It looked almost as good as the Bandit car, it performed nearly as well as the Bandit car, and even though it wasn’t a big win back then, I think it still holds up pretty well today.
Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed and Jackie Gleason may be the ones named on the cover, but the true star of that movie is the 1977 Trans Am that was beaten mercilessly across state lines as a blocker car in a bootlegging operation. Though fairly underpowered compared to all of the muscle cars that came out of Detroit just a few years earlier, it still had enough power to boil the tires off on command, and the appeal to nearly double the sales of Trans Am’s over the next couple of years. Would customers have been disappointed with their purchase? As the cars looked incredible, I don’t imagine so, drove nice, were quite comfortable, and had just enough horsepower to get the job done. Did they sound like the movie? Not even close. The movie’s sounds were dubbed in from the hot 454 powered 1955 Chevy from American Graffiti. By 1980, the performance of the Trans Am (and everything else for that matter) was pretty much on the rock pile. Potential buyers were limited to little engines, the most impressive one being the turbocharged 301, and by impressive, I mean on paper only.
For the 1980 model year, Pontiac offered a Trans Am Special Edition, nicknamed the “Bandit Edition” due to the black and gold colour scheme. If I recall, it was the car that was used in the sequel to the original film. Boasting a newer, smaller 301 under the hood backed exclusively by a three-speed automatic, it lacked nearly one-hundred cubic inches compared to the old 400, which is the mathematical equivalent of lacking two entire cylinders. What it had that the 400 didn’t, however, was a Garrett TB305 turbocharger and a specially-modified four-barrel carburetor and distributor. How did it perform? Not as well as the previous 400, and not even as well as a Camaro Z28 of the same model year with a four-speed manual. Putting out 210 horsepower and 345 lb-ft of torque, the numbers were there, as I said, on paper. The problem was that the cars didn’t work that well, nor were they consistent. Despite the fact that history has tarred them with a bad brush, fast-forward four decades, and they are a pretty solid candidate for a performance car. Turbocharging technology has come a long way, and with a large engine bay and rear-drive platform to work with, a modern performance engine would drop right in there. The only feature I’d want to keep would be the “Turbo Charge” indicator lights in the back of the hood bulge. The “Normal” light stayed on with the key, while the “Medium” and “High” lights illuminated at two psi and six psi, respectively. A boost gauge would have been much more accurate and probably affordable, but it wouldn’t be as period-correct 1980s.
Have a question or comment for Kelly? Post it at lmtimes.ca/kirk
