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The 1969 Firebird Trans Am existed for exactly one model year in this form, wearing a color combination buyers couldn’t change and stripes that ran straight over the roof, a look Pontiac never repeated. This Ram Air III 4-speed example from The Brothers Collection pairs that one-year-only styling with a functional hood feeding a 400 cubic inch V8. See what made the very first Trans Am look and drive like nothing else on the lot.
Pontiac only sold the 400-cubic-inch W72 with a mandatory four-speed manual in 1979, the final year for its biggest V8, and this factory-correct four-speed Trans Am backs that combination with an aluminum intake, Edelbrock carb, and long-tube headers. 1979 was also the single best sales year the Trans Am nameplate ever had. Read on to find out what made the last big-block Bird so specific.
Few nameplates carry as much baggage — good and bad — as the Pontiac Trans Am, a car that went from low-volume performance special to pop-culture icon almost by accident. This transformed example takes that legacy and pushes it somewhere new, keeping the silhouette that made the Trans Am famous while updating what’s underneath. Read on to find out how a build like this honors the Trans Am’s history instead of erasing it.
This custom-built 1979 Pontiac Trans Am pushes the factory’s final big-block V8 to 450 horsepower, more than double what the original W72 400 ever made from the factory. Read on to find out why 1979 was the true last call for Pontiac’s biggest engine, and how a modern build manages to respect that swan song while blowing past it entirely.
Pontiac built only eight 1969 Trans Am convertibles, and V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week caught up with the very first one ever produced — RAIII 400 power, a rare blue interior, and options like power windows that were unusual for a car built primarily as an SCCA homologation special. Restorer Gary Riley walks through the car’s history from the floor of the 2015 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals. Even in the comments, collectors still disagree on the exact production numbers. Watch to see what makes this one of the rarest Trans Ams ever built.
This 1972 Pontiac Trans Am wears Cameo White paint, a saddle interior, and a 455 H.O. under the hood — but the real story is how few cars like it Pontiac managed to build at all. A 174-day strike at the Norwood, Ohio plant gutted that year’s production, and only 458 of the 1,286 Trans Ams built came with this car’s four-speed manual. Read on to find out how a labor dispute turned an ordinary model year into one of the rarest in Trans Am history.
Pontiac built just 7,500 examples of the 1979 10th Anniversary Trans Am to mark a decade of the badge — and inside that already-limited run, only 1,817 buyers got the 400 cubic-inch V-8 paired with a 4-speed manual. That combination makes this silver-and-charcoal special one of the last true muscle-era Firebirds, built right before the fuel crisis changed everything.
Buick’s turbocharged 3.8 liter V6 should have ended when the Regal went front wheel drive in 1988, but this final episode of OldCarMemories.com’s series tracks its unexpected last stop: a 1989 Pontiac Trans Am. The engine used Pontiac heads instead of Buick’s own and reportedly paced the Indy 500 as a genuinely stock car, a first. Watch to see how a mid size sedan engine ended up the fastest thing on a GM showroom floor.
By 1980 emissions rules had taken most of the horsepower out of Detroit, and Pontiac needed its flagship to look fast whether or not it actually was. The answer was a turbocharger bolted onto a 301 small-block and the largest hood decal General Motors ever approved. Mike Musto put one to the test. Read on to find out whether the numbers backed up the theater.
210 episodes into covering the Brothers Collection, Muscle Car of the Week finally ranks the convertibles — pulling from a 1967 Mustang K-code, a 1964 Plymouth Satellite 426 Wedge, a fuel-injected 1959 Corvette, and a 440 Six Barrel ‘Cuda in Tor-Red. Each car represents a different era and manufacturer’s approach to open-top American performance. The comments are already split over which one deserves the top spot. Watch to see the full lineup and decide which convertible you’d pick.
Gregg Hamilton’s Pontiac Trans Am started as a childhood dream inspired by Smokey and the Bandit — and turned into something no one expected. Trained by top World Rally Championship teams, Hamilton skipped the traditional big-inch V8 in favor of a GM 5.3-liter truck engine, then applied rally-derived suspension knowledge to give this Firebird handling most muscle cars never get close to. It’s a build defined by engineering judgment over budget. Watch to see how rally-car thinking reshaped an American icon.
Mike Lorusso has owned this blue-and-white 1975 Trans Am since 1989, and over three decades he’s pushed the 400 cubic inch V8 to roughly 500 horsepower. This walk-around covers the custom work, the often-overlooked 1975 model year, and one detail about the hood bird most owners still get wrong. Watch to find out what it actually is.
A black-and-gold 1978 Pontiac Trans Am built to Burt Reynolds’ own specification crossed the Barrett-Jackson block in Las Vegas in 2018, weeks after the actor’s death, and brought $192,500. Two other 1978 Trans Ams in the same sale, mechanically similar but with no connection to Reynolds, sold for a fraction of that. The gap is the whole story of how provenance works in the collector market, and why the Bandit car mattered in the first place.
This 1978 Pontiac Trans Am rolled into V8 Speed & Resto Shop running like anything but a bird of fire — and rolled out with a FAST EZ-EFI fuel injection system, a 2004R overdrive transmission, and a COMP Cams roller valvetrain under its Pontiac 400. The upgrades are the kind Pontiac purists argue about for hours. See exactly what changed and why the team made each call.
A 1979 Pontiac Trans Am arrives at V8 Speed and Resto Shop with rust hiding behind a poorly repaired firewall, and a factory stamping flaw underneath that. Rather than patch over both problems, the crew cuts the section out entirely and fabricates a replacement using a bead roller and a Pullmax, tools most home mechanics never touch. Fabricators in the comments call it some of the most impressive metalwork on the channel. The process reveals exactly what separates a real restoration from a quick fix.