I have been reacquainting myself over the past couple of years with many of the television programs I used to love when I was growing up. In an essay that ran a couple of weeks ago, I had name-checked a short list of prime time action shows from the late ’70s through the early ’80s that placed spectacular car chases and crashes front-and-center. Among those shows was “CHiPs”, which was originally broadcast on NBC from the fall of ’77 through the spring of ’83, turning actors Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada into household names.
“CHiPs”, set in Los Angeles and a loose acronym for “California Highway Patrol”, was one of those rare shows that had a little something for everyone watching in the living room. It had a funny, likeable, attractive, and somewhat diverse cast (by late-’70s standards), which also usually showcased one strong female officer prominently in the story line amid the all the testosterone in the briefing room. Actress Brianne Leary, who played officer Sindy Cahill, checked out after just one season, the show’s second, to be essentially replaced by Randi Oakes’ Bonnie Clark character for the next three years. Mensa material it wasn’t, but it’s still one of my favorite shows, ever.
As a young kid, the big draws for me were the cars, the camaraderie between the officers, especially Ponch and Jon, the action shots on the expressway, and lastly and not at all the least important, the music. American composer Alan Silvestri, who would go on to score myriad movies and TV shows, contributed a very late-’70s-Los Angeles soundtrack to “CHiPs” with sounds that ranged from yacht rock-ish incidental music to frenetic disco with a four-on-the-floor beat, both during opening credits (starting in Season 2) and also during some of the heated chase scenes. In my opinion, the music of “CHiPs” deserved its own casting credit for being such an integral part of the show, being no less indispensable than the “motors” the officers rode on or Erik Estrada’s perfect teeth.
Also cast on this show was what seemed to be the exact same roster of maybe ten cars that were used and reused, intended to be seen as completely random background traffic. Included among them were a silver Ford Mustang II hatchback, a black, H-Body Buick Skyhawk, a ’76-or-so Toyota Corona Mark II sedan (when’s the last time you saw one of those?), a white, mid-’70s Camaro with a camel-colored vinyl roof, and perhaps my favorite, a ’77 (or early ’78) Pontiac Firebird Esprit Sky Bird, pictured above. Exposure to “CHiPs” probably left me with the false impression at the time that there were a ton of these Sky Birds roaming the streets across the United States.
I’ve been rewatching this show on DVD and have to suppress a chuckle every time the silver Mustang II or blue Firebird appear in frame. There simply weren’t that many Sky Birds produced to merit their ubiquity in every other scene. I couldn’t find a breakout of Sky Bird production for ’77 or ’78, but referencing William Stopford’s earlier piece on limited edition Pontiacs, only about 4,200 versions of the ’79 “Red Bird”, the Sky Bird’s successor, found buyers. That latter model year was the all-time high water mark for Firebird sales, at 211,000 units. Given the 2% take rate for the Esprit Red Bird that year, one can interpolate that even if the Sky Bird sold more units during its run, its popularity was still a small percentage of the 34,500 Esprit models sold for ’77 (37,000 for ’78). Total sales of the restyled ’77 Firebird were about 156,000, which was an appreciable 40% increase over the 111,000 units sold in ’76. Most were Trans Ams in both years, by a substantial margin.
It’s becoming clearer to me that this particular show must have been partially responsible for my enduring taste for both disco and also that smooth, L.A. session musician sound of the period made popular by artists like the Doobie Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, the band Pablo Cruise (there is no actual “Pablo Cruise” in the group), the underrated Valerie Carter, and also many different acts produced by the brilliant and prolific David Foster. (If you like the early Foster sound, you should check out his very first outing as producer, of Jaye P. Morgan’s eponymous record from ’76. It’s another one of my favorite albums from this era.) In tandem with my rediscovery of so many cherished shows from my childhood, I’ve also been doing some deep diving into the sounds of the late ’70s that also put me into a happy place. Perhaps I should qualify that, in some cases, I’ve discovered the DJs and music curators who have done the actual “crate-digging” for me and unearthed many until-now unfamiliar musical gems of that ilk.
