I was walking after work to meet a college buddy who I hadn’t seen since the ’90s, when this Firebird convertible passed me on Michigan Avenue. It can be both thrilling and frustrating when a nice car zooms past me moving in my same direction before I can get a decent shot of it. I scrambled to get a few frames of its aft view before a stoplight mercifully afforded me a few more frames. I don’t have anything too cerebral to say here, but I wanted to share a few pictures and some of my impressions of Pontiac’s F-Body that have been reinforced over the years.
Compared with its Chevrolet Camaro platform-mate, the Firebird had always managed to add something just a little extra. In my opinion and speaking only of aesthetics, it’s the first-generation of F-body siblings that seems the least differentiated. However, as the early Camaro (while not an unattractive car) looked fairly generic and lacked the strong identity of a Mustang, Barracuda, or even a Javelin, the Firebird brought some flavor. Its slatted taillights would become a Firebird hallmark for years, and its beak-like prow did, indeed, make the car look very much like a menacing, predatory bird.
While there were certainly mean-and-muscular looking Camaros throughout the years, the Formula, GTA, and Trans Am (especially the hallowed SD-455) versions of the Firebird seemed to really bring the ‘tude by looking (and often being) just a little “badder” than the comparable Chevy. If the Camaro was “American Bandstand”, the Firebird was “Soul Train”. The Firebird was Lawry’s seasoned salt versus Morton’s, Rice-A-Roni versus Uncle Ben’s, or Goofus versus Gallant (though unlike Goofus, the Firebird never, ever relented and seemed apologetic about being in your face).
This example is one of just under 17,000 Firebird convertibles produced for ’68, out of just over 107,000 Firebirds total that year. Either number isn’t spectacular compared to what would follow roughly a decade later, with Firebird sales exploding by the late ’70s, led by the popularity of the Trans Am which arguably had become an American cultural icon. (Firebird sales peaked in ’79, with over 211,000 produced, about half of which were Trans Ams.) Our featured car is notable for being a convertible – a bodystyle which would depart after ’69 and not return until ’87, through a somewhat complicated ordering procedure involving American Sunroof Company, who performed the operation on t-tops equipped cars.
Few cars of this era don’t look good on Cragars, just like it’s hard to look bad wearing Ray Ban Wayfarers. I hope this guy got to where he was going with his Firebird intact in Chicago’s rush hour traffic. He seemed to be doing just fine, kickin’ it old-school. After all, he and his Firebird are the cool kids – and rushing anywhere has always been the opposite of cool.
Downtown Chicago, Illinois.
Tuesday, May 24, 2016.
Related reading from:
- Tom Klockau (I feel like I should start writing him royalty checks!): Curbside Classic: 1967 Pontiac Firebird Convertible – Dig That Aqua Paint!; and
- Paul Niedermeyer: Classic Curbside Classic: 1968 Firebird 400 – Reliving Childhood Memories, Twice Daily.
Fabulous essay, Joe. I think you nailed this car’s essence. I would add “The Jackson 5 with Michael to the Osmond Brothers with Donnie.” 🙂
It is interesting to me, who was a kid when these were new, how seldom you saw black cars then. But black was always available and for the few that came that way, they were stunning.
I wouldn’t exactly call our black stripper Fairlane “stunning” 🙂
But I know what you mean. I high trim black car, especially if it was clean and well polished, always got the looks and let the world know you cared about what you drove.
This car, albeit with a hard top was the one my ex just had to have. We drove it in Panama for a year. It was easy to sell in 76 as they seemed pretty popular with the used car “go fast” crowd. Pass anything but a gas station with that 350/4bbl,
Great catch!
Funny you should mention the ASC conversions from the Firebird’s 3rd generation, because I’m writing a CC on just such a car now (below). It’s even black too, the early-90s version of your featured ’68 here.
The complicated thing is that the 1987-89 ASC convertibles were not “officially” produced. ASC produced Camaro convertibles, which were official GM products, but for Firebirds, customers had to send their own cars to ASC. Oddly, this was done with the consent of GM (and they were still covered under GM’s warranty), and done through Pontiac dealers. Very unusual arrangement.
For 1991-92 (which is the year of the car below), these were in fact official GM products, also converted by ASC, but the cars were plucked from the assembly line, rather than having finished cars converted. For the 1987-89 Firebird convertibles, there’s no indication on the VIN that it’s a convertible.
It’s amazing to me that the Firebird convertible — an American icon — took a 20-year hiatus.
Thanks, Eric!
