Ford's Mustang stole a march on the rest of Detroit. The quickest response to leaked news of the upcoming close-coupled little 2+2 coupe from Dearborn was from Plymouth, who put slapped a glass fastback and bucket seats onto their Valiant coupe and dubbed it the "Barracuda" and actually squeaked it into showrooms ahead of Ford's Falcon-based sales juggernaut.
Actual purpose-built competition for the original pony car wouldn't come until the 1967 model year, when GM launched the Chevrolet Camaro and its F-body sibling from Pontiac, the Firebird.
The F-bodies made use of extensive mechanicals from the Chevy Nova compact, to include the entire front subframe, mated to attractive coke-bottle contoured unibodies. Following the established pony car pattern, they were affordable coupes with small-but-useable rear seats and available in a variety of trims from mild and thrifty to hairy and snarly.
This was still the era when every GM division still had their own engines, and the '68 Firebird convertible in the photo would have been available with several different powerplants.
The base Firebird, "the nifty, thrifty" one in the brochure's ad copy, would have come with the 250 cubic inch SOHC inline six with a one-barrel carb, making 175 SAE gross horsepower. Then there was the Firebird Sprint, advertised as being the European-flavored variant, which had a 4-barrel 215hp version of the inline six and came with a floor shifter, hood tach, and heavy duty suspension.
The standard V-8 was Pontiac's small journal 350, available in 2-barrel form with 265 horses or the H.O. version, which had a 4-barrel carb and a 10.5:1 compression ratio and made 320 ponies. Top of the line was the 400 cube small journal V-8, in three levels of tune: The standard 400 rated at 330, the H.O. at 335, and the Ram Air 400, mysteriously also only making 335 horsepower, which must have surely placated insurance companies.
Car and Driver's test of a 1967 Firebird ragtop with the base 400 and a 4-speed returned a 5.8 second zero-to-sixty run and a 14.4 quarter mile at 100mph.
The one in the photo was snapped with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and a Panasonic Leica 12-60mm f/2.8-4 zoom lens in August of 2024.
It looks like the hood has scoops, which if original would make it a Firebird 400. Hopefully its restoration has continued!
ReplyDeleteI'm keeping my eyes peeled.
DeleteI got to watch that Sprite get driven through its restoration, so it'd be cool if I could get a series of this one, too.