DJ Supermarkt (Marcus Liesenfeld) from Germany has been steadily putting together and releasing compilation albums within this oeuvre, sonically similar to what was played in the background during episodes of “CHiPs”, since his first excellent “Too Slow To Disco” collection from 2014. It was on his “The Ladies Of Too Slow To Disco, Vol. 2” from 2020 that I discovered the titular track to this essay, “Pretty Bird” from ’77, the year when our featured car was fresh off the Pontiac dealer’s lot and “CHiPs” had first aired. It was recorded for independent record label Baby Grand by an artist named Terea who, according to Discogs.com, has also recorded under her given name of Sharon Robinson. The following sample of the lyrics seemed a very appropriate tie-in to our featured car, sitting as it was parked on the curb with The Club anti-theft device stretched across its steering wheel and locked into place:
Your owner offers you protection
Provides a cell and food everyday
Now, careful, pretty bird, don’t you spread your wings too wide
You were meant to be free, but you may never, never, never go outside
I hear you, pretty bird in a cage
Now, do you wish to be you or just a sparrow?
Just a simple sparrow
Now do you understand
He’s worthless as the sand, but free as the breeze
And he goes where he pleases
Oh, pretty bird, don’t you see that if only you were ordinary
You too could be free
Here was this beautiful, limited edition Firebird, still looking resplendent in its factory Normandy Blue paint, with its custom license plates and looking like, well, an escapee. Cars like this aren’t used as daily drivers, and daily-driven cars like these aren’t in beautiful condition like this usually for very long. It’s the eternal question for the owner of any classic car, the delicate balancing act between enjoyment of one’s prized vehicle, preserving it, and/or ultimately consuming it. This Sky Bird’s owner could leave it in its heated garage for three hundred sixty-three days of the year, but then it has become a caged bird. He or she probably drives their hypothetical Corolla about town, so it is that little Toyota that is as “free as the breeze”.
It’s not that hard for me, with my active and colorful imagination, to personify both cars in my mind and to forget that they’re inanimate objects that don’t care about being caged in a garage or being free to roam the streets. At the same time, I recognize that nice things are meant to be enjoyed. I’m going to go ahead and keep watching all of my favorite shows, both new and old. I’m going to put on “repeat” the albums and music I have come to cherish without fear of wearing them out and/or diluting their impact. I will incorporate all of these things into my life both this year and beyond in the hope that, to rearrange some of the lyrics interpreted beautifully by Terea, I may find freedom and enjoyment in that which is my ordinary. Here’s hoping this pretty bird is still in flight.
Lakeview, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, October 31, 2010.
The colour suits the car and makes a welcome change from the black n gold Trans Ams. A rare bird.
Mark, I like it also for that reason. I love a black-and-gold Trans Am https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1981-pontiac-firebird-trans-am-instant-attitude/, but I also love a Formula, and many other variations of Firebird, like these Color Birds.
Just as well to look at it in a garage, since those cars could barely get out of their own way.
I never liked the rectangle headlights but the late 70s firebirds were the 1 exception. They compliment the front end and make it look as good or better than their round headlight predecessors.
I think that the rectangular lights that arrived with the ’77 restyle gave the front end some extra balance. It’s hard to explain. I think the concurrent Camaros look just fine with their dual headlamps, but the rectangular quads on the ’77+ Firebirds look just a little bit more “finished” (to my tastes) than the ’76.
I was actually acquainted with someone who owned one of these. A law student a year or two ahead of me had one. I didn’t know her, but her car made her unforgettable – it really stood out in the parking lot.
And wow – I had forgotten all about Jaye P. Morgan, including that she was recording new music as late as the mid 70s. She did a pretty amazing job at continual reinvention for a long time.
For some reason CHIPs never made my watch list, and I’m not sure why. I was normally a fan of shows like that, and have seen a few old episodes in recent years. It’s funny how a given show will use a small number of background cars you see over and over again. In Mannix they used a 65 GTO painted silver (something I can’t ever recall seeing on the streets) and CHIPs used the Sky Bird. I’m sure there were many others given the number of shows produced back then.
