1979 Pontiac Trans Am - Jay Leno's Garage

this is something you could drive to vegas or drive to san francisco in all day long extremely comfortable i love the fact that this is exactly how it left the factory no modifications nothing added on so you really get a feeling of what it was like back in 1979 this was a fast car and a still a fast car welcome to the episode of jay leno's garage the car featuring today 1979 pontiac trans am firebird ws6 400 four-speed probably one of the most popular cars of all time certainly american cars of all time made popular by the smoky and the bandit movies you know i'm a huge firebird fan they never got the recognition they deserve they always got overshadowed by camaro you know firebird was started by john delorean john delorean was you know made president of pontiac motor division uh and he pushed the performance angle and he had a car called the banshee which made the rounds on a bunch of auto show circuits it was a two-seater sports car but general motors felt nah that's gonna compete with the corvette we don't want that one we don't want to build two separate corvettes you know the whole deal so they compromised and they decided to do a four-seater version much like the mustang in the camaro which is actually a smart thing to do because you really can't sell that many two-seater cars the firebird ceased production i think 2002 because i got to drive the pace car the daytona 500 one year uh with tony stewart actually you know daytona's got those stiff banking so when they bring in uh like an idiot comedian or somebody from tv who's not a freshman race car driver you have to go down to practice a little bit and tony stewart took me out and getting up on the banking was a lot of fun we were laughing about 135 which was pretty impressive and since it was the last year of the firebird they brought all the firebirds from all the years down all the high performance models and we took each one out in the banking the last one the 2002 was the fastest this even though it has a 400 cubic inch v8 it's 1979. it's still pretty much uh carburation and lean gas mixtures for emissions so consequently this was saddled with just 220 horsepower and 325 foot-pounds of torque firebird never got the engines that chevrolet got firebird used bureaucrat they didn't build their own past a certain point i don't think they ever had more than about 350 horsepower whereas you could get camaros you know especially the copper cars uh with you know five six hundred horsepower but the firebirds handled better the firebirds i believe were a better handling car than the uh the camaro i'm sure there will be photographs you know you idiot but i'm just telling you my what i think that's okay anyway this thing is loaded to the gills this belongs to the audrain autumn museum in newport rhode island you know with so many auto museums closing now because of the crisis and covid it's nice to see new ones coming up and the the drain is one of the newer ones and they have classics like packards and duesenbergs and turn-of-the-century stuff but they're not snobby they've got all kinds of cool stuff like this classic muscle cars from the various eras and you know if you go to those radwood type deals these cars in the 70s or 80s are just getting really hot right now this belongs to the museum and it's got every option on it here's a window sticker this car sold for eight thousand two hundred dollars which was a lot of money back in 1979 but it had everything the t-top and i love the what do we have here wow the speedometer goes to 100 miles an hour you know remember they had that uh 85 mile an hour speed limit and i don't know what happened to 79 but this is a high performance model it goes to a hundred which just just makes me laugh i mean i i'm on the freeway here in l.a and i'm passing women in honda civics putting on lipstick at 100 you know it's okay you know so they act like it's a big deal they always do that on the news here uh police chase a suspect at speeds up to 100 miles an hour you know it's really not a big camrys go 100 miles an hour but it was 1979 100 miles an hour was a big deal if you could pin the speedometer that was sort of the big thing now this moms could go to 200 two and a quarter whatever it might be but that's a whole different thing anyway it's got the cool non-airbag steering wheel and it's a manual it's a four speed uh what else can we show you it's got this kind of cloth interior you know build quality in the late 70s was not real good among all the auto manufacturers in america but this one seems to be pretty well put together it seems to be a well-maintained car you might have seen this on bring a trailer a while back it was on there for sale and i think it sold for a record price because it's so nice it's let me see what is the mileage the mileage is oh wow nothing what's that about 2 000 miles 2400 miles something like that i think it's got every option to accept no air conditioning and i'm anxious to drive it it's got the snowflake wheels it's got four wheel disc brakes which i think is very cool because 1979 people are still fudging that a bit just with front wheel brakes and drum to the backs and pontiac was pretty good at sorting out the suspension as i said it's got the shaker hood uh well let's open the hood and see what