AutoTrader Find of the Week: 1984 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am is the Stuff High School Dreams Are Made Of

Your first car shouldn’t be nice.

The bodywork should suck. The paint should suck even more. The interior should be held together with chewing gum, and you should sincerely wonder every time you turn the key if the damn thing will even start.

You’ll want it to be cheap, decidedly unspecial, and so mechanically dimwitted you can fix it with a hammer. 

Why? Because you want a car you can sit on the hood of without worrying about scratching it. A car you can drive to a campsite and not give a damn about dirt or stone chips. You better believe somebody will inevitably dent it at the first party you drive it to.

And while it might be tempting to spend every last dollar in your savings account on a set of wheels, I promise, it’s not worth it. The sex of your preference will care nothing for your meagre