A Life Changing Event

This is a 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am SE in the traditional black, just like The Bandit's. In the summer of '77, I was in the market for my first new car since '68. I was driving what I called The Inconspicuousmobile at the time, a 1969 Impala four-door sedan with a 350 and Turbo-Hydramatic. It was light brown with a white top and an equally bland interior. When it needed a $600 AC repair, I decided I needed something closer to my roots. My roots vary quite widely in some circles, from high economy to high performance. All that I all ask of any car is that it have somewhat clean, timeless styling and drive with the precision of quality engineering in the handling and interior ergonomics departments.

A friend of mine who was the son of a Pontiac dealer had a new Trans Am in 1970 when they came in only one color, white with blue stripes, so I was very familiar with the breed. Both my mom and sister drove new Celicas. I remember going with my mom to a Pontiac dealer and seeing a T/A 6.6 in brown on the showroom floor. Mom commented that she could certainly envision me in that car! I replied that I could, too, except mine would be white inside and out with the gold-trimmed SE package and a four-speed manual transmission. Of course it would have the T-top and screaming chicken options, just like the brown one in the showroom.

There are three main drawbacks to any T/A of this vintage, particularly one with the SE package and Screaming Chicken decal on the hood. (1) You must wear gold chains around your neck with your shirt unbuttoned when you frequent the local disco. (2) You cannot carry squat on a long trip. (3) The CEO of Exxon will love you! If you can make it over these three hurdles, it's all downhill from there. The T/A looks, drives and acts like a car should, and the price is reasonable. Since I have never been one to give a rat's ass what other people think, #1 didn't bother me much, but #'s 2 and 3 did. I bought a 1977 Toyota Corolla Liftback SR-5 instead. It had a five-speed transmission, styled steel wheels, stiff suspension, a good interior design, and it carried lots of stuff in its pseudo-station wagon motif. The problem was that it got 27 mpg at its very best on the highway and 17 mpg around town was downright common! This meager result from only 75 horsepower haunted me every day I owned that car!

Little did I know in the summer of 1977 that less than one year later I would land a traveling job that would provide me with an included new lease car for each of the next twelve years. It wasn't long before I realized that I had nothing to lose by thumbing my nose at both Exxon and luggage capacity in my personal car. The SR-5 with low mileage got sold to an old friend and I bought Max, named after Mad Max, but later referred to as simply Baby. She was a 1970 454 four-speed Stingray that inspired the publication of my first book. I owned this beautiful beast for eighteen years. You see, the traveling job did not allow for the development of many long-term relationships. I wanted the old Corvette as much for the companionship of a local Corvette Club as anything else, and Max/Baby did a fine job of delivering on that promise. Max could get 17 mpg on the highway, and that was quite good enough when she was only a secondary vehicle of transportation.

The 1970 Stingray had a removable rear window, chrome bumpers, high-compression engine, and a Kamm tail, all things I valued highly at the time. The 1977 Corvette was quite a turkey with its plastic-coated, sloped rear bumper, fixed glass rear window, and low-performance, small-block engine. I was actually unaware at the time how much I would later appreciate the 1980 Corvette, another one of my favorite model years, but that's another story. (Go buy Plastic Ozone Daydream: it's in there.) The '77 T/A 6.6, on the other hand, was the last of a proud breed. It already had the fastback rear with more luggage space in both the rear seat and trunk. The T-tops were a popular option, and the 400-cubic-inch engine was still available. I even liked the wheels and color choices better on the T/A than the Corvette in 1977, not to mention that it was $2000 cheaper.

I left out a detail just to build the suspense. Surprisingly, the Corvette club in Dallas has never been a national powerhouse, but the ones in Fort Worth and Austin were two of the largest and strongest in the country, and I assume they still are today. I was getting a little weary of the sheer massive size of The Metroplex, and due to the job and old friends in Austin, was actually spending more time there than in my own city of Dallas! I moved to Austin in early '80 and bought Max and joined the club before the year was out. Twenty years later I would re-publish all my stories from the Corvette Club Newsletter in an edited book format. I would do this from my home in Austin that I shared with the wonderful native Austinite I married in 1997. She finally got me interested in computers after I had avoided them like the plague for decades. We are now retired and live happily and quietly out in the Texas Hill Country in a house I designed on my computer, and I am working on my fifth book. None of this would have happened if I had simply bought a white 1977 T/A 6.6.