200 MPH in a Trans Am. Not Kidding!

There have been at least two Firebirds built to break 200 mph.  Back in 1984 the guys at Car and Driver got Gale Banks, a California hot rodder, to modify a Firebird Trans Am that they took to Mrs. Orcutt's driveway in the desert and tried mightily to do it.  The obscure roadway was a flat, straight, two-lane frontage road that connected the independent woman's California-desert house to the nearest Interstate-40 entrance/exit.  It was four miles long and free of traffic and damage.  It was built as required by law for her when the new highway cut her off from the old Rte. 66.

After at least two unsuccessful attempts, two engine rebuilds, and major improvements to the cooling system, the radar gun registered 196 mph.  Banks wasn't satisfied and dialed in more turbo boost and worked another trick or two.  This time the car was claimed to have hit 204 mph before a small bushing in the distributor failed and the spark-timing advanced too much causing detonation and the immediate disintegration of the V8 engine.  Nevertheless they succeeded in converting an American muscle car into a road machine that none of the exoticars at the time could catch, regardless of the pedigree or sticker price.


Most of the Car and Driver report can be read at

http://www.bankspower.com/magazines/show/640-super-trans-am

where there is a pdf available by clicking at the bottom of the web page.


Two things are for sure: 1. the Firebird was an adequate and inexpensive platform to convert into a supercar beater, and 2. the Car and Driver guys were either very brave or escapees from the asylum.  I rather think it was the latter.  They were nuttier than the test pilots to the north at Muroc.  


A second 200+ mph Firebird was built by Polly Motorsport of Norway in about 2008.  While still street legal in Europe and looking like a normal Trans Am with a body kit, it was definitely a special car .  The engine produced 1400 bhp which propelled the car over 407 kph or 252 mph at the Papenburg, Germany, test track.  That's as fast as James May went in a Bugatti Veyron in the BBC's Top Gear show, Series 9, Episode 2.  

Polly Motorsport claimed the 1987 Pontiac could go even faster, but I don't know if they ever demonstrated it, and unlike the Veyron, it didn't cost over $1 million.  There have been lots of drag racing Firebirds that could go faster than this car, but they were useless anywhere but on a drag strip.  This car could serve for grocery store runs or taking the kids to school, then a spin  by the Salt Flats for an attempt on a world speed record.  What a machine!  See it at
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/22/europes-fastest-street-legal-car-is-a-252-mph-pontiac-trans/
and on Youtube hitting 200 mph
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWl6QGcJOf0

Stories like these demonstrate why F-body cars were beloved by so many.  Cheap speed couldn't look better or be more available to the common man.  Contrary to the clenched fist inscriptions on lavatory stall dividers, PTTP  means "Performance to the Plebes."  F-body cars delivered that for so many over about four decades.  Even now it lives on in the new Camaro, a car that looks retro, but actually derives from the very non-F-body Holden Commodore of Australia.