it looks like underneath there i could lose the chicken on the hood look i like colonel sanders as much as the next guy but i don't know but some people like it as you can see it's got the cold air package right there uh this is not a show car this is a car that well it hasn't been driven that much but you know back east climate you can see a little bit of rust and stuff from rain nothing terrible but it doesn't appear to ever been in an accident it seems to be enthusiast owned its whole life and you know these things are addictive they're a lot of fun to drive i mean 220 horsepower is not much by today's standards but the torque isn't bad so i'm anxious to see what it's like shaker hood 6.6 liter notice complete just about absence of chrome no chrome on this car at all you know it's a good-looking car i like it i think they're kind of fun it's it's it looks like an american sports car and it's got a proper four speed and if you missed it it says trans am on the back the impact that smoking in the bandit movie had on these everybody had to have one of these every cars and coffee every drive-in hamburger place where you hung out on a friday or saturday night there was always a couple of these around and i saw guys build them up and get four or 500 horsepower out of these things and they really move i mean these all appear to be functional which is kind of cool what else oh you got the fuzzy dice i don't think that was standard on the seat there you got the bags to keep these t-tops and they fit in the trunk let's see what the trunk looks like on this thing you know i don't know much about this this was just delivered here yesterday i haven't driven it yet so i'm anxious i'm like you i'm curious to see what it's like i mean i'm doing a firebird right now a six-cylinder firebird sprint from 1968 which has the same horsepower as this so it's kind of interesting let's see what the trunk looks like there's your space saver spare with this stupid can of air that just kind of goes it doesn't really i've never had one of those work but here's the thing that makes a collector car valuable it's what makes this car valuable it's every piece of documentation since the day this car came out of norwood 1979 trans am purchase contract there's your original bill of sale right there or your window sticker i guess you'd call it i showed you that before but there it is right there eighty two hundred and two dollars and fifty five cents every option here yeah this is kind of cool i mean you know you got every oil change when tires were put on trim tag news from pontiac there's your the original owner's manual road test from car and driver magazine when you go to sell a car this is the kind of stuff that gets a record price when people see it's been maintained maintained there's and apparently it's in nebraska for a while the problem explains a little bit of surface rust on the block a buyer's guide all matching numbers car right from the factory pretty good what did i say the mileage was it just doesn't seem possible looks like 20 242 miles we should uh and oh you know what scott got your cb radio yeah i got a bear in the air yeah i know that kind of stuff that these these were so popular back in the day this tie is uh is not a stock but it's got a built-in cb radio i'm not who you talk to on cb radio these days i don't even know if truckers still use them but but i love the fact that it's a manual let's fire it up let's see what it sounds like that's right up sounds good oh see the shaker hood look at that 4500 rpm redline but you know i love the dashboard i love the way it's set up let's take it next door put it up on the lift and show what it looks like underneath remember it's not a show car it's a real car you know it sounds good actually just my steering wheel because of the covered restrictions i can't have the crew in the shop part of the garage so i'm shooting this on my iphone it looks a little bit different just like we did during the pandemic edition so okay here we are underneath the transit i think that looks like a replacement gas tank but that's okay that's good to know there's your limited slip tag on the differential there's your uh leaf springs so funny we look at the leaf springs on the old cars like the duesenbergs are like seven or eight here you've got like three or four okay these look like later replacement mufflers looks like they tried to keep as much original stuff as they could don't forget this car is 40 years old but as you can see no rust catalytic converter in place you know we get spoiled in california the carriage stays so nice and clean you know everybody else you get rain and snow and salt but see this is where this is usually the first areas to go right up in here i made a little surface rust on the block but that's nothing that's standard car stuff oh yeah that's a nice straight car i think the odd drain did a smart thing buying this we won't find them as nice as this most of these things are thrashed to have just 20 something thousand miles that's pretty amazing so cool i think we're about ready to uh take it for a ride boy this feels like a lot more than 220 horsepower i guess it's the torque 325 foot-pounds you know i i like this thing i've sort of always made fun of the big chicken on the hood i would lose the chicken but i love the car