I am so glad I didn’t inadvertently overstep what you are going to write about – I’m looking forward to reading your piece. While doing a little research on the Firebird convertibles, it was then that I discovered some of the unusual aspects of the third-gen models.
I really need to research more about ASC – they were responsible for many mild customs and models I’ve admired over the years.
Turns out the history of ASC is pretty fascinating — it was a one-man shop that turned into an industry-leading company in less than 2 decades. I’m planning to include a few paragraphs about ASC in my Firebird write-up, but it’s such a compelling story that it deserves a full article of its own here someday.
No better way to show off your man bun!
I was going to comment on that. Ugh.
Notice the wall of mommy mobile SUVs/CUVs behind the Firebird, That did not exist in 1968.
No, they just drove big station wagons.
I might like this one even better than I like my ’74, but I’ll take any Firebird between ’67 and ’78. The only thing I’d add to this one is door handles (and yeah, the driver needs to lose the man bun…when did that become a thing?). 🙂
The shaved door handles…Aaron, if you hadn’t pointed this out, I wouldn’t have noticed. Wow. Thanks!
Just a week ago I passed a 1st generation Firebird hardtop. That one was a white Sprint with a red midline stripe. To me, the Firebird has always been the more “dramatic” of the 2 “F” bodies….though not always better because of it. The 91s, and newer models are a bit too….”over the top” for my tastes.
BTW, VERY apt descriptions of how a Camaro differs from a Firebird and the main reason why I decided a Firebird WASN’T going to replace my J2000.
The original Camaro really was very bland and generic, in its details. The Firebird was a huge improvement, given the shared body, and quite exciting at the time. I really wanted a Sprint Firebird, with the four-barrel OHC six, not surprisingly, although the 400 was quite compelling too.
About a year ago while “exploring” a few of the small towns in Florida I saw a 67 or 68 Firebird convertible. It was triple black with an OHC 6 and sitting in the parking lot of a tire store. No Sprint, and no idea which transmission it had, but I really wished I could have seen what the owner looked like. A man, a woman, young or old?
I think the distinction, from a conceptual standpoint, was that the Camaro was designed to facilitate Chevrolet’s usual merchandising strategy of making most of the interesting details more or less à la carte, packaged into a bunch of different “Appearance Group” options. Obviously, if you want to make people pay extra for hidden headlights and fake velocity stacks on the hood, the basic car needs to not have stuff like that. (Given how prolific all those little appearance options were on most Chevrolet models in this era, I’m assuming they were a big profit-maker.)
Pontiac, of course, loved option-merchandising too, but they were also challenged to make sure even the base Firebird looked different from the Camaro without changing most of the basic sheet metal. So, they had to come up with various ways to distract passers by from saying, “Wait, isn’t that just a Camaro with a Pontiac badge?” Of course, Jack Humbert was (is? I have no idea if he’s still alive) very good at that kind of detailing, but that was basically all Pontiac had to work with on the original F-body.
If I recall correctly, DeLorean asked for and received permission from GM management to delay the introduction of the Firebird for a few months. He wanted extra time to better differentiate it from its corporate sibling. The Firebird thus debuted in early 1967, not the fall of 1966.
gorgeous car. love the black on red it just pops. i had one of these years ago but a real 400 w the th400 tranny. (this one has a standard front end) i enjoyed that car for many reasons – convertible, fast, styling but i hated the rust factor and the fuel mileage only 11mpg uphill, downhill, with the wind or against it, it did not matter.
this one has an aftermarket rear spoiler which i always wanted but never purchased or put on. a set of redline tires would look really good with the red pinstriping and red interior.
ah dreams …….
I completely agree with you that the color combo (black w/ red interior) looks really fantastic. Your ideas for accessorizing with red pinstriping and redline tires would take this car to the next, great level. This color combo is almost like a metaphor for hot coals amid black embers – the “fire” in “Firebird”. I dig it.
Redlines with the Cragars this car wears would make it look like an old Hot Wheels car, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Can’t go wrong with black on red with Cragars on this beautiful ’68 Firebird. Pontiac really did do the F body the best back in the day. Grandma had a ’68 Camaro convertible. Nice car, but was in the frost green on green color (with white top) that was popular during the period, but never was one of the better colors. She really looked cool in it just the same.
Look Mommy That man has 2 heads!
What a nice and rare find. I have always myself preferred the Firebird over the Camaro, both 1st and 2nd gen. ’82-up F bodies were a complete and total waste of perfectly good steel.
Sweet looking car, although it sits a little too high on its haunches—particularly in front. Granted, my judgment may be slightly impaired from seeing so many low-riders in recent years, but this malady seems to afflict a lot of first-gen Camaros and Firebirds.