Hollywood budgets, I suppose. Think about the green Beetle in the famous Bullitt chase scene. How many times did we see that same car?
And wow – I had forgotten all about Jaye P. Morgan
I didn’t realize she was a recording artist. I remember her as a game show panelist – sort of like Charles Nelson Reilly and Brett Sommers, the reason for their fame was never clear to my pre-adolescent mind.
I had remembered seeing episodes of “The Gong Show” as a very young kid and didn’t really have a sense that the panel of judges were supposed to be famous people. I just liked the bonkers aspects of the show (in my young, innocent mind), the crazy acts, the loud gong (which would make me laugh), and the fact that host Chuck Barris and I had basically the same hair.
Learning about Jaye P. Morgan after discovering her music as an adult, I was shocked to learn that she had been this singer of standards from the great American songbook. I like her so much better as the funky, bluesy chanteuse from her great 1976 album.
I went back and refreshed myself on Ms. Morgan – and I agree with you. Whether it was Morgan herself or those in charge of her career (agents, record companies, etc) her early material has aged very poorly in my opinion. But then there is not a lot about pop music in the late pre-rock & roll period that has held up well.
I think she had a great instinct for grabbing attention and used it to the max in television. And her music of the 70s is, I believe, far better than most of her earlier stuff. It appears that she is still alive.
Maybe my lack of enthusiasm for the pre-disco Jaye P has to do with my current musical infatuation with Beverly Kenney, a contemporary of Morgan’s who took the other road – to jazz and obscurity. It was her version of “It’s A Most Unusual Day” from 1958 that was sampled on a recent Lincoln commercial.
Thank you for putting Beverly Kenney on my radar. I love vocal jazz like this and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of her before today.
This article (“The Funky Reinvention Of Jaye P. Morgan”) is one of my favorites about the latter’s metamorphosis by the mid ’70s. She hardly even seems like the same person who appeared on her record covers decades before dressed like Donna Reed:
https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/jaye-p-morgan-lost-album-feature
My mother came home with one from Haselwood Buick-Pontiac-GMC where she worked for the owner, Chuck Haselwood. She LOVED that car and I was still short enough to easily get in and out of the back seats. She daily-drove it for about a decade and after selling, missed it until the day she died In April 2022. I hope to get one to help remember her. The color birds were polarizing and she gave about 1/100th of one eff what T/A guys thought!
This was a nice find. I’ve watched CHIPs some, but only for the car related stuff. As one who likes big Dodges, it was right up my alley. I’ll have to keep an eye out for this Pontiac next time I stumble upon the show.
Jaye P. Morgan had only ever crossed my radar from watching a few episodes of The Gong Show, where she seemed to be a semi-regular.
Tangential subject…like you, I have been reacquainting myself with some old, favorite TV shows. My current favorite is “In The Heat Of The Night”, which ran from, like, 1988 to 1994. There are lots of cars, but not as prominently featured. Howard Rollins is amazing in the show and Carroll O’Connor is fantastic. I recently saw on old interview with O’Connor and he said he enjoyed playing Bill Gillespie more than he did Archie Bunker.
Carroll O’Connor was just great. I was never that much into “In The Heat Of The Night”, but that was one of my dad’s shows, and I remember watching some episodes with him when rerurns would come on after lunch.
Jaye P. Morgan was a hoot on “The Gong Show”, from clips I’ve viewed as an adult.
I have examples of the Sky Bird, the Red Bird, and whatever they called the yellow-colored version (Golden Bird?), though its been quite awhile. I like the idea, and the execution isn’t too bad, but I would’ve preferred more subtle or tasteful colors. To me, these come across as cars inspired by circus wagons. I do prefer the 77 model over the ” sugar scoop ” headlight models that followed them.
Yellowbird, was the official name.
