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Showing posts with label Trans Am. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trans Am. Show all posts
Monday, April 07, 2025
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Friday, January 10, 2025
David Tom, the founder of the Historic Trans-Am Registry and the author of The Cars of Trans-Am Racing
collects and restores historic race cars in his Apache Junction, Arizona, shop.
He has owned 15 vintage Trans-Am cars, including the 1968 Smokey Yunick Camaro, the Jerry Titus Firebird/TG Firebird, a Bud Moore prototype Cougar, a Jim Hall Chaparral Camaro, and one of the 1968 Penske/Donohue Camaros
Monday, January 06, 2025
Monday, November 11, 2024
Monday, September 09, 2024
the Wall Street Journal had a catchy headline that caught my eye.... a Private Eye found the Trans Am he'd sold decades ago, in Alabama, and now he's restored it.
Gransden grew up near Buffalo, New York, and saved up to buy his 1979 model when he turned 17. He was already a talented trumpeter. After a few semesters at Fredonia State University, he toured with the Tommy Dorsey big band for a year (that band is still performing, though Dorsey died in 1956), lived in Manhattan, then relocated to Atlanta and entered Georgia State University to study music.
To cover tuition he sold his beloved special edition Firebird. The beast was a beautiful car, but the 400 cubic inch V-8 engine drank a lot of gasoline.
“I really needed a Honda,” said Gransden. “In Atlanta a nine-mile-per-gallon four speed Trans Am was not the way to go.” On the other hand, “I really didn’t want to sell that car.”
Robert Baitis, a transplant from Germany, bought it in 1993 for $7,500 then moved to an apartment in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Trans Am had to sit out in a parking lot most of the day.
Baitis felt bad about that, so he sold it to his mechanic in Alabama for $9,500, before moving back to Atlanta. The mechanic passed on, leaving the car to his widow, who remarried and sold the car again, to someone in a small town south of Huntsville.
After some bargaining with the brother, Gransden bought back his old car for $6,000. He sent it on a flatbed to Trans Am Specialties of Florida in Miami, where Deiters keeps perhaps 80 Trans Ams that he’s restoring, selling or buying.
Next came the pandemic. Gransden, who makes his money from performing, couldn’t perform. Deiters, who gets his parts through the supply chain, couldn’t get parts. Everything stopped.
Then Deiters’ warehouse caught fire. Thirteen priceless Trans Ams burned to the axles. His shop and showroom were half-destroyed. The business ground to a halt as Deiters rebuilt the structure. But Gransden’s Trans Am was spared. Said Deiters, “It not only survived sitting under that tree in Alabama, it survived the fire in my place.”
After four years in the shop, and many thousands in restoration costs, including a transplanted low-mileage 2006 GTO engine, Gransden’s Firebird came home.
Monday, July 15, 2024
Monday, June 17, 2024
Tuesday, June 04, 2024
Parnelli died today. Last of the bullring ironmen racers. Winner of the Indy 500 as a driver and team owner, 100 jalopy races, the Motor Trend Riverside 500 and 4 other USAC stock car races, the 1970 Trans Am championship, Pikes Peak, 4 sprint car championships, Baja 1000 and Baja 500 in the Big Oly, member of 8 Hall of Fames. He retired over 50 years ago from driving... but he's going to be legend forever.
Robin Miller said it best: U.S. motorsport’s Mount Rushmore would feature A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney and Parnelli.
Parnelli was among those elite sports stars Shaq, Fangio, Stirling, and Shelby, etc who require only one name for everyone to know the subject of the conversation. There is only one Parnelli, and yes, he was the all-time leader of the Broke While Leading category. But winners are often the ones pushing their equipment the hardest
But Parnelli wasn't really his name, he was born Rufus Parnell Jones. And he raced a car called Ol Calhoun! That's cool, very cool, to THIS car guy!
He grew up poor—and poorly educated—and did a long, painful apprenticeship running jalopies on Southern California bullrings. Yet despite racing during what was statistically the most dangerous era in motorsports history, he was never seriously injured, and he ended up as one of the wealthiest drivers in the world.
Parnelli was the first driver at Indy to ever qualify over 150 miles per hour in 1962 and participated in the Baja 1000, raced midget cars, stock cars, sprint cars, ORVs and more during his career.
the best write up of Parnelli is at https://racer.com/2024/06/04/parnelli-jones-1933-2024
Sunday, May 19, 2024
Monday, May 13, 2024
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
She must have drove the guys crazy in the late 70s
That's HER car, not a boyfriends or husbands. One of her sons just went on a search for it and located it only 60 miles away.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=793034289519983&set=pcb.793034859519926
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
This 1969 Shelby GT350 was stolen shortly after it was delivered in 1969 and damaged badly enough that the insurance car wrote it off and paid out the owner, and sent the car to the junkyard
The owner was cashed out, and the car was destined for the scrapheap.
This is where ABC Auto Wreckers of San Leandro, California came into the picture. Jerry Lecatse bought the car and set to work turning it into a race car eligible to compete in the SCCA B Production Class.
The original 428 was removed and replaced with a Boss 302 with a more rules-friendly displacement of 302 cubic inches
In 1982 the car was bought to return it to its earlier SCCA racing specification. But, before work could begin, the car was damaged in a storage facility fire along with 14 other vehicles.
The car remained in damaged condition in a new storage facility until Goeringer met famous hot-rodder Doane Spencer, they got to talking about the car and struck a deal to finish it together, repairing the parts that needed it with a donor chassis. Spencer would sadly pass away in 1995 and the project wouldn’t see completion until 2012.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
I've never heard of the Trans Am Victory edition Javelin
Any Javelin SST built between October and November 15, 1972 could have been ordered with the package. They were heavily optioned from the get-go and included unique “Javelin Winner Trans Am Championship 1971-1972 SCCA” fender decal, and 8-slot rally styled steel wheels.
Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Friday, April 07, 2023
The dealership selling this 79 Trans Am with only 682 miles, would like 120,000 more for it than when it was fresh from the factory. 40k more than they paid for it 4 months ago at auction.
maybe there is some rich guy with a midlife crisis, who just watched American Beauty, who will trade his life savings for the car to spite his soon to be ex-wife. But I doubt it
Frankly it's ridiculous to pay more for this than a new Hellcat or Corvette, either of those will out perform this, and depreciate less in the next 20 years if treated the same as this if it were bought instead, as a low mile never driven investment
Saturday, April 01, 2023
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Uh oh... ugly American car craze earned some bad press in Australia when a local reporter characterized a Pontiac Trans Am as terrorizing an Australian neighborhood before crashing.
The reporter detailed how one neighbor claimed the Pontiac Trans Am was “deliberately fish tailing” before the accident.
Another detail the newscast in Australia definitely wants you to focus on: the big block (421?) of this assault muscle car of foreign origin, something you absolutely don’t need for commuting. There’s apparently absolutely no reason for any citizen to own such a machine of mass destructive power.
Naturally, being an American muscle car, this Trans Am took out its natural born enemy: a Volkswagen Passat. Sure, on the newscast they try pretending the VW was parked and minding its own business, but we all know better.
Another detail the newscast in Australia definitely wants you to focus on: the big block (421?) of this assault muscle car of foreign origin, something you absolutely don’t need for commuting. There’s apparently absolutely no reason for any citizen to own such a machine of mass destructive power.
Naturally, being an American muscle car, this Trans Am took out its natural born enemy: a Volkswagen Passat. Sure, on the newscast they try pretending the VW was parked and minding its own business, but we all know better.
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