1975 Trans Am Project

A friend at work told me about a family member having an old Trans Am for sale... and it was white and blue.  Thinking it might be a '70-'72 Trans Am, I quickly got a phone number and made contact with the owner.  On Valentine's Day in 1987, I drove to Greenwood, SC and looked at what turned out to be a 1975 Trans Am.  It was white with blue interior, and had a 455, 4-speed.  It had been sitting under a tree for a while so it was black and moldy.  The passenger side window was broken out and covered with plastic.  One of the rear leaf springs were broken so the Trans Am didn't set level on its suspension.  I could not get it to start, but determined that the engine was not stuck.  The asking price was $1100 but ending up buying the car for $700.  Now I needed to come up with a way to get it home.

The next weekend I lined up a rollback to go back to Greenwood to get the Trans Am.  So this guy shows up in this faded, greasy, rusty, and worn out light blue Chevy rollback.  The inside was filthy!  The top of the dash had cracked, busted, turned to powder, and disappeared!  You could see the wiring, ducts, etc. behind what was left of the dash.  This rollback was one of the biggest pieces of junk I'd ever seen.  It spit, sputtered, coughed, and backfired all the way to Greenwood.  At first I didn't even think we were going to make it out of town.  We had to stop, clean out the carburetor, and check or replace the power valve on the Holley carburetor several times, and stop and manually switch over to the other gas tank when we ran out of gas (the gauges did not work). We stopped at local gas stations in the small towns we traveled through to use their tools, parts cleaners, etc. to keep this piece of junk running.  It was an adventure!  I didn’t see how in the world this thing would ever make it back with a 3800-pound Trans Am loaded on it!  We got to Greenwood, loaded the Trans Am and headed back.  It actually seemed to run better with a load on the back.  The trip back was not nearly as eventful as the trip up.

Here it sits "as delivered."  You can see the black mold all over the hood.  We had to wash the Trans Am with Soft Scrub and water to get the mildew and mold off.	I thought the "455 HO" decals were fake... until I received info on this Trans Am from Pontiac Historical Services and found it really was a 1-of-857, 455 HO, 4-speed T/A!!
I finally got the 455 HO to start up and run... but it had low oil pressure and a "death knock" ( a rod knocking) so I shut it off before I damaged it.	I pulled the 455 HO out and stored it, bought this running 400 from a friend for $200, and got the Trans Am running.  Check out those flames on the shaker scoop...
It cleaned up pretty good.  I replaced the broken door glass in the passenger side door and replaced the broken rear leaf spring.  When I got it to this stage, a guy started coming by weekly wanting to buy it.	It ran good... even with a $200 used 400.  I only had one incident with it dying and not starting.  I had to push it with my 77 Cutlass so check out what happened on that page... the two car accident with only one driver!!
	The interior even cleaned up pretty good.  The dash pad, door panels, console, and interior plastic were excellent.  The seat had some small tears, but were presentable. I had $1000 in this Trans Am.  I made the mistake of pricing to this guy that keep coming by wanting to buy it... because he forked over $1500 and drove it back home with him to Atlanta! So, I didn't have this Trans Am very long at all (only about a year), but it was great fun while it lasted. I used the $1500 to buy a nice, rust and dent free 1969 Mach 1 which I was going to restore, but changing jobs and moving forced me to sell it before I could even get started.
Check out the drilled aluminum plate in the back of the shaker scoop... hog-a-riffic.