I also noticed the same group of background cars that were used over and over to create “traffic”. One in particular was a 75/76 black and red RS Camaro. When I would see that car, I knew a car chase or accident was forthcoming.
Yes! I also noticed that the red Camaro spelled trouble, though the one I’m thinking of was an earlier, small-bumper version, like a ’71 or ’72. Once the “bad guy” gets behind the wheel and the tires start squealing, I think to myself that this Camaro is not long for this world.
The last time I saw Erik Estrada was in the music video for “Pepper” by the Butthole Surfers.
Very nice post and photos, Joseph. I like your opening collage. Sky blue is not my favorite car color, but I think it works on this one, as do the snowflake pattern wheels. I never really appreciated what a nice clean design these F-bodies were until I started reading CC.
Thank you, Corey! Those color-keyed snowflake wheels really set off the entire look. I think the last, then-new thing I remember seeing Estrada on was when VH1 was doing “The Surreal Life”. I did remember hearing about the “CHiPs ’99” special when it first aired.
As always, Joseph, a great morning read. However, I think you must have the years for CHiPs wrong. No way it could have started in the Fall of 1977. I was already a new college graduate then, working full-time as an engineer. Are you sure it wasn’t 1971? I hardly would have been watching a kids’ show like that as a working professional. Oh that’s right, I only watched it for the cars 😀 One other editorial nit: while there are some roads called expressways in California, typically suburban divided roads with occasional traffic lights, those epic scenes in CHiPs were on freeways. And, since it was Southern California, more specifically THE 405 or 210 or whatever freeway.
Here y’go: 1977-1983.
Women were not hired as CHP Officers until the WTOP ( Women Traffic Officer Program) was started in 1974, a two year study. So they would have hit the field by 1975 and would have been rare even in the Los Angeles area, where most new cadets were initially assigned. So the lone female Officer was not that unusual.
I was a fan of CHiPs because there were two guys riding motorcycles. Roller Disco may have also had something to do with it! Hey, just kidding!
Thank you! I remember seeing as many chases on the freeways as on the four-lane divided roads with stoplights.
What takes extra effort in suspending my disbelief is when (on the expressway) a car hits another one from behind, and instead of just crashing into the back of it, it launches into the air as if on a ramp – which there was one. There had to be.
There were 5,692 Sky Birds in 1977 out of 34,548 Esprits out of 155,736 total Firebirds produced!
Debby, thank you so much for the facts, the picture of yours, and also for linking that article! Wow – and here I thought I was a pretty good at internet research. Your Sky Bird is beautiful.
Thank you.
Hey Debby, I bought my SKY BIRD around Christmas time in 1976 off the showroom floor for 6200. This was in Ardmore Okla. I was 21 at the time. I kept it for 10 years. It had a 350 4 barrel. Now at the age of 67, I wish I had it back.It had the baby blue velour seats(nice cloth seats). I miss it alot
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.motortrend.com/features/hppp-1003-1976-pontiac-firebird/amp/
I was going to comment about the one thing I knew about the Sky Bird, but it’s in the link that Debby posted above.
That random fact is that the car was based on a 1976 Auto Show concept that Pontiac called the “Blue Bird”. The auto show concept was popular, so a version worked its way into production, but along the way Pontiac realized that the “Blue Bird” name was trademarked by the school bus manufacturer of the same name, so Pontiac named its new model “Sky Bird” instead.
I believe CHIP’s like a lot of other T.V. shows used vehicles belonging to cast and crew in background shots. Thus the same vehicles would show up in multiple episodes repeatedly. I grew up very close to MGM in Culver City when CHiP’s was in production and remember seeing a number of vehicles on the show that I recognized from the neighborhood. That Sky Bird was one of them, those cars were rare enough I doubt it was a coincidence. There was also a beige 1972 El Camino and a 1977 two-tone blue Chevy C-20 that were seen often.
Bob, thank you for this. This is fascinating – I hadn’t even considered the possibility that these “background cars” on the show could have belonged to the cast. It makes me wonder, for example, what kind of cast or crew member would have driven the Toyota Corona Mark II. Or the Skyhawk.
