engines were almost universally cheap, heavy, pushrod-operated units installed purely to hit a price point, Pontiac engineered a genuinely sophisticated single-overhead-camshaft inline six driven by a fiberglass-reinforced rubber belt. The Sprint version, with its four-barrel carburetor and free-flowing exhaust, produced 215 horsepower and gave the car noticeably better weight distribution and steering feel than any V8 version. American buyers, conditioned to believe that sixes were for people who could not afford eights, largely ignored it. Sprint cars are consequently rare and increasingly appreciated by people who value how a car handles.

GM’s Displacement Ceiling and Pontiac’s Workaround

The 400 existed the way it did because of corporate policy. General Motors capped engine displacement in its pony cars at 400 cubic inches, which is exactly where the Firebird 400 landed, and the rating of 325 horsepower was widely understood at the time to be conservative relative to what the same engine was doing in other applications. Pontiac reportedly limited the induction system on some versions to keep the published figures in line with corporate expectations, a piece of paperwork engineering that owners frequently undid within days of taking delivery.

Convertible Numbers and What They Mean Today

Convertible production is the number that shapes today’s market. At 15,528 units against 67,032 coupes, the drop-top was already the minority choice when new, and convertibles suffer disproportionately from rust and from decades of being stored outdoors with imperfect tops. Surviving first-year convertibles in good condition are therefore meaningfully scarcer than the original production split alone suggests, and they carry a clear premium over comparable coupes.

So What Is a 350 Doing Under That Hood

All of which brings the conversation back to what is actually under this particular hood. A 350 in a 1967 Firebird is a sensible, period-appropriate upgrade, and Pontiac’s own 350 is a close relative of the 326 it replaced, so it fits without drama and looks entirely at home. Buyers simply need to understand what they are looking at. A numbers-matching 326 HO or a documented Firebird 400 occupies a different tier from a nicely sorted engine-swapped car, and the difference shows up on the invoice. The first-year Firebird is a genuinely significant car either way, and it deserves to be described accurately.

What Pontiac Actually Changed Underneath

The Firebird is frequently dismissed as a rebadged Camaro, and the engineering record does not support that. Pontiac was unhappy with how the shared F-body chassis behaved under hard acceleration, because the Camaro’s rear suspension had a tendency toward axle tramp that upset the car badly. Pontiac’s response was to specify a different rear spring arrangement along with staggered shock absorber placement, mounting one damper ahead of the axle and one behind it, specifically to control the rotational forces that cause tramp. Spring rates, bushing specifications, and steering calibration differed as well. The two cars share doors, glass, and a great deal of structure, but they do not drive the same way, and the differences were deliberate engineering decisions rather than badge work.

A First Model Year Only Nine Months Long

The compressed schedule shapes everything about first-year Firebird production. The car went on sale on February 23, 1967, and the model year ended that summer, giving Pontiac roughly six months of selling time against a full twelve for most competitors. The 82,560 cars built across both body styles therefore represent a substantially higher production rate than the raw total suggests, but the absolute number is still capped by the calendar. For 1968 Pontiac had a full year, replaced the 326 with the 350, added Astro Ventilation with the deletion of vent windows, and moved considerably more cars. That makes 1967 a genuinely distinct year within the first generation rather than simply the earliest one, and it is the reason well-documented first-year cars carry the standing they do.

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