This would be the third '79 Pontiac Trans Am seen on these pages. The first was a Tenth Anniversary Trans Am, and the second was a Sundance Yellow coupe on the standard Rally II wheels, indicating that the original owner had been pretty stingy with the options list.
Then there's this 1979 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am here...
It's a Starlight Black t-top coupe and pixel-peeping in on the hood, it looks like it has the gold outline around the opening for the shaker hood scoop, indicating it's a Black & Gold Special Edition car. The "TA 6.6" decal on the scoop is the tell that under the hood is the 220 horsepower W72 400 cubic inch Pontiac V-8, rather than the tamer L80 403 cubic inch Oldsmobile Rocket V-8, which made 185 horses and came with a "6.6 LITRE" decal on the scoop.
The car has the iconic 8" wide gold snowflake alloy rims that came with the WS6 performance package, which came shod with 225/70R-15 tires, considered quite meaty at the time. The WS6 package also included rear disc brakes and beefier front and rear sway bars. A Black and Gold Special Edition with the W72 is one of the rarest configurations found on a '79 T/A, with only 1,107 configured thusly.
1979 was the last hurrah for the 400 cubic inch Trans Ams, and the 8,672 W72 motors installed that year in Trans Ams and Formulas were actually hoarded from earlier production. Tighter emissions regs for 1980 meant that the most potent motor in the final Second Generation Firebirds would be the 301 Turbo.
This one was photographed using a Nikon D3 and a 50mm f/1.4 lens in July of 2021.
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