Thanks for a great article!
Just as well it’s underpowered, because that color is a cop magnet. Dad’s ’78 Century was a little paler, and I got my first speeding ticket in it because the speedo was 5 mph off (I thought it had been fixed). Weird choice for a background car, but maybe Pontiac paid them.
http://www.firebirdtransamparts.com/redsky/ladybirds.htm
Probably the best on the web over these cars.
Terrific – thank you for linking this resource.
Back in 1977, the Firebird was probably my favourite American car, not that you saw them in Yorkshire. Little memory of CHiPS though, to be honest.
I can imagine that in northern England, a car with this Firebird’s dimensions would have been huge compared to much of what was on the road.
The Skybird, Yellowbird et al are remarkable in how different the same body can look with different paint and trim, Trans Ams look like macho action stars, and these look like feminine ballet dancers. I hate being critical of the “malaise era” because at the end of the day while that era may have lacked performance it excelled at variety, not just in models but all the colorful variations of a given model. It’s really great to see survivors of this era, seeing this car in the wild would excite me more than 100 Hemi Cobra L88s pulled from barns now a days.
I really enjoy Chips for its car/background watching, it’s far from my favorite show as far as dialogue or story but that’s fine. I noticed on that show that I believe Ponch owned as his personal car was a 70-73 Firebird that seems to be the very same one in Corvette Summer, just repainted. It was the same Trans am/formula hybrid.
Matt, you got me thinking about Ponch’s gold Firebird, an early second-generation car, and how many times it was destroyed on the show. Man! And then, a few episodes later, there it would be again, with some backstory about how he had finally gotten it “back from the shop” or all fixed up.
I wonder if the early 2nd-gen Firebirds were seen as passé by the late ’70s when Firebirds and Trans Ams were super-popular. I thought Ponch’s Firebird was well cast, as was Jon’s GMC High Sierra step-side. I liked Jon’s Mini from the first season, but couldn’t figure out that piece of car-casting at all.
The Sky Bird was also in the movie The Nice Guys at the very beginning …I have to admit I cried during those first few minutes
A Sky Bird was also in the movie The Principle with Jim Belushi
And also in the fairly current movies Miles Ahead, which my Sky Bird was in
I don’t think I had thought about “The Nice Guys” in years, but yes – that beginning scene is the kind that has me thinking, “What a waste!”
There was a commenter here years ago who’s handle was “Junqueboi” that had one of these cars as his avatar.
If he was an owner of one, I wonder if he still has it?
Great post, Joseph and a big Thank You to Debby for chiming in about your car and for providing the link to the Motor Trend article about it. Yours is beautiful!!!
I’m getting to this a bit late, but thanks for very fine read. Your ability to weave cars, popular culture and your life into an ever-growing tapestry is splendid, and gets better and better. You’re a true artist. Or are people who weave tapestries artisans? 🙂
Paul, thank you so much. I had been sitting on these pictures of this Sky Bird for a long time before writing it up, and I feel that (from a personal perspective, anyway) I did it justice.
Beautifully written essay. I can relate to the CHiPS soundtrack, including so many Top 40 tunes popular during my high school years. While scorned by purists, it’s the kind of undemanding music which can leave an unexpectedly deep impression. Listening to it today never fails to put can me in a happy place, too.
As for this Sky Bird…well, let’s just say that it’s a ‘70s prom tux of a Firebird. It may be tacky, but a black and gold Trans Am of this generation is more to my taste.
let’s just say that it’s a ‘70s prom tux of a Firebird. It may be tacky, but a black and gold Trans Am of this generation is more to my taste.
If the skybird is a prom tux the SE Trans Am must be a leisure suit with a gold medallion 😆
Nice ponderings as ever from our CC Laureate, Mr D.
