Rusty Hulk: 1977 Trans Am SE

Want a messed-up pile of a car that needs every nut and bolt gone through? Here’s your chance at a 1977 Trans Am SE that’s so decrepit its VIN tag has rust all around it. Why would you bother? Because everyone and his brother needs a 70s TA these days, right? If you pop for this one, listed here on ebay, you’ll be in at $1525 as of Saturday in an auction that concludes mid-week. You’ll then hitch your trailer for Oklahoma City and collect your prize. And once you restore it, you’ll auction it off for lottery-sized money. Hold your horses.

Here’s the cycle in the life of a collector car marque in today’s auction-fuelled era. A few go to auction and sell for reasonable prices. Someone brings one to the next auction cycle and it hits semi-big. Then a couple of people drag similar models out of barns and restore them, and suddenly everyone needs a $100K priced car-boat (read, “Amphicar”). Next, the hulks come out of the closet, or barn, and suddenly a junker that was worth a couple of thousand bucks is a starting point to fame and fortune and sells on ebay  for $20K. Or more. It happened to all things MOPAR Hemi, then the aforementioned Amphicars, and most recently, every Trans Am ever to fall off a truck onto a dealer’s lot. Here’s the latest example.

This car is a mess. There’s rust enough that the seller offers two rust-free doors, two quarter panels, and a hood in the deal. The engine was originally a 400-CID V8. That was replaced with a 350, and that’s been pulled and it’s vague as to whether it goes with the car or not. There’s no indication of mileage, but it might as well be a million as one. Do you want this car anyway? It does have the SE package, which makes it more rare/desirable than some of its brothers. That would also be true of its original four-speed status, which you could put back along with whatever engine you source to power the car.

Which brings up the resto-mod question: Would the best route to go here be to forget what the VIN and sticker say and just make this a hot rod? You’ll have to be careful with it if you live in a smog state (California), but in many states with no emission rules for older cars, this might be a good opening platform. Just don’t get so crazy about that idea that you fail to look over the body and underside of this one. If it’s as rusty as it might appear to be, you’re basically buying a VIN and title, and surely you can find a more solid starting point than this Pontiac if that’s your aim.