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.”



—



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.







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