As the muscle car age came to an end, this beautiful green Firebird was there. It’s a time capsule with low mileage and almost perfect shape. In fact, it looks just like the hero car in a long-forgotten John Wayne movie from his later years. The Bring a Trailer sale will end on April 17. John Wayne, who is 66 years old, sags on screen in the 1973 movie McQ, losing a lot of his bossy presence. The tough hero of many a Western didn’t fit well with a hard-boiled detective movie, especially one that seemed like an attempt to cash in on the success of Dirty Harry, which came out two years earlier. However, the old Duke stayed tough. A dark green 1973 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am would be a great car for him to drive. There is an auction today at Bring a Trailer, which is part of Hearst Autos, for a 1973 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am 455 in Brewster Green with the desired four-speed manual transmission. Indeed, the Bandit’s best ride isn’t the most famous screaming fire chicken of its kind. But it’s a perfect end to the era of muscle cars—the last gasp before the first fuel problems in the 1970s. This one is in collector’s shape, painted in its original color, and shows 250 kilometers, but no one knows how far it really went. Restore a Muscle Car (RAMC) of Nebraska, a specialized company that has worked on many Pontiacs, including Bandit-type 1977 cars, has carefully checked it out. It has 15-inch wheels that look like those on the Rally II. This time, Firebird had a terrible grace. It wasn’t clear what the SD-455 meant when Invoice Pricing tried it in May 1973 and called it “the last of the fast cars.” The L75 7.4-liter engine in this 455 had only 250 horsepower when it was new, so it couldn’t keep up with the Super Duty when it was stock. Still, a 370-pound-feet grunt could be heard. Besides that, the normal shade-tree hot rodder could easily start that huge V-8. In 1973, 1,420 people bought a Firebird 455 with a manual gearbox. If Steve McQueen could take off the emblems on his Bullitt Mustang and speed it up, anyone could do the same thing. It was only a short time before big-displacement engines were no longer used in Trans-Am races or street races. The small German cars suddenly did better than the Camaros and Corvettes, even though they had a lot less horsepower and volume. That’s about when OPEC’s ban on oil sales started. The old V-8s were gone (for a while), and small Hondas were all over the place. But I have a small secret to tell you. One of Soichiro Honda’s favorite cars was his own Pontiac Firebird. In Japanese, it’s called “yakitori,” which means “chicken on a stick.” It goes without saying that he would like this huge, attractive green animal. It is, in fact, a relic from a long time ago. It’s hard to stay away from the past when you picture yourself speeding down the road with the V-8 roaring next to the shaker hood in the golden hour, just before dusk. April 17 is the last day of the sale.