initial impression you know a manual transmission makes all the difference it just makes it so much fun to drive you got that goofy shaker hood doing this hilarious i love the steering wheel nice small round wheel i like non-airbag wheels they look better i know the airbag is safer but i'm just saying and just a hundred mile an hour spawn where it just makes me laugh a hundred i can do a magic it says ats radial tune suspension and i think there's something to that you know i uh these do handle better than some of the other gm stuff as i mentioned before this was the most successful year for firebird i mean that smoking the bandit well there's a bunch how many more movies two or three hugely successful i mean it it goes good it's okay i was kind of sneakily 20 horsepower but feels all right to me i can't get jerry reid out of my head for those people don't know jay read it he sang the song he's found it down and oh he did a bunch of songs smoking abandoned you know if you were like 10 12 13 years old and that's smoking eventually you came out this was the coolest car in the world and i got your cb ready yeah we got a smoky on my tail if you saw this on bring a trailer you know it sold for about forty thousand dollars which i think was pretty close to a record price for one of these but i can see why it's worth it it feels like a brand new car it's tight it's only got 20 000 miles been babied its whole life the exception of a few things that appears to be all original i don't think it's ever been an accident and you've got every piece of documentation possible in the trunk there just jerk the ties however i was going to say pontiac should bring back the firebird name but even pop pontiac's not around anymore so there you go it's a shame you know i was a huge fan of john deloren before he got arrested for cocaine it was too bad but he really made pontiac division what it is you know it was sort of a dowdy salesman's car didn't really fit in anywhere it was a it was sort of in the low price field as he used to say back in the day and then he made it the performance division with the wide track and making the gto and all of that actually you know this is a very nice motor [Applause] if you told me this was 325 horsepower i believe you pontiac never really built any high horsepower uh firebridge not even close to 400 horsepower i don't believe but it was all about the handling and the braking four-wheel disc brakes i like the red lines at 4 500 rpm that just i know why that makes me smile [Music] you know there's a lot of footage on youtube of tony stewart and i driving the uh firebird on daytona if you google it you know i tried to get it in this video but it's like ten thousand dollars to show it and all kinds of restrictions and it gets a little crazy but this thing wow i take back all those screaming chicken jokes on the hood i used to do i liked it i like this car that's the fun thing about the australian museum all the cars get driven they all get used they get rotated out of the museum if you're ever in newport you should check it out in newport rhode island right there on bellevue avenue it's a small museum and they only have sometimes maybe you know 10 or 12 cars on display at a time but they rotate it and it always has a theme it's very interesting 20 000 miles in 40-something years that's pretty good this thing has been babied its whole life this is something you could drive to vegas or drive with sandwiches going in all day long extremely comfortable and the manual gearbox is what makes it so many people audit the uh automatic transmission but this is this is really good i remember jimmy carter got that law pass that the speedometers can only go to 85 for whatever stupid reason it was during the 55 mile an hour thing so i wonder if they got a special dispensation for 100 miles an hour because it's a performance i don't know i don't know why why that is but it makes me laugh gearbox is very nice collector's very nice i gotta admit when i first saw this i had a little snarky comment oh well you know you know something it seduced me it's great i love this thing i think i like this better than a 79 camaro it's different there aren't as many of them it's just unusual it's a lot of fun see you can't judge a book by its cover this way once you get into your drive here you go and handles nice it feels good i like this thing this was a fast car and it's still a fast car you know it it it's got more power than i thought i really thought it'd be just anemic you know but no it's great it's really good i'm gonna put my foot in it pass the camera truck and see you guys next week [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 603,223

Rating: 4.9582458 out of 5

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Pontiac, Trans Am, Smokey and The Bandit, Burt Reynolds, shaker hood, Jerry Reid, Audrain Automobile Museum, Newport RI, American muscle, sports car, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, 1979 Pontiac Trans Am, 1979 Pontiac, trans am drift, trans am restoration, 1979 Pontiac Trans, pontiac, trans am, jay leno pontiac, jay leno trans am

Id: daALS8jpVmE

Length: 20min 8sec (1208 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DocCaliban]

Got a ticket for going 100 MPH over the speed limit in one of these when I was 17. Good times.