Car Lust Classic--1977 Pontiac Trans Am SE
Originally posted by Chris Hafner on Dec. 1, 2008.
Sally Field: "Does this thing move?"
Burt Reynolds: "Oh, yeah."
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Like Smokey and the Bandit, the movie that made it famous, the 1977 Pontiac Trans Am is easy to dismiss as a buffoonish, overblown mockery of a once-great art form. Certainly both the movie and the muscle car are obvious, gauche, and deeply imbued with the cheesiness characteristic of the 1970s. Personally, I think that is at the root of their appeal.
Last year I wrote a series of posts on Poseur Muscle Cars, honoring such punchless extroverts as the Ford Mustang II, Chevy Monte Carlo SS, Dodge Magnum XE, Ford Gran Torino, and Spirit-based AMC AMX. The '77 Trans Am would seem like an obvious candidate for Poseur Muscle Car (dis)honor--after all, as the Trans Am's horsepower ratings sagged in the mid-1970s, the body kits and graphics kept getting flashier and gaudier to compensate.
The difference? The Trans Am was the real thing--the car most of those poseur muscle cars wanted to be when they grew up. Compared to its contemporaries, the Trans Am was still a potent car. Relatively speaking, it still brought the thunder.