I was thinking the same thing. Seems to be riding a bit high. In my autoshop class back in 1980, some of the guys rebuilt the suspension on 68 Camaro and it sat like this. Turned out they had done something wrong, don’t remember what now, but it sat real high and rode like a buckboard.
That’s a day 2 restomod look it seems, I see a lot of high sitting muscle cars on Cragars or torque thrusts going for some sort 70s look. I actually kind of like it personally, it beats the hell out of that Foose style frame dragging rubber band tired look that most restomodders think is so cool.
I noticed that too. My guess is he lifted it a bit to clear those wide tires.
For my eye, it needs to be lower, just looks more menacing. If wide tires are the reason it’s sitting so high, tub it. Not horribly expensive.
Personally, even though I don’t like the lift I’d never tub a car like this, assuming it’s otherwise pretty original. Tubbing is also a lot more involved than a lift.
That is just simply beautiful. I’ve often said that the 1968 Pontiacs were the absolute pinnacle of the design prowess that came out of that division. It’s a totally arguable point, but I’m very biased toward the ’68’s for a number of reasons. I really don’t think there’s ever been a Chevy that could hold a candle to its Pontiac sibling, even through years of badge engineering, the awful plastic body cladding years and the absurdly overwrought dash layouts, etc.
I actually didn’t notice the absence of door handles until it was pointed out above, but yeah….where the hell are they? I suppose maybe there was some mild restomodding done at some point, which included remote door latches, maybe? Whatever the case, I personally couldn’t own an early 70’s GM car without the requisite heavy chrome door handles. Despite so many of the sins at GM, there are just certain aspects of some of their products that were just so “right”. Arguably, one such attribute (for me anyway) was their use of those heavy chromed outside door handles that just felt so sensuously perfect in the hand. Maybe I’m nuts, but sometimes it’s the little stuff that really “pops”.
After Aaron65 and you pointed it out, I looked up pictures of the original 1964 Pontiac Banshee XP-833 concept (John Z’s baby) to see if it had exposed door handles, and it did.
I had just had the though that maybe the absence of the door handles on this Firebird accentuates its curves for a more Banshee-like appearance. But not really. I agree with you, though – I like the design of those door handles, and they were a cool-looking piece of functional body-jewelry.
Alos par of the Modifications are the Rocker panel trim bits with Argent paint below. 1st gen Firebirds never had that, They are off the 1st gen Camaro. I also agree the stance is a little higher than stock. However, A fine looking example of Pontiac Style.
That’s it! Something seemed “off” to me on this car and I couldn’t figure out why. It’s kind of funny how natural that looks on it, as the 67 GTO had that exact style rocker trim, almost as if Chevy and Pontiac got their parts bins mixed up for production
Does anyone remember the alleged lack of body structure in the convertibles? I had a friend who had a ’68 Firebird convertible and he was advised not to convert to radial tires because of the stress on the structure. I can remember driving it and seeing lots of cowl shake. It was a beautiful car, though.
I have a friend that has a 71 Chevelle ragtop, on radials. It’s a shaky mess going down the road. Sexy as hell, but has all the strength of a wet noodle when the wheels are not sitting on the same plane, despite having a fully boxed frame in rust free condition.
I had a 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme hardtop coupe in the 1990s. It had a rather willowy structure, too. As did the 1976 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale hardtop sedan that my parents owned in the late 1970s. It wasn’t just the convertibles that felt shaky during that era.
my 68 convertible fbird still had the ‘cocktail’ shakers in all 4 corners. they were filled with a viscous oil solution and it helped dampen shake, rattle and roll that removing the top can produce. i never felt the car was out of control – well at least not due to inherent fault of the convertible.
from my reading back in the day my understanding is that the fbird ‘vertibles benefited from thicker steel in the rockers as well as the aforementioned cocktail shakers. i do not recall if they were installed on camaro’s too. hopefully someone in the know can fill us in on that point.
i’ll try to upload a picture of one from a first gen firebird below, if not visit
http://firstgenfirebird.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=200034&page=all
The Camaro/Firebird convertible structure was probably similar to my Corvair convertible. It, too, has the cocktail shakers, but the rockers are made from 12 gauge steel instead of 14, and there is a large reinforcing beam down the center of an oversized rocker (which is why convertibles generally have different kick panels than coupes).
The problem with the GM design is the “flush and dry rocker.” As tree schmutz and leaves collected, it all soaked up water like a sponge, and with the extra beam in the middle, the rocker didn’t drain as readily and there were more places for it to hang up and hide. Therefore, convertibles rusted more readily in an area that was paramount to its structural integrity.
