The Pontiac or The Hot Girl – What’s your pick?

Pontiac rushed its answer to the Ford Mustang into showrooms in barely six months, borrowing GM’s F-body platform and grafting on a face unlike anything else on the road. Buyers could order this first-generation Firebird with four completely different engines, from a mild six-cylinder to a 325-horsepower V8 borrowed from the GTO. Fewer than three years later, the rarest versions were already becoming collector gold.

A single black-and-white detail hides at the base of the windshield on early Pontiac Firebirds, and it’s the kind of thing most owners never notice until someone points it out. Pontiac built this car in barely six months, rushing to answer a rival that had already stolen the pony car spotlight. The result borrowed its bones from Chevrolet but wore a face nobody else had, with bumpers folded into the nose and taillights borrowed from the GTO. Underneath the sheetmetal sat one of four completely different engines, from a mild inline-six to a 400 cubic inch V8 pulled straight from the GTO parts bin. Which one ended up under this particular hood says more about the car than the badge on its fender ever could.

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A Six-Month Sprint to Beat the Camaro

Pontiac never actually wanted to build the Firebird everyone remembers today. The division had pushed for a genuine two-seat sports car based on its Banshee concept, but General Motors worried that project would cannibalize Corvette sales. Instead, GM handed Pontiac a share of the new pony car market by letting it use the same rear-wheel-drive F-body platform Chevrolet had just developed for the Camaro. Pontiac‘s engineers had barely six months to turn that platform into something distinct, and they did it by integrating the bumpers into the nose and borrowing the split, slit-style taillights from the Pontiac GTO and Grand Prix. The car launched on February 23, 1967, less than half a year after the Camaro itself hit showrooms.

Four Engines, One Body

Base buyers got a 230 cubic inch inline-six making a modest 165 horsepower, but Pontiac also offered a four-barrel ‘Sprint’ version of that same six rated at 215 horsepower, an unusually strong output for an engine most rivals treated as an afterthought. Most buyers skipped the six entirely and chose one of two 326 cubic inch V8s, either a 250-horsepower two-barrel or a 285-horsepower ‘HO‘ four-barrel version. At the top of the range sat a 400 cubic inch V8 pulled straight from the GTO parts bin, rated at 325 horsepower, with an optional Ram Air package adding functional hood scoops, stronger valve springs, and a more aggressive camshaft.

By the time the first-generation Firebird ended its three-year run in 1969, Pontiac had sold more than 250,000 of them, a number padded out by an ultra-rare mid-year Trans Am model of which only 697 were built. Whichever engine sits under this particular car’s hood, it’s a direct link back to a lineup built almost entirely from spare parts and a six-month deadline.

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