From a purely personal perspective I think that the 1973 Pontiac Firebird is the best looking one of the entire line’s existence. It was also the first to have the awesome middle finger to the government, dying gasp of the muscle car era 455 Super Duty engine available. In this video, which is not “high def” quality a narrator takes us through the Firebird lineup for ’73. From the base model to the Esprit, Formula, and Trans Am. They show the cars getting put through their paces at the GM Proving Grounds, they show the cars being beaten like rented mules and most importantly they spend a whole segment with a young Herb Adams.

Adams was the special projects manager for Pontiac at the time and he takes us for a guided tour through a cutaway version of a 455 SD engine. He talks about the rods, the cam, valves, etc. He also talks about the increases in power that the engine promises, which are kind of hilarious because what that engine was rated for and what it actually produced were very different things. We had soda shoot out of our nose when he says that the 455 SD provides 10% more power than other 455ci engines of the day. It was slightly more than that. HA!

Other scenes to watch are the test driver slamming a Firebird between drive and reverse at full throttle a whole bunch of times, smoking the tires in both directions. This was “transmission testing” apparently. Man, we wish we had THAT guy’s job! The whole video is really cool and even if you are not exactly a Pontiac or Firebird fan you’ll like it because of the period nature of the thing and what’s better than seeing some classic cars getting hammered on.

I think I am going to publicly commit to making a second gen Pontiac Firebird my next project after Buford.

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO WATCH THIS NEAT MOMENT IN TIME FROM 1973 — HERB ADAMS HAS THE SD CHAT AT ABOUT 3:00 IN!