How would you like your earliest memories to be of sitting in the back seat of a 1968 Firebird 400, watching your Dad work that Hurst shifter and hearing the bellowing of its healthy engine getting its exercise? Maybe the smell of rubber reaching its melting point to add to a toddler’s vivid multi-sensory experience? Well, that would be nice indeed, but not nearly as nice as ending up with the very car twenty-five years later through a fortuitous sale ($1000). Yes, the marks where Jayson’s babyseat rubbed against the back seat when Dad created some g-forces are still there, and will never be re-upholstered away. And the original 400 still snorts and bellows its lullaby, as Jayson drives it to work everyday. Sigh…
This is my favorite kind of Curbside Classic: take a scouting detour through a little town (Junction City) nearby after a Sunday hike, and stumble on my first parked gen1 Firebird ever; and a 400 no less! But that’s just the preamble to the story: its owner comes out and tells me the heartwarming story behind it. Which has actually become a bit of a local legend.
Jayson’s Dad bought the Firebird new for $3315, the year he was born. Three years later, when little sister came along and Firebird was feeling a bit cramped, it was sold to Jayson’s uncle, and a ’68 Plymouth GTX took its place. Now there’s a Dad who knew how to properly accommodate a growing family: more cubic inches! Reminds so much of my own. Not.
Well, he wasn’t totally perfect either (which Dad is?). When the 1974 gas crunch came, the GTX was traded in on a Vega. How many folks made that mistake, in order to kick themselves forever over it? Almost half a million, actually, in 1974 alone. Well, they didn’t all trade in GTXs, but yes, the Chevy OK Used Car lots had plenty of hot Detroit iron cooling off their crackling exhaust manifolds that year. Buy low; sell high. 1974 was the year to have bought that hemi-Cuda for peanuts. Must stop sighing.
So while our featured Firebird spends the next twenty-two years in limbo, let’s take a short diversion from its story and talk a bit about the origins of Pontiac’s F-Body; the short version.
John Z. Delorean wanted to build a real sports car, his beloved Banshee. Another two-seater at GM? Given the Corvette’s fairly modest sales, the bosses’ “nyet” was probably the right answer. Instead, he was tossed the Camaro’s new F-Body as a bone. If you’re given lemons…
I may not be wildly enthusiastic about the gen1 Camaro, but John Z’s Pontiac guys did a credible job of differentiating it, at least from the front. Actually, “differentiating” doesn’t do the Pontiac designer proper credit, because what they really did is finally bring the F-Body to its proper level of development, at least from the front, where all of the design budget or opportunity must have been.
The ’67-’68 Camaro has a profoundly undeveloped front end, which was mostly fixed with the ’69. But the Firebird: it’s the real deal. The faceless Camaro was a pretty generous bone to be thrown, and it finally got the lovely, curvaceous and sensuous front end it deserved. Pontiac’s vaunted styling studios were still at the top of their game.
Of course, Pontiac had established itself in the number three sales slot largely on that design prowess, especially with its nosy front ends, so given what little free reign and budget they were given, it was well spent. Obviously, once one gets to the windshield heading back, the story becomes increasingly…familiar.
Except for the silly little “vents” on the rear hips, and the rather pathetic GTO-esque slotted tail lights, it’s a Camaro. Oh well; just keep looking at that handsome face. Which ironically was butchered for the ’69 Firebird; the same year the Camaro finally found its proper face. Trading places…
Under the skin, the Firebird got something commonly know as “traction bars” to settle down its skittish rear end under the influence of Pontiac’s healthy V8s. The Firebird 400 was the top of the line in ’68, a year before the first TA appeared. Its standard 400 CID (6.6 liter) V8 was rated at 330 (gross) hp, but it was essentially a 360 hp GTO motor, with a little obstruction in the throttle linkage to keep the secondary barrels from fully opening. That was easily fixed; in thirty seconds or less, in order to get the 0-60 times to six seconds or less, maybe. It was there to keep it in compliance with GM’s “thou shalt not have a horsepower to weight ratio better than 1 to 10″ commandment. Sinning was easy, and the penance was just as likely a promotion. John Z’s next gig was GM of Chevrolet. Repeatedly stretching or stepping on GM’s rules was working for him, so far.
Yes, technically there was a 335 hp Ram Air option in 1968, but the numbers actually built were minuscule. The 400-4 was the hot ticket, and Jayson’s Dad checked the right boxes in 1968. And just how did it end up back in his hands?
