Don’t look past this 1980 Solar Gold Pontiac Trans Am at the 1977 Can Am behind it. The feature of this article is the car in front! You can see more pictures of the car here on eBay. The car is bid to $1,650 and has less than 2 days remaining in the auction. The Trans Am is located in East Greenbush, New York and was purchased by the seller from an impound lot. The Trans Am carried the touch for performance cars from 1973-1979 but Pontiac dropped the large displacement V8s in 1980.
The interior of this car is trashed but it does contain the hood scoop. The base tan interior might be able to be cleaned up and the dash is said to have only one crack. The car is not well optioned but does appear to have a rear defroster. The Trans Am is being sold on a New York bill of sale because the original title is lost. The towing company that had the car claimed the water pump off the car so it is not running.
As you can tell, there are a few other problems with getting this car running. The seller states the car has been off the road since 1997 and the car is rusty throughout. The rear of the car seems to be the worst and the rear frame rails are rotted away. Fortunately, the front and rear bumpers and the spoilers are plastic and fiberglass or they would be gone also.
This car would have been equipped with the Pontiac 301 cubic inch V8 engine from the factory which delivered only 155 horsepower and was a shadow of earlier Trans Ams in terms of performance. With approximately 50,000 Trans Ams built in 1980 this car is not rare. Unfortunately, the seller states that he is keeping the rear window louvers. So is this car worth saving or parted out to keep other Trans Ams on the road?
Parts car only, too many unknowns. Looks like a Pontiac graveyard, and by the way, the “unobtanium” spoiler is broken on the Can Am!! :-)
RIGHT !? On the Can Am Spoiler !! Too bad. Can Ams are cool.
That Firebird (and I am a BIG Firebird fan) is JUNK, parts car….MAYBE….Rotted out. Total neglect. Way easier to spend some of the budget on a WAY better car than to try and polish that turd!! Plenty of them out there for sale and more ARE coming.
Even if the endcaps are good, the center section goes all the way down to the edge of the trunk – hard to fabricate – Pontiac should have made it shorter & possibly used/modifed the firebird rear spoiler center section.
http://www.speednik.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/08/www.speednik.com-muscle-cars-you-should-know-1977-pontiac-can-am-mecum3.jpg
Tree fell and broke the spoiler. But it is complete and repairable. Seller is my son. He has 4 can ams, all numbers matching.
would he be interested in selling one of the can ams?
gord
parallax@vianet.ca
Thanks for chiming in!
Eh, on another note…. When the dash behind the VIN plate is rotting away, the car is in deep, deep doo-doo.
Yup. I think everyone agrees it’s more of a parts car than anything else. If someone wants to restore it though, that’s up to them. To each his own.
Always a shame to loose a Pontiac, but this one was not a really nice one to start, it if it wasn’t so rusty it could’ve been converted to a nice 400 400 car, but I think this one is toast
Parts car only. Best thing about it – the cool vintage rear window louvers!
SOLD for $2,425.
A not too wise person and their money parted…..
Who’s an idiot? I thought there were no personal attacks here. I don’t believe it was listed as rare anywhere in the ad. Please read properly; a magazine editor should be capable of that. Someone lists something, anything for sale. If someone else wants it, it sells. If not, it doesn’t. Simple as that. Learned that when I had my lemonade stand at the age of 5.
Not a car worth restoring, not even a parts car. My dad has a mint 80 T/A with maybe 50,00 kms on the clock. His car with the black Hobnail interior doesn’t even look sat in. I think the max he can get for his is 15K. These aren’t sought after cars and probably never will be. The 77 and 78s still bring a good buck and the 69 to 73 T/As always bring big money.
Not even a parts car??? Some have no idea of the value of parts!! Having restored a number of this gen Firebird, I see tons of parts that are worth having. At $2,425 no, but if someone were to give this to me I would be pretty OK with that. 1970-’79 TA’s all bring good money in the right condition. As far as Dad’s mint TA, with those miles, unless it’s restored it’s not mint.