- This gorgeous green Firebird witnessed the end of the muscle car era.
- Uwith collector mileage and in near mint condition, it is a time capsule – and a match for the hero car from a forgotten John Wayne movie made during the actor’s own twilight era.
- The Bring a Trailer online auction ends on April 17th.
In the 1973 film McQ, a John Wayne, 66, slouches across the screen with little of his former authoritative charisma. The laconic hero of many Westerns was ill-suited to a hard-boiled detective, especially one that seemed made to cash in on the success of Dirty Harry, issued two years earlier. But the old duke still had courage. And when he got behind the wheel of a dark green ’73 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, he couldn’t have picked a more fitting ride.
It’s up for auction today at Bring a Trailer (which as Car and Driveris part of Hearst Autos) is a Brewster Green 1973 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am 455 with the desirable four-speed manual transmission. Yes, this is not the most famous screaming fire chicken of the breed; this would be the Bandit’s preferred ride. But as a last hurray before the first of the 1970 fuel crises, it’s one hell of a good-looking muscle-era bookend.
This particular one is a collector’s item, painted in its factory color and showing 250 miles, but the actual mileage is unknown. Fitted with 15-inch Rally II-style wheels, it has been meticulously machined by Restore a Muscle Car (RAMC) of Nebraska, a specialty shop that has machined many Pontiacs, Bandit-style 1977 models among them.
There is a brutal elegance to this era of Firebird. The SD-455 has been tested by Car and Driver in May 1973 and was announced with some sadness as “the last of the fast cars”. This 455 couldn’t match the performance of the Super Duty when it was available, as its L75 7.4-liter engine was rated at just 250 horsepower when new.
Still, the growl was there, about 370 pound-feet of it. Plus, uncorking that big V-8 wasn’t out of reach for your average shady hot rodder. If Steve McQueen could take the badges off his Bullitt Mustang and put it on, then so could every one of the 1,420 people who ordered a manual transmission Firebird 455 in 1973.
The writing for large-displacement engines was on the wall by 1973, not just on the street, but in Trans-Am racing itself. Suddenly, Porsches were beating Camaros and Corvettes, and the small German cars were doing it with far less power and displacement. When the OPEC oil embargo hit, that was pretty much it.
Small Hondas were all over the road, and V-8 dinosaurs were ready (for a while). But you want to know a little secret? One of Soichiro Honda’s favorite cars was his own Pontiac Firebird. He called it “Yakitori,” Japanese for skewered chicken.
So you’ll know that even he would love this big, beautiful green beast. Of course, it is a relic of a time that has ended. But imagine cruising down the road in the golden hour just before sunset, with that vibrator hood growling along with the V-8, and the allure of yesteryear is hard to resist.
The auction ends on April 17.
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He grew up cracking his knuckles on British cars, came of age in the golden age of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machines, whether Walter Cronkite’s racing career or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift in a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to forever buy Hot Wheels.