His aunt called him one day in 1993 and told him she and her uncle were getting a two-for-one deal from their lawyer: a divorce and bankruptcy. Want the Firebird? Make an offer. So he swallowed hard and did: $1000. Well, it wasn’t in the best of shape at the time, and had been sitting immobile for a dozen years, so that offer was as not so easily refused.
But the 400 fired right up, and with a bit of cleaning up and a new paint job (by Jayson), the ‘Bird was soon looking and running good again, to his uncle’s consternation.
The Firebird hasn’t always been used it as a daily driver, but times have been hard here in Junction City. When the local RV industry collapsed a few years back. Monaco and Country Coach both tanked, Jayson was out of work for over nine months, so the previous DD had to go. No way the Firebird would ever be sold.
Now that Jayson is back to work, it’s back to front line duty for the Firebird. Worse things could happen, than to have to hear the 400 bark and rumble to life every morning. It’s got some 150k miles on it, and has never been opened up; literally, that is. That’s one way to keep those childhood memories fresh: relive them every day, twice no less.
An old girlfriend had a ’67 ‘Bird. Wasn’t her daily driver, that was a 280ZX 10th anniversary edition. But we used to take the ‘Bird out cruising once in a while – that was the stiffest clutch I’ve ever driven in my life.
Awesome beast ,I agree these look better than the Chevvy version
Looking at the original, it’s really sad to think this is gone forever, and the Camaro only lives on like novelty and an action figure (that can become a warrior robot from outer space, but still) The Camaro always looked like the ‘firebird for the (poor) people’.
The only year the Camaro looked as good or better than the Firebird was for ’69, but then it looked heavy and luxurious instead of sporty. This is more comparable with the Cougar of the same generation,from another brand that has sadly kicked the bucket…
What a great story. When I was a kid, the family next door had a series of hot Pontiacs. One of the older kids bought a new 68 Firebird. I cannot tell you what engine it had, but it was a 4 speed. I think I remember a tach mounted out on the hood. I rode in it a couple of times, but after several rides in his mom’s 66 and 68 GTO 4 speeds (and another neighbor’s R2 Avanti and yet another neighbor’s Road Runner), the Firebird didn’t impress me that much. It is a terrible thing to be so jaded as a 9 year old.
I am amazed that this car has been able to keep a shine on its paint after all these years. In my part of the country, this color in that soft GM laquer did not hold up that well. But what a cool car. The 68 Firebird was indeed an attractive car, and perhaps one of Pontiac’s last strikingly good looking designs.
He repainted it himself after he bought it back about twenty years ago.
I can hear the engine starting and then settle into that wonderful muscular idle.
Those seats have no lateral support…which is a peeve of mine. That sliding around while driving removes any pleasure.
With regard to the ’74 gas crisis, I remember a friends dad picked up a ’74 Impala (arguably the low point in Impala-dom) for a song and we all thought he was crazy.
I also remember joy riding, without a license, in that car and stepping on the gas nearly to the floor and having very little to show for it.
Reading others’ accounts of their love for this car, I’m almost reluctant to pee on that parade. But I must. Like you, Paul, I had a Firebird 350 of this vintage dropped into my lap when I was rounding twenty, because my mother had a somewhat daring taste in cars. My first memory of it was jumping it over a RR crossing, followed by loss of all power, including power steering, brakes. Somebody back at the factory neglected to tighten the battery cables. The car was fairly reliable for a few years after that, until the timing chain ate itself.
The Firebird’s acceleration was truly impressive, but I was more concerned with “road manners,” as defined by the string-backed driving glove magazines. And this Pontiac had the manners of a drunken redneck. Despite many attempts to align the front tires, which were always out of spec when we checked, the car had zero sense of direction. It required constant course corrections, like a kayak in river rapids.
I was given the ‘bird to take four of us from Memphis to BIg Bend on a spring break trip. That might have seemed like motoring nirvana, but I was happy to trade it temporarily for another car offered by a relative along the way. That car taught the the value of simple pleasures that still draw me today: room, comfort, visibility, ground clearance and, yes, proper manners. Thus I traded my Firebird, not for a Vega, but for a Volvo sedan.
You sir, as they say… simply DO NOT GET IT. Muscle cars, especially 60s muscle cars, are not about road manners or comfort. They are definitely not about ground clearance or visibility. They are about the visceral thrill that comes from the sound, the raw power, the looks and the image of driving a car with a single mission, to go fast. Its sad that even at the young age of 20 you still didnt appreciate what you had.
