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Slide behind the wheel of a 1968 Firebird 400 expecting nothing but brute force and the first surprise is how composed it feels at speed. Pontiac had spent a year learning what its pony car needed, and the 1968 answer involved a hidden factory restriction, a mid-year engine change and a rear suspension redesign that finally cured the axle tramp. Read on for what actually made this one of the best-sorted pony cars of its year.
Pontiac built only 157 Ram Air IV Firebird hardtops for the 1969 model year, just 55 of them Trans Ams, and this freshly restored Firebird, pulled from The Brothers Collection, carries its original numbers-matching example paired with a 4-speed Muncie. Muscle Car Of The Week walks through what makes the RA IV’s idle and powerband so distinct from lesser Pontiac V8s. Watch to see one of the 102 standard Firebirds that got it.
Pontiac built 68,745 Trans Ams in 1977, and the black-and-gold paint that made them famous tells you almost nothing about what is bolted under the hood. One car is a 200-horsepower Pontiac 400. The next one, wearing identical decals, is an Oldsmobile engine with a different word on the shaker scoop — and that single detail decides everything.
This 1969 Pontiac Firebird sat forgotten for years, its factory 400 engine buried under rat nests and grime, until the Turnin Rust crew finally got it running — and the exhaust blew out a literal dust storm in the process. Built originally for strip use, the car earned its Dirty Bird nickname on the spot. Watch to see what years of neglect actually did to a genuine factory 400-powered Firebird, and how much of it is still worth saving.
Filmed while the third-generation Trans Am was still brand new, this MotorWeek retro review evaluates the third-generation Trans Am completely on its own merits — new styling, real road performance, and an engine that didn’t quite live up to its own marketing. Watch the car exactly as period reviewers judged it, before it became KITT.
The Pontiac Trans Am WS6 package started as a simple order-form checkbox, but it transformed a standard fourth-gen Firebird into the sharpest-handling version Pontiac ever built. This detailed Cars & Bids review, viewed nearly 288,000 times, walks through every quirk from the functional hood scoops to the notoriously cheap interior. Watch to see what that $3,290 checkbox actually bought.
A grassroots drag strip reel from the channel Wheels captures classic Dodge Chargers, Chevy Camaros, Novas, and Cudas making real, unscripted passes — including a 1967 Firebird whose nose lifts dramatically off the line before settling back down. With nearly 95,000 views, it’s become a favorite for viewers who’d rather watch these cars run hard than sit static at auction. Watch to see which car actually gets fired out of the slingshot.
Forty-nine of the fastest small-tire cars in the country lined up at Darana Raceway chasing a $12,000 purse, and the results didn’t go the way anyone expected. ProTreeVideos captured the entire King of Columbus Backside Battle from the pit walk through the finals, including an upset that had the comment section arguing for days. No-prep racing rewards driver skill over raw horsepower, and this event proved exactly why. Watch to see which cars actually made it to the winner’s circle.
A 1978 Pontiac Trans Am, immortalized by Smokey and the Bandit, was once cheap enough to be a common sight in driveways across America, sold by the tens of thousands every year. The comments on this video tell a different story now — one viewer cites $85,000-plus prices for clean examples, calling the video’s ‘bargain’ framing badly out of date. Watch to see why GM’s most aerodynamic 1977 production car still gets called ‘the aerodynamics of a brick.’
This 1969 Pontiac Firebird 400 convertible wears its original Carousel Red paint and whatever numbers-matching hardware Pontiac bolted under the hood in the final year before a full redesign. The gap between a standard 400 and the Ram Air package cars built that same year can mean tens of thousands of dollars at auction today. Read on to find out what separates a garden-variety 400 from the cars that made 1969 the high-water mark of the first-generation Firebird.
Pontiac’s second-generation Trans Am was supposed to launch with the rest of the 1970 lineup, but tooling delays pushed it to a February 26 debut — creating a “1969 1/2” nickname collectors still use today. From the Ram Air III and IV through the emissions-fighting SD-455 and the shrinking engine lineup of the mid-1970s, the Trans Am’s first six years tell the story of muscle car performance colliding head-on with new safety and emissions law. Read on to see how the numbers changed year by year.
Regular Car Reviews is giving away the WS6 Trans Am featured in this video — but the real story in the comments is an owner whose own WS6 sat under a cover for six years and fired right up the moment they turned the key. Watch to see what it actually costs to bring one of these back from years of hibernation.
A 1968 Pontiac Firebird ordered with the right boxes checked could carry the 400 H.O. package or the mid-year Ram Air II update, complete with round-port heads and a reworked camshaft most buyers never knew existed. Out of over 107,000 Firebirds built that year, only 16,960 were convertibles, making a documented Ram Air drop-top a genuine rarity. Read on to find out what actually separated a standard 400 from Pontiac’s best-kept 1968 secret.
Fifty years ago General Motors answered the Ford Mustang not once but twice, and a museum exhibit is now putting the Camaro and Firebird side by side with the movie cars that turned them into pop culture icons. One shape-shifted into an alien robot on screen; the other spent a decade running from the law with a trucker at the wheel. Here’s why GM built two separate pony cars instead of one.