Purpose built, high performance cars that force their drivers and occupants to make supreme sacrifices in comfort are all but non existent these days. Today's "pony cars" are so refined and easy to live with they might as well be cross over sport utility vehicles. So, imagine my delight when I came across this "fourth generation" Pontiac Trans Am last weekend. I don't know what model year it is but I do know it's a '93-'97 based on its front end.
I was also happy to see that instead of being some painfully original "trailer queen", our subject here, at least at one time during it's very long life, was in the hands of someone who really appreciated what they had here. These cars and their corporate twins, the Chevrolet Camaro, never came with a Hurst Shifter option. The Hurst replacing the annoying GM "skip shift" manual that forced drivers to shift from first to fourth rather than go into second under light throttle; all in the interest of fuel economy. While it was fairly straight forward to disable, someone here went instead to the extreme of swapping in the Hurst. You see its handle in all its chrome glory to the right of the steering wheel.
I'll stop short of heaping further praise upon the Hurst Shifter swap since someone, not necessarily the person who did the swap, also saw to it to festoon their car with these badges. Who cares?
Oh. And what is that on the hood? Is that what I think it is? Yes it is. A "screaming chicken" hood decal. "Snowman, what's your 20?"
Granted, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and no doubt this hood bird was applied with the best of intentions but still, instead of looking cool, it looks home made and any shred of "cool" goes flying out the T-tops. A quick search on ebay uncovered several choices of "laughing phoenix" decals that are replica's of the iconic '70's 'birds that decorated second generation T/A's. They certainly look like they'd fit neatly on the narrower hood of our fourth gen T/A here. Makes you wonder.
Pontiac first offered the hood decal, it's a stylized phoenix not a chicken, on 1973 Trans Am's. The idea behind it was to make the inverted shaker in the middle of the hood appear as though it belongs there. I don't get that - I think the shaker would look fine without it. Although, I have to admit that somehow, someway, the hood decal works gloriously well on these cars.
It got larger in subsequent model years. The largest of them being festooned on the "Smokey and the Bandit" cars featured in the 1977 movie blockbuster. By the way, Pontiac did not offer the hood decal on third or fourth generation Trans Am's.
I hung around for several minutes hoping the owner would appear. No such luck. Love to get the story behind the car, the Hurst Shifter and most importantly, this hood decal. No doubt it's going to be a good one.
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