NSU1000TTS: I didn’t have a Firebird dropped in my lap. If I had, I probably would have been interested in the Sprint OHC six; but to each their own.
Maybe your Firebird’s endless front end problems were the result of jumping over RR crossings?
Paul, all GM cars of the era, actually right up to the final B-Bodies and beyond, had really crappy front ends. The stock parts were just plain cheap and undersized. After market replacements like Moog were better but not a lot; there was simply too much car and unsprung weight coming from giant pressed A-arms to make any of it last. Actual replacement of all the stuff isn’t that expensive. The whole shebag, including GM’s notoriously crappy steering boxes, was about $1800 in today’s dollars. Not a horrible amount of money. Problem is to keep the cars driving nice it was practically a bi-annual ritual.
The innate crappiness of GM front ends is a testament of how hard it is to keep them aligned. Even the later FWD stuff was awful, just cheap junk. When I worked at GM, a wheel alignment was recommended every second service. When I asked why, I was told it was because the front ends were so weak they were easily knocked out and the parts were so poor it was easy to have a huge upsell when the car was still on the rack. My stealership made a fortune doing this but eventually customers got tired of it and drove to the Toyota dealership to buy a Camry and have a front end that would last the life of the car, or at least as long as they owned it. This is one of the main reasons this stealership closed down; the service department dried up. People got fed-up with making regular and large retail repairs to keep their GM stuff running.
With 60′s and 70′s domestics, this was expected and par for the course but when the Accord and Camry came along, it was pretty hard for Detroit to get away with it. And as history has shown is, they haven’t.
Well what you say is likely true,but my father purchased an ’88 Accord EXi brand new and it’s still being driven by my brother. I can’t keep track of how many times control arms on the vaunted wishbone suspension have been replaced on this car. Front, rear,doesn’t matter, it’s just ring-a-round the rosie, a constant circle of new arms all around over a period of a few years, then start again.
I can confirm this to some extent. When I worked for a NAPA store in the ’80s, the hottest selling suspension parts we had were lower ball joints for ’73-’86 Chevy half-ton pickups and Suburbans. We sold them like hotcakes. We had one shop that specialized in alignments; the technicians there told me that any C-10 or Suburban that went on the rack, regardless of the mileage, needed lower ball joints. Time after time, they would align one, back it off the rack, drive it back up, and it would be out again. They finally started including the cost of the ball joints in the their quoted price for Chevy half-ton alignments.
oddly enough the 69 Camaro is the floorpan and suspension setup used to build Australias HQ Holden and believe me a Holdens front end will stay aligned over really rough roads maybe it got beefed up but they do not need constant adjustment or repairs. Being airborne over cattle grids at 80mph doesnt hurt em either Thats why Holdens were so popular they are nearly unbreakable
That’s very interesting history. I had always assumed that the wayward alignment, which ate our tires every 20,000 miles, showed Pontiac’s inexperience with the new “Wide Oval” tires from Uniroyal that hit the market at about the same time. Remember those? They looked daringly wide, almost like racing tires, though they were only 60-series … or 70s?
No, I didn’t “get” this particular pony car, because I drove it farther than a quarter-mile at a time. Mom was then a 50-something redhead with a taste for fun, and she bought it for daily transportation. I was missing her 289 Mustang, a ’65, that always seemed nimble and fun to drive, though not nearly as powerful.
One thing I’ll say for the Firebird, though– it’s still an outstanding shape (from certain angles favoring those hips). Compared to the Firebird’s curvaceous bod, the Mustang looked like something built by carpenters.
I wonder if GM’s low-rent front suspension had anything to do with the fact that GM did the best job of being able to incorporate big-blocks into their ponycars. This was the real achilles’ heel for Ford and Chrysler. The Mustang 390 was widely known to be a slug (but they made up for it later with the CobraJet). Seems like there were maintenance issues with some big-block Mustangs, too, like having to jack up the engine to change one of the sparkplugs.
Likewise, although the 383/440 engine would shoe-horn into the Chrysler A-body, it wouldn’t go in without sacrificing power steering or A/C. I don’t even know if you could get power brakes. That was a big reason the E-body replacement had to be off the B-body chassis and ended up being so wide – Chrysler had to be sure there were no fitment issues with their big-inch engines.
But I never read of any issues with big-block Camaros and Firebirds, and I always wondered what their secret was.
Actually, Roger, this is the main reason Honda went back to struts for it’s lower end stuff. The quality of the parts in the more expensive stuff like Acura is much better and there is less need for replacement parts. That said, a control arm suspension has more parts in it and thus more to break.
My dad had a ’67 ragtop, a relatively pedestrian 326/4-speed in Verdaro Green.
Love that front end, much better looking than the early non-Rally Sport Camaros. Especially now that Pontiac’s gone, I’d love to own one.
Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. And the ’69′s front end wasn’t ruined; Pontiac simply used their venerable (but an epic failure to hold on to paint) Endura around the headlights and used a smaller grille. Still looked and looks better than the Camaro.
In the late 70′s, me and my two brothers convinced my dad to buy a succession of pony cars for his “work” car, with a 68 ‘Bird being the first ( the other two, in order, were a 67 Cougar, and a 75 Camaro, which became my first car ). The Firebird needed a new paint job, so we bought a half-dozen or so spray cans of silver paint and had at it in the backyard — the results looked pretty decent to my 14 year-old eyes. It had the 400, and every time my parents and the neighbor’s parents ( who had a 69 Camaro with a 350 — daily driven through the late 80′s ) were away at the same time, we’d race each other on our side street. They were pretty evenly matched, but I remember the ‘Bird winning more races than losing. Quite the illegal thrill for a 14 year-old……..
A buddy of mine had one of these back in high school. Chuck was the kind of guy who could take a nice car and reduce it to crap in two weeks or less. This is exactly what happened to his 1969 Firebird 400. It was a beautiful car, midnight blue with a white ‘ironing board’ stripe.
For example, one morning before school, he picked me up in front of my house. As a reference, the county seat was about 20 miles from my house. I lived about 3/4 mile from the highway that ran to the county seat. Just for fun, we drove over to the county seat in about 17 minutes. And then, for fun, we made it back to the high school in about 14 minutes. That car was smoking after our mini-Cannonball that morning.
One evening, maybe three months after he got the car, a mutual friend called and told me Chuck had rolled the car on a little farm road near our homes. When we went to view the remains, it was mostly a wadded up ball of steel. But what sticks out in my mind, is that the ’400′ emblems never came off of the hood…
While I liked this body style, my favorite is the one that succeeded this car, the lovely Henry Haga designed 2nd generation F body. Particularly the late 70′s/early 80′s Firebirds in Formula and Trans Am livery.
…the marks where Jayson’s babyseat rubbed against the back seat…
A child seat? In 1968?
Sorry, Paul, I couldn’t resist…this is a great piece of writing, and a touching story.
Didn’t make that up
not everybody had them but i do recall child seats in the ’60s. they weren’t exactly “safe.”
In the early 80′s my brother owned a ’68 400. It was the most beautiful thing ever. Of course my brother could not leave well enough alone and did some performance upgrades to the engine(as if it needed it!).
The thing was so pumped up that you could not accelerate from a standstill without leaving a patch of rubber, no matter how gentle you were on the peddle.
My mother was one of those self proclaimed know it all’s who threatened your life if you disagreed with her. She would go ballistic every time he or I would take off in front of the house(he rarely let me drive it, so it was great when he did).
On yet another day of her going off on him for leaving yet another little patch, we yelled back at her to try and not leave a patch out front… If she could do it, we would never do anything wrong ever again, we would do anything and everything she asked without question… Little did she know the cards were stacked against her.
She grabbed the keys from my brother, stormed out the door and dropped her crabby ass in the driver seat. She put it in reverse and pulled out of the driveway, shifted into drive, gave us a glare, you know the glare, the one that says you’re wrong and I’m right and you’re about to eat my words…. As she glared at us, she proceeded to leave the longest patch out front of our house ever! My brother and I had the experience with this car and had achieved the right foot touch which kept the car from leaving such long patches in front of the house, she and her almighty knowing didn’t actually know jack shit after all.
She turned the car around, pulled it back into the driveway, got out and closed the door, walked right up to my brother and handed him the keys. Then, then she simply walked back into the house without a word, without even a look, she simply just walked back into the house emotionless.
She never again ever said a thing about the car or anything related to it ever again, but she did go out for several joyful drives in it in later days. It was a bittersweet loss for her.
That car will never leave my memories.. It wasn’t even my car, but it’ll always be remembered by both my brother and myself. That was the car, not just any car, but ‘the’ car.
Good story about an old favorite. Funny, yesterday morning I heard a familiar rumble while waiting for a haircut at the local barbershop. I looked out the window and saw The Judge drive by….a yellow one. Sweet.