1977 Pontiac Can Am - I Know. As If

Here's something you don't see everyday and you didn't see that many of them in the late Seventies either. It's not a Pontiac Grand Am, Grand Prix or Lemans, although it shares a lot of DNA with those cars, but a 1977 Pontiac Can Am. Excuse me, a what?

A one-year-only, 1977 Pontiac Can Am. Technically a 1977 1/2 Cam Am while we're at it and it's supposedly a mashup of the then current Pontiac Grand Prix and Trans Am; although it's based on a LeMans Sport Coupe. If you're of my certain, ahem, vintage, and you appreciate automobiles from your woe-be-gotten wonder years, you may have a proclivity to go bonkers over these things. I know I have, on occasion, done so. It's no "Smokey and The Bandit Trans Am" but us beggars born in the hey-day of the muscle car era, meaning by the time we came of driving age they were all but dead and buried, can't be choosers. 

Pontiac introduced these cars halfway through the 1977 model-year as either a re-imagining of the Pontiac GTO or a literal big send off to their intermediate sized coupes that were about to be hacked into upsized compacts. Legend has it Detroit ad man Jim Wangers, many give credit to Mr. Wangers for marketing the original GTO when he was Pontiac's public relations director, who approached Pontiac management with the idea of a Pontiac LeMans dressed up akin to a Carnival Red or orange, 1969 GTO Judge. The original inspiration was a 1975 Pontiac Grand Am decorated in a Bicentennial motif; that car never saw production. Can't blame Wangers as he was part of the team that came up with the GTO Judge in the first place.  Perhaps he saw the downsized, 1978 Pontiac mid-size models and thought these outgoing cars needed to go out guns blazing. 

Pontiac "suits" were not amused. When Wangers came back with a LeMans in Cameo white like the Grand Am Bicentennial car, tri-color stripes, body-colored rims and the shaker hood from the Trans Am, somewhat amazingly considering the era, they greenlighted the production of 5,000 Can Am's. 

The car was named after the Canadian American Cup Series races and were "special builds". They had the sportier looking dash from the then-current Grand Prix and the 220-horsepower, 6.6-liter (400-cubic inch) Trans Am engine; California and high-altitude areas got the 185-horse, Oldsmobile "403". They were shipped to Wangers' "Motortown" facility where they cut a hole in the hood, fitted the engine with the Trans Am's "Shaker" hood, applied the decals and installed the all-important fiberglass rear spoiler. The machine that made the spoilers broke after 1,377 were made and production ground to halt.  Apparently, you can't have no Cam Am with no rear spoiler. 

I have my doubts this a "real" Can Am, though. The exterior stripes are missing, good luck finding those, and that's a steering wheel from a Grand Prix and not the one found on other Can Am's. I doubt that's a dashboard for a Grand Prix as well. As far as the engine goes, Pontiac's non-Trans Am 400-cubic inch V-8 was available for 1977 on the LeMans as well. So was their far less powerful "350" and (new-for'77) 301 engines. But who knows. Jim Wangers has said there are a number of "Can Am clones" out there too. 

Why anyone would go through the trouble of cloning a 1977 1/2 Pontiac Can Am is anyone's guess. The lack of the stripes is disheartening, though. Especially on something with a Facebook Marketplace ask of $13,000. I know. As if. Take it from me, when you own a car this old that's had multiple owners, you're not only dealing with what you want to do it or have done, but what its myriad other owners have done to it too. I you're interested comment below. I'd triple check the build codes and VIN number.