My parents had a ’68 forest green vert, albeit with the 350 2bbl. What a beautiful car! They sold it when I was about 12. (BTW, the “man bun” on the guy in the pix ruins the whole picture for me; not the “cool kid”, he’s a “hipster sheeple”)
Is that the first man bun we’ve seen on CC? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, the driver of this car in the 1970’s probably had a fro and gold chains, then the next owner a mullet.
Nice car though, looks good in black and a restrained design compared to what came later..
The 67-68 Camaro always struck me as a butterface, the blandness of the front ends – the covered headlight RS being a mild exception – really masked how curvy that body was. The Firebird, with virtually nothing more than it’s gorgeous loop bumper and bulged hood, utterly transformed it into a stunner. I’m always surprised by how popular Camaros are in comparison today, the 69 I get, the firebird nose that year got bland and the Camaro got character, but 67-68? Are people blind?
The man bun definitely seems like today’s mullet. I’m proud to say as a man who has had long hair on and off since I was 15, I never had the urge to tie it into a bun.
Oh my, the man-bun… It isn’t my favorite look either (and even if I wasn’t balding and still had all my hair, I still probably wouldn’t try one), but this guy was nice enough when I ran up on the sidewalk to get some pictures. He was the opposite of douche-y when he saw me taking pictures.
It can be tricky, when you’re photographing a moving car with a person in it, especially when traffic is slow. Owners / drivers don’t have to cooperate. It may be a free country and we can photograph mostly what and who we want, but I try to be respectful of my subjects – and I’m saying this in a nice way without trying to sound defensive.
It’s a possibility that Man Bun could’ve given me the finger, started yelling, or thrown a Big Gulp at me and my camera instead of just letting me do my thing. I’d like to think I returned the favor properly by blanking out his license plate number and showing just the three best frames I got. This was a really cool moment.
That said, I was jealous that it was him behind the wheel and not me. 🙂
I too am jealous lol
At least he still has enough hair to put it in a man-bun. Me, on the other hand…..
We say it all the time here at work, “No 60’s or 70’s car looks bad in Crager SS wheels” If this car had redline tires it would be a dead ringer for the first series Hot Wheels Firebird convertible.
I can never decide if I like the side marker lights on these or not. Neat, but pretty tacky.
I always liked those little shields on the rear quarters. A unique solution to a safety requirement that was hard to make look good, at least until wrap-around tail lights came into fashion.
Definitely a Hot Wheels vibe going on there, though the gaps around the hood are a lot tighter on the full size version.
That’s actually one of my favorite details on these and GTOs!
My brother had one of these in aqua with a matching interior. Another stunning color for them, in my opinion!
just looking at these 3 pictures again and reading some of the newer (from yesterday) commentary on styling.
yes the stance is higher than stock and the tires are wider than stock. i’d still take it.
i had missed that the door handles and key lock are gone. what? how do the doors open? or do they? if it is garaged all the time you could open the doors with the inside handles but that means that the windows never are fully closed. somewhere it must reside with really good protection from the elements and that means rodents and cats and birds too.
or could it be that the car has been updated with an auto up and down window mechanism controlled from a key fob?
i like the styling on the front end compared to the camaro, esp when pictured or viewed from above; low, wide, pointed ‘beak’ it just screams agressive. the view from head on or front quarter shot closer to ground level shows how unbalanced the lower half of the front clip is, say anything below the chrome bumper. in my opinion it looks like a severe overbite.
one of the best renditions i have ever seen for a 67-68 fbird is to mate the lower valance from a 69 camaro with the round lights to this front end. eliminates the turn signals and for some reason it really works well with the rounded chrome bumper and 4 round headlights. all i can recall is that i saw it while trolling through youtube one day. here it is and the first 10 seconds gives you the money shot…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNYpXghvosE
although this treatment would not be factory it sure helped the appearance.
I think that lower body-side metal trim adds a lot to the look of an already attractive car, providing a nice bit of contrast against the black. I would love to have one of these…
We had a 17 y/o kid staying at our house as his parents were divorcing & it was an unhealthy environment for him. One day he pulled up in this modded yellow ’67(?).(His dad was always “wheelin’ & dealin” with cars.) I think the front hood was fibreglass, & had flown off the car at one time as it was banged up a bit. The car was a little rough, & needed a real ground up restore, but I was tickled none the less.
That was 10 years ago, or so. I have never seen the car since. Funny, when I was a kid, we had a slot car track. My favorite slot car was a yellow ’67 Firebird with 2 black racing stripes!