The Generation Game: Pontiac Firebird & Pontiac Trans Am

[Liquid]

The Generation Game: Pontiac Firebird & Pontiac Trans Am

For convenience, this includes the Pontiac Trans Am, which might be seen as a distinct model but was a specialty package for Firebirds.

1967-1969 Pontiac Firebird

Bodystyles: 2-door coupe, 2-door convertible
Engines: 3.8 - 6.6L V8
Drivetrain: FR
Weight: ~1,560kg / 3,432lbs

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1970-1981 Pontiac Firebird

Bodystyles: 2-door coupe, 2-door targa
Engines: 3.8L V6; 4.1L I6; 4.3 - 7.5L V8
Drivetrain: FR
Weight: ~1,600kg / 3,520lbs

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1982-1992 Pontiac Firebird

Bodystyles: 2-door coupe, 2-door convertible
Engines: 2.5L I4; 2.8L - 3.1L V6; 3.8L turbocharged V6; 5.0 - 5.7L V8
Drivetrain: FR
Weight: ~1,450kg / 3,190lbs

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1993-2002 Pontiac Firebird

Bodystyles: 2-door coupe, 2-door convertible
Engines: 3.4L - 3.6L V6; 5.7L V8
Drivetrain: FR
Weight: ~1,615kg / 3,553lbs

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The second generation gets two photos because the mid-generation facelift makes the front end look different enough to warrant another one.

Previous Results Thread

 

[daan]

You might just as well have posted Bandit vs KITT.

 

[TheCracker]

 

[05XR8]

 

[ScottPuss20]

Yes, the 2nd gen '77 Firebird is a classic but I'd much rather have the 4th gen WS6. At that point, it had recovered the HP lost during the late 70s and 80s so it actually had some bite to go with it's meow bark. Not the most handsome I know, but in terms of performance and usability, it's the best Firebird Trans Am. If anything the goofy front end makes it more endearing to me.

 

[05XR8]

I'm torn between 1970-1992. I chose Gen2, but from Rockford Files to CHiPs to Knight Rider, those shows carried the Firebird from where Ban1 was left at the cookout.

 

[Tornado]

It's always been amusing just how often Pontiac was willing to step on Chevrolet's toes with this car, almost certainly against GM's wishes. At multiple points throughout the 1970s/1980s you could buy the most powerful, fastest and best handling American car on the market.


Or you could buy a Corvette.

 

[Liquid]

It's quite rare for any car company, let alone an American one, to nail it with every gen. The last one is obviously the weakest one but all four are very appealing, all four are extremely handsome in their own ways and Firebird is a fantastic name for a car.

You might just as well have posted Bandit vs KITT.

However this is what it comes down to. Bo Darville is cooler than Michael Knight, Burt Reynolds is way cooler than David Hasselhoff, but the Bandit vs KITT is really hard to call.

Bandit. But not by much.

 

[Joey D]

The last generation was the car I wanted when I was younger, especially the WS6. A buddy of mine had one back in college and we got up to so many antics in it. Another buddy had an 87 Trans Am that we also got into all kind of mischief with too, so that car holds a fair bit of nostalgia for me as well. The older Trans Ams? They do nothing for me, but I'm of the age where cars really didn't get that interesting until the 1980s.

 

[TheCracker]

Thanks to Bo 'Bandit' Darville and probably equally Matchbox, the '79/'80 Firebird will always be cool to me. Doesn't matter that it was heavy and slow - it just looked cool.

I have a friend who built a Cobra replica in the early '90s. The cheapest V8 he could source was a 185hp 400cu out of a Firebird of that era. With side exit exhausts it certainly sounded the part. Shame that even in a lightweight sports car it didn't go particularly quickly. But that wasn't really the point.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

While the WS6 was definitely the 90s/00s muscle car before the horsepower wars truly took off (with the introduction of the 2003 SVT Cobra) I think I gotta go with the 2nd gen. The early ones in particular just look so cool - the 1970 Trans Am might just be the most all around good looking muscle car of that whole era.

 

[r_outsider]

This was a really tough one as the Firebird is truly one of my favourite cars from bottom to top, but ultimately there's a third gen in our garage. So that's where my vote went.

