On the way over he tickles the secondaries a couple of time, but never really stands on it. Couldn’t have if my life depended on it sitting on top of all that dirty laundry and baseball equipment.ĭon drove us toward a little traveled road that led to oil fields, and rice farms. I don’t know about the other guys, but I wasn’t buckled up. The first time we took it out Don, was driving, Art was riding shotgun (C’s close friend,) and I was sitting in the backseat on top of C’s dirty laundry and batting bag. Actually, lots, and lots of test drives
You can’t install all of that hardware with out taking it on a test drive to dial everything. Oh yeah, he made the infamous shaker scoop functional. In quick succession headers were installed, and turbo muffler after of the cat, an aluminum intake was fitted, and 780 cfm holley carb topped it all off. Don’s mission (should he choose accept it), was to wake this baby up and keep it emissions legal….mostly. The Trans-Am had serious street cred due to the movie, but the big Pancho had been smothered by mid-70’s emission Regs. C’s parents owned an establishment known simply as The Foxy Lady. It seems that a young man we’ll call “C” had recently received the Trans-Am as a present from his parents. One day during my Junior year of high school I showed up at Don’s and the ultimate teenage fantasy was sitting in the driveway. After a time it only became natural that other hot-rodders sought out Don to work on their rides. No, his real passion was good old American muscle cars. Don didn’t really like working on the Aspens and Volare’s at the local Mopar store. At that time he worked as a mechanic mainly to support his own automotive insanity. Funny thing is that I never even drove the damn thing.ĭuring my fledgling auto-maniacal years, my close friend and mentor was Don.
Translation, the real black and gold bad ass that the ’77 movie car pretended to be. This relationship started with a 1976 SD-455, 4-Speed, Trans-Am SE. But I digress….I’ve always given the Z’s and Trans-Ams high marks in the fun to drive quotient, but I’ve also had several scary experiences with inadequate brakes, annoying rattles, and over-heavy doors that drop on the hinges. Sort of a ships passing in the night thing. I also had a brief weekend affair with a modified ’94 six-speed fourth generation car. I’ve owned multiple first, second and third generation cars. My close friends know that I have love hate relationship going with Camaros and Firebirds. I recently heard that Year One was offering a limited number of restored “Burt Reynolds Edition” Trans-Ams just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the movie. In the summer of 1977 there was nothing cooler than Burt Reynolds and the Trans Am. Today seemed like a good time to share it again. This story was original published over a decade ago.