Pontiac Trans Am 1979 WS6 4-Speed

Ordering the W72 400 in a 1979 Trans Am forced you to take the WS6 handling package and a four-speed manual as well, with no exceptions. That bundle produced 220 horsepower, 320 lb-ft and a 0-60 run of 6.90 seconds in the middle of the malaise era. Only 2,485 were built in that configuration without T-tops, with another 2,917 wearing the T-top roof this one has. Read on to find out why 1979 was the cutoff.

By 1979 the American performance car was supposed to be dead, and on paper it mostly was. Compression ratios were in the dirt, catalytic converters were mandatory, and the horsepower figures printed in brochures had been sliding downhill for most of a decade. Somehow Pontiac was still selling more Trans Ams than it ever had, and a small number of those cars left the factory with a combination of boxes checked that the factory itself would not let a buyer split apart. This one has all of them, plus two options that make it rarer still.

The Bundle You Could Not Break Apart

Pontiac did not let buyers assemble this car piece by piece. Ordering the W72 400 cubic-inch V8 in 1979 automatically brought the WS6 handling package and the four-speed manual transmission with it, as a single mandatory bundle. There was no version of that engine with an automatic, and no way to get the W72 without the suspension package. That decision is the entire reason cars in this configuration are scarce today, because every buyer who wanted the big engine had to also accept a stiffer car and a clutch pedal, and plenty of them simply took the 403 instead.

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What the W72 400 Actually Was

The W72 was the high-output version of Pontiac’s own 400, producing 220 horsepower and 320 lb-ft of torque, backed by a Borg-Warner Super T-10 four-speed manual and a Safe-T-Track limited-slip differential geared at 3.23:1. Those numbers look modest until you remember they are net ratings measured with accessories attached, which is a very different standard from the gross figures quoted a decade earlier. In real-world terms this was among the strongest engines available in any American car in 1979, which says as much about 1979 as it does about the engine itself.

The Numbers It Ran

The combination was good for 0 to 60 mph in 6.90 seconds, a figure that put the Trans Am at or near the top of the domestic performance charts for the model year. Contemporary road tests found it competitive with the Corvette of the same period, which was carrying more emissions equipment than it had power to overcome. It is worth keeping the context in mind, because this was not fast by 1969 standards or by modern ones. In the middle of the malaise era, though, it was very close to the best anyone was managing.

WS6 Was About Corners, Not Quarter Miles

The WS6 package was aimed squarely at handling rather than straight-line speed. It added a larger-diameter front sway bar, a quicker-ratio steering box, 15×8-inch snowflake wheels and power-assisted four-wheel disc brakes, which was not a common specification on an American car in 1979. The result was a car that could actually be driven quickly on a back road, not just launched hard at a stoplight. That focus is a large part of why second-generation Trans Ams have aged better as driving machines than many of their more powerful predecessors.

The Rarity Math

Here is where the rarity comes in. Only 2,485 Trans Ams were built with the 400 engine, four-speed manual and WS6 package without T-tops. Pontiac built another 2,917 of the same W72 four-speed WS6 combination with the T-top roof, which is the group this one belongs to, plus 117 more as the black-and-gold Special Edition. Call it roughly 5,400 cars across every version of that mandatory bundle, which makes the fixed-roof coupes the harder half to find rather than the T-top cars. That is the practical difference between a Trans Am, of which Pontiac built a great many, and this Trans Am, which required a buyer in 1979 to want the hardest-riding, most expensive and least convenient version on the lot.

T-Tops and Hobnail Cloth

The interior on this one carries hobnail cloth, a texture that has become one of the signature details of the late second-generation Firebird. Combined with the removable T-tops, the engine-turned dash appliqué and the deeply hooded instrument binnacle, the cabin is one of the most distinctive of its era. T-tops are also the single most common source of complaints on these cars, because the seals harden and leak with age and the roof structure flexes more than a fixed-roof car does. Original, properly sealed T-tops are worth paying close attention to.

1979 Was Firebird’s Biggest Year Ever

It is easy to forget how popular these cars were. Pontiac sold 211,454 Firebirds for 1979, the model’s best year ever, and 117,108 of those were Trans Ams. The effect of Smokey and the Bandit was real and it was enormous, turning a niche performance model into a mainstream cultural object almost overnight. That volume is why ordinary Trans Ams remain affordable and easy to find today, and it is also why the genuinely rare configurations get overlooked. Most people see the shaker hood and the hood bird and assume they know the car.

The End of the Pontiac 400

1979 was the last year for the Pontiac 400 in the Firebird, and the engines installed that year had actually been built earlier and stockpiled, because Pontiac had already ended 400 production. Once that supply ran out, the performance flagship became a turbocharged 301, a very different engine with a very different reputation. That makes 1979 a hard cutoff. It is the final model year in which a Trans Am could be ordered with a genuine large-displacement Pontiac V8 and a manual gearbox, and everyone who collects these cars knows it.

Collecting One Now

Anyone shopping for one should verify rather than assume. The engine code, the transmission, the axle code and the build documentation all need to agree, because W72 cars are easy to replicate cosmetically and the drivetrain is the whole value proposition. Rust in the T-top surrounds, the rear window channel and the floors is common and expensive. A correct, documented 400 four-speed WS6 car with T-tops sits well above an ordinary 403 automatic Trans Am in value, and the gap has been widening as the people who wanted these cars in high school reach the point of being able to buy them. Original paint and documented mileage push the strongest examples higher still.

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