 

[Liquid]

Tangentially related, the Phoenix (a firebird) is one of my favourite Grand Theft Auto cars and is heavily based on the Pontiac Firebird with shades of the Chevrolet Camaro. The Ruiner, another car I really like, is the inverse - heavily based on the Camaro with shades of the Firebird.

 

[Tornado]

The first gen is lame so I'm skipping it. The original Camaro, in spite of GM's slavish devotion to it over the past two decades, came in so extremely hot to the market that GM didn't even bother styling it until two years after the fact; and the Firebird obviously didn't have much to delineate it beyond the cool Sprint engine. I also don't really are about movie cars just because they are in the movie. S


So, second gen.

In 1971 the most powerful Corvette had 325 hp. The most powerful Camaro had 275. Most powerful Trans Am had 305. The most powerful Barracuda (an extreme outlier as the Hemi was barely a streetable engine) had 350 hp.

In 1972, emissions started coming for everyone. The Corvette lopped 50 off the top. The Camaro was down to 255. The Barracuda lost all of its big engines and the best you got was the 240 horses out of the 340. The best Mustang had 275. The Trans Am, with the 455? 300.

In 1973 only the Corvette had a big engine left, though they retuned it to offset stricter emissions and got a bit more power out of it at 275. The Camaro's best was 245. The Mustang was down to 266. Barracuda was the same as before. Pontiac, however, decided that they were going to introduce an all new high performance engine for 1973 that they knew could be only sold for two years.

310 horsepower, and then (after they spent most of the year fighting the EPA) 290. It probably was the most powerful car you could buy in the US in 1973 and almost certainly was in 1974, when it had the same power number.

And in 1974, when the Trans Am had 290 still? Corvette was 270 again. Camaro was the same as the previous year. Barracuda was up a bit because Chrysler introduced the 360 to replace the 340. Mustang? 105 that's disgusting.

Yeah in 1975 everyone had their knees cut off, but you know what? The Barracuda was gone. The Camaro had 155. The Mustang at least had a V8 with 140. The Corvette had 205 and the Trans Am was right there with 200.

And so it went throughout the generation. Bandit's car was chosen specifically because it had 220 hp when the best Corvette had 225. The one in the second movie had 210 horsepower in a year when the Corvette had 190 (notwithstanding if carbureted turbos running off of 1970s electronics were a great idea). The Trans Am actually had legitimate effort put into it the entire decade to make it a real performance car at a time when you could count real performance cars sold in the American market on one hand. They even made the effort (that most manufacturers absolutely did not) to meet US crash testing requirements without just hanging railroad ties off of both ends.



The third gen is not the same because while Pontiac did put more development work into the car than Chevrolet did, this was Roger Smith GM. No individual drivetrains. You get your engines from the flagship divisions (Buick for V6s, Chevrolet for V8s and I4s). You do not step on the Corvette's toes because they are taking that car seriously now; so no manual transmissions with the engine the Corvette also had (among other things).

But damn even then Pontiac managed to sneak stuff out with no budget, right under GM's nose.



I hate the styling of the early 4th gen Firebird as a natural evolution of the restyled (also ugly) 3rd gen, and the later one (while so over the top that it approaches parody) does that body much better and has a far greater jump in performance than you'd think it would be on paper. The WS6s I've driven all drove great and have putrid interiors and horrendous space utilization; just like the high spec third gens did (though like the C5 the interiors were even worse than the car it replaced).
But again the Corvette was still being taken seriously by GM and just had a substantial jump that basically completely reset the paradigm of the entire market, so even when the Trans Am got the LS1 there was no contest since it was still largely the third gen car with a new body and a better drivetrain.



Second Gen all the way but 3rd gen is far closer than it has any right to be for a Roger Smith car.

 

[TexRex]

Chose third gen, and I appreciate them all, but I'd narrow it down to facelift cars--'91/2. Can go Formula or T/A; I like the Formula hood and the T/A ground effects.

A Firehawk's something of a dream car. I remember seeing one at an auto show and it stopped me in my tracks. They are very rare cars.

I also dig a pre-facelift fourth ('93-7) as long as it has the low hood. The 25th is a treat. Facelift cars look...bloated?

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

As a side note - 4th gen F-bodies seem to have entirely disappeared from the earth. Whereas I still see a lot of SN95 Mustangs out there, somehow surviving, the GM equivalent are very few and far between.