I too watched Chips, but was more like the person who complained of a porn film having far too much dialogue: I cared not one whit for all those dull bits when there were conversations and plots, and was watching only for the chases. And the crashes. Being foreign, the US cars all looked about the same to me – mainly over-decorated and ugly – but I loved their ability to slip and slop and slide round most any corner, and, of course, to crash only by leaping skyward like a lemur. I believed all this this to be real, I should add, and also add I was young kid.
The show was naturally entire crap otherwise, and an indulgence my folks grudgingly allowed me if the timeslot was free, but I’m afraid I can never agree that anything US of its time was any better. To me, the great Republic only produced vast flooding oceans of unwatchable bilge from the time the box was invented, right up until about the year 2000, when someone brave at last manned the pumps. The bilge still flows, but since then, on and off, it has produced amongst the very best in the world. I cannot pretend the remotest nostalgia for the old stuff, as the internet has shown me nostalgia is EXACTLY what it used to be: it’s perhaps for that reason I find your well-articulated enthusiasms all the more fascinating.
As an aside, it would seem that the incongruously-named Randi Oakes (I mean, they can’t, can they?) may very well live in one Eugene, Oregon. Looks like she got out of the biz long ago and appears a nice, un-facelifted 69 y.o. lady with a bunch of kids. All power to her for that.
Yes, Randi Oakes lives in Eugene along with her husband, actor/heartthrob Gregory Harrison (of Trapper John, M.D. fame) to whom she’s been married since 1980.
While I’ll accept that assessment of Chips(in fact that’s my exact assessment of Chips), that’s way too sweeping of a generalization all for all TV of the time, I can directly counter that with first run Columbo, which was top tier in writing and direction for TV at the time, and many writers responsible for today’s “golden age of television” would cite that show as an influence, Vince Gillian of Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul fame has credited it himself in interviews and podcasts.
Not to mention Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, the X-files, and many other great American TV shows predating the year 2000. And outside of shows that are essentially mini-series, episodic cop shows really aren’t any less abundant or better in quality now than they were in 1978, they just have dimmer mood lighting for some reason. I’d rather watch Chips than Chicago _____
Yes, I confess to overstatement, but the exceptions of goodness are very thin from such a huge industry.
Beyond that, commenting on individual shows moves into stuff well beyond this site – I do pretty-much agree about the shows you mention, as it happens – so it’s best I don’t.
But damn it, I can’t help but add that the original masters, the Brits, did it all first, and were only bested when (sort-of) copied, monied-up, by the US golden age still going.
(Please note for posterity this was said by a wildly-republican Aussie who can’t wait for the day We aren’t They!)
Thanks… I think! So, just out of curiosity, what were your favorite shows? 🙂
I will say this, though. I brought a DVD of “CHiPs” to my brother’s household for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend a couple of months ago (hard to believe it was already that long ago). We popped in one of the discs with my nephew in the room. It happened to be an episode without much real car crash action.
My nephew was so bored with it he asked if the show was supposed to be “educational”. Ooooouch. My brother and I had a good laugh about that. Needless to say, we didn’t watch another episode that night. I’ll just keep “CHiPs” as my own guilty pleasure.
People have generally been really charitable in the comments to this essay unless a moderator has had to go on a deleting spree. (I try not to write articles that necessitate this, but I write what I write, friend.)
Oh, Joe, please think ‘thanks’, and please do think the compliments implied in ‘Laureate’ and ‘well-articulated’ are the real deal – they really are. And always, please, do write what you write, because that’s how it should be, and I, like many, many others here, like it a great deal.
I did have to laugh at your nephew’s reaction. Hell, I enthusiastically show youngsters some stuff I thought brilliant from just 20-odd years ago, and they eye-glaze on to the iphone within minutes (if that).
A US favourite from the long era I mentioned? In bare-faced honesty, none. I am located in a foreign country, of course – where the TV was a weak imitation of the US, god help me – and that makes a difference, but I found it almost all entirely weak, forced, unfunny if intended to be so, cliched, boring, obvious, staged, stilted, and stultifying. As a cultural imperialist export, it was all a fail, though the preponderance of stuff-we-didn’t-have in the backgrounds – think microwaves, airconditioners, etc – it all almost certainly was a raging success.
