We've had a 1979 Trans Am on here before, but it was the Tenth Anniversary model, which was actually a whole separate model from the regular Firebird, Esprit, Formula, and Trans Am.
In the photo here is a regular W87 Trans Am in Sundance Yellow. This car doesn't have the 8" wide alloy "snowflake" wheels, so the original owner probably didn't opt for the WS6 or WS7 special performance package. That explains the rear drum brakes as well.
The decal on the shaker hood scoop reads "6.6 Litre" rather than "T/A 6.6", so the car was ordered with the base L80 403 cubic inch four-barrel V-8, sourced from Oldsmobile and rated at 185 SAE net horsepower. The L80 only came with the three-speed Turbo Hydramatic TH350 transmission, and, unless you ordered the WS7 package, you got a fuel economy friendly 2.41:1 rear end to go with it.
Needless to say, a Trans Am optioned like the one in the picture was no bolt of lightning.
They were wildly popular, though. Of the 211,453 Firebirds sold for the 1979 model year, a full 117,108... well more than half ...were Trans Ams. Subtract the seven thousand odd Tenth Anniversary cars, and that's 110k regular Trans Ams. Of those, 89,040 had the Olds V-8 and a slushbox.
This one was photographed with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and an M. Zuiko Digital 12-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens in October of 2024.
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