The REAL Story of the Pontiac Firebird Hood Bird!

[Music] it's family name Firebird an Indian symbol that promises youth Beauty and strength and in 1977 the Pontiac transan is destined to become America's number one sports car oh the Big Bird interestingly enough that that was a good thing that happened for all the wrong reasons the Firebird emblem that had been on the first generation car that Jack Humber did was derived from I think it was a hopai hopai Indian uh bird it had it had its arms down and its head turned to one side and the guys used to call it the sick chicken um which was you know just not what I wanted on on an allnew car I didn't want a a s i I I I respected the fact that it was from Indian symbolism for the fire bird you know the bird that was going to rise from the plams but it definitely had not risen from the Flames when its wings were down and its head was turned and its eye was closed so um to get away from the sick chicken image I immediately thought if we're doing a new car here we should have a bird with its wings up it should have Victory it should be it should be rising from the Flames or whatever and then it also occurred to me I TI some Tiffany vases that I had had collected by that time had these beautiful feather like patterns on them just Exquisite like flam like feathers and it just you know kind of connected in my mind since I was collecting that as a hobby oh gee W how could if I could plug in those Flamel likee feathers into the wings of this bird and the wings are going up you know you'd get and it was an American Source Tiffany was a great American designer it just seemed like a a reasonable thing to to do so I developed these little feathered wings I think I doodled them on a on a napkin at lunch one day and was playing yeah oh yeah that looks pretty good so the wings be the feathers became these little Tiffany flame things and I gave the whole little napkins Doodles over to a young graphic designer in our Graphics Department a fell named norm inaway and Norm developed it into the U into the [Music] bird I was sitting there one day at lunch and I thought wait a minute what if I made that bird huge and wrap the Wings around that uh scoop it would graphically it would pull it back into the car so I taped one on on one of on the clay model I taped one on wow so I um went down to the paint shop I taped the uh the bird or half a bird I went back up to the studio or went on to lunch or something something and I'd forgot to tell Bill Mitchell the big her big boss the vice president that I was that come up with this big bird idea well what would happen the worst possible thing that could happen was that bill would walk in the paint shop and see that bird on the hood that's what happened so when I got back to the studio after lunch my secretary was she was in a sweat she said bill you got to call Mitchell immediately so I did and Bill start bill was a poet of profanity he could think of more profane things to say in a shorter sentence than anybody and I had to actually hold the phone away he was screaming and hollering get that blankety blankety blankety bird off the hood it looks like a blankety blankety blankety Macy's truck a Macy's truck I didn't know what a Macy's truck looked like I still don't and anyway the bird came off the hood immediately so that was the end of the bird and about I guess a year or two later um John chanella who was after the studios were divided and I was no longer involved with the firebird John saw the bird and made some little refinements made it the Flames even more uh I think even more fluid and sort of delicate uh and he had he on the idea of showing bill that design and trying to resell him on it how that started is Bill Davis and I were talking one day and I said you know we do typical Stripes over the hood and over the top of the car and the typical cars all have those I said we need something different so we got talking I said maybe you should take the bird which is the ambulance and make a large decal for the hood nobody's done that before we own it it's ours so bill went over to one of these 20ft board WS put put a vinyl over the engineering drawing of the hood and started taping nobody could make a decal that big it was too wide so they made it in two pieces so I was driving a red Trans Am at the time and we took the uh hood decal after they made it and put it on my car and I took that car out a couple nights and drove out up and down Woodward in the summer to the totem pole to gas stations uh eer all that stuff and the reaction of the young people people was amazing and uh I'd come back down Woodward the other side and I said this is too good this something we got something here and so I took it to work and uh we talked to people about it talked a little bit about Pontiac with it nobody thought we was serious and uh then uh Mitchell had a black uh and gold motorcycle and that theme came from the John player Grand Prix car the the uh cigarette package was black with gold stripes and uh I decided to do a black car and put the stripes on it we parked it outside with his motorcycle I don't know if John was aware of the time of how lient Bill had been when he had killed it the first time but in any case called up Bill and said they and put them down he parked them both down on the tarmac right below Bill's office Bill's office was on the second floor you look right down and see the car and his racer Cafe Racer bike and called him up and said hey Bill look out the window and Bill looked out the window and like wow that's really cool probably totally either totally forgetting that he had chewed me out six ways from Sunday for doing this a year earlier or maybe he the black and gold did it whatever did it John had pulled off a a masterpiece of you know salesman ship he didn't buy it right away he didn't say anything negative so then I decided that we need to sell that to Pontiac and Chuck Jordan at the time who had switched to Chevrolet and uh Pontiac under Mitchell he said good idea so he did a white one a blue one and a red one we took it over to the auditorium put the spotlights on them we had the whole Pontiac management team there so we stood there and I gave the pitch and I could see some grimacing in the background some people said I'm out of my mind it must be and uh finally the general manager said you know what guys John may have something here why don't we offer it as an option of course being a zealot I wanted it standed for every car and so they said okay let's do that bill Mitchell uh decided to pull a 1972 Pontiac TransAm off the Norwood assembly line and it was a white car and had crew cruise control and pretty well loaded out and they put it in the Pontiac Design Center they wanted to study uh whether or not they could get the Hood bird on the car they painted it pearl white on the exterior and they had the matching interior in pearl white which you never see leather in pearl white the seats were oversized and real comfortable and then it had the soft carpet in it like Bill Mitchell did on a lot of the cars what I really like about it it has the blue pin striping that they didn't put on the the tell the special editions you know they the black cars had the gold pen striping but this has baby blue pen striping Dash and then it has the small bird on it but driving this car around is what he decided okay I'll allow him to put a bird on the car so then they started building them out Norwood and they took me out to Norwood and I think it was to rub my nose in it that it was too difficult to do and too complicated to to execute Etc Etc I don't really know I don't remember I just went out there knowing I've got to look at what they want to do so as I'm walking towards where they put the bird on the hood I'm watching the hoods come down the assembly line the different colors the Shaker cut out and I'm looking in the distance I see the hoods going away with birds on I didn't see any with no birds I'm thinking hm so we get down and it's a dark corner of the plan there's two guys there and they had the box at the decals came in as a bench cardboard box they' take the hood down lay it on the box and the decals were rolled up over on a little table they take the substrate off put the bird on the hood throw the substrate down the shaker hood hole and clip it back on the zbl line it was dark there there was no lighting and they said well you see John how difficult this is it's uh the lighting's poor it's hard to do and blah blah blah and I said interesting point but I said you know if you look at all these hoods coming down to the station they have no birds and isn't amazing as they going away they all have Birds on I said somebody has ordered those they're an option that's money Pontiac makes money the company makes money and they said yeah okay and I said you know actually these guys are doing a great job why don't we get them some lighting and a better bench to put the hood on so that they don't have trouble and uh so we finished finished the conversation and that was it we kept the bird a huge thanks to Bill Porter and John chanella for sitting down with us to talk about some noteworthy high points and their amazing careers these guys are directly responsible for so many of the automotive designs we love today as collectors and enthusiasts original Motorcar is a new channel and we can't thank you enough for watching we're in search of the automotive world's best stories and we're determined to bring interesting history engaging profile pieces and captivating documentaries to you right here on this channel so the biggest Thanks goes to you our viewing audience for showing us your support by viewing sharing liking and subscribing if you like the content we're producing please tap the like button and leave a comment subscribe for new regular content and share this video with anyone else you know that's into anything automotive and in return we'll continue to make the very best content we can these interviews come from a larger documentary project were creating about the GM Norwood assembly plant that was in Norwood Ohio it was the birthplace of the Chevrolet Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am it also happened to be the first expansion plant that GM built outside of Michigan the first plant that produced cars for GM 24 hours a day the first use robotic welding the list goes on and on it's an important piece of history and we're bringing that story out with your continued support so if you're interested in checking out more about that particular documentary project go to Norwood legends.com and if that website ever changes or updates to a different URL we'll put that in the description below so tell us what you think about the infamous Hood bird we've all seen them and you probably love them or hate them so let us know in the comments and most of all thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: Original MotorCar

Views: 143,425

Keywords: Firebird, Automotive, Graphics, Design, Graphic Design, General Motors, History, Smokey and the Bandit, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Screaming Chicken, Fire Chicken, Hood Bird, Pontiac

Id: LGmbemezL_4

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 13 2023