When I say that I am fascinated by your writings on this stuff that is culturally embedded well beyond the shores of its making, please understand that I do mean that, mean it in a positive way, and wish strongly for you to continue it in your cool, understated style.
I remember the car. A female friend had a Red Bird. It wasn’t much of a car. Looked nice, but build quality was typical of that era. Lots of plastics and strangled engines.
Thanks for sharing that music. I suppose that one day people who never suffered a hangover after hearing that music, would rediscover it and enjoy it again. But the moment I heard it, my head began to throb and I started having flashbacks to Everclear and Hawaiian Punch, bongs, tight polyester pants, inflation and Farah Fawcett hair. OOF!
As to TV shows, I don’t remember anything worth remembering. Never watched CHiPs, Columbo, or anything until MTV. Glad you found shows you liked!
Thank god punk rock saved the decade! Thank god for the Fairmont, Civic and Omnirizon!
Between the Firebird and Grand Prix, although diminished from the Widetrack and GTO sixties’ heyday, Pontiac still had their youth mojo going in the seventies, and the ‘color’ Bird series was a big part of it. They didn’t get the attention of the Bandit’s black Trans Am or Jim Rockford’s gold Esprit, but they sold well, and are definitely a worthwhile CC.
Love this piece, and as a young lad of 5 in 1980, I can still picture that Xmas gift that rose above all others: my new CHiPs Power Wheels motorcycle!
Now, it may just be me, but I find it hard to read the title of this entry without automatically thinking of Dumb and Dumber…”Pretty bird, pretty bird….”!
Hey Joseph!
That was a great find. I have an eternal love for this era of Firebird, while the Sky/Red/Yellow Birds are not my exact favorite (Firebird Formula? Yes!) it’s always great to see one on the road. A few months ago, I cut the TV cable and put an antenna on my house and was amazed to find a number of TV stations in the area are broadcasting old TV shows such as CHiPs. I was 14 when the show first aired and it was “must-see-TV” for me when I wasn’t busy with other stuff. That was the golden era of “jiggle-TV”, along with Charlie’s Angels and a few other shows on at the time. Even CHiPs had it’s share of scantily clad ladies on just about every show, as my recent viewing on the re-run TV station is proving out. Now I remember why I wanted to move to Southern California so very badly when I was a teen…
An odd rememberance of these Sky Birds happened while I was reading your post. Back in the late 1970’s speed limit enforcement was a big thing on the interstates nationwide. In some states, it was even legal for law enforcement to use non-marked vehicles in speed traps. On a trip on through Pennsylvania on I-80 in the late 70’s, I saw a Blue Bird parked on the side of the Interstate, just idling. I had no idea what they were doing there. However, it became apparent to me what and who they were after a few miles down the road.
A car that had passed us at a high rate of speed was being chased in close order by the same Blue Bird, it’s windows lit up with flashing lights! We rolled up on them a few miles down the road, with the Pennsylvania State Patrol officer ostensibly issuing the driver of the other car a citation. I never looked at another Blue Bird so innocently again.
Thanks for the great memories and keep your eyes open for Smokies in plain blue wrappers!
I had a 76 Trans Am. I had mine painted in June of 76 Chrysler power blue a lighter blue then the sky blue w the trim spoilers,mirrors, shaker scoop bumpers GM midnight blue fine metal flake. Then for 77 the local Pontiac dealer had Firebird Esprit sky blue.
I live in Wyoming Valley Pa. Wyoming Pontiac dealership had the Esprit. My Trans Am was originally White couldn’t get the Trans Am in blue that year.
This is in response to Bruce and his comment, the birds are plenty fast and can easily be made faster. Bruce gets in his own way and doesn’t think that most men wouldn’t want their lady driving a high powered car. Bruce doesn’t like the power of the birds, not sure why he is driving a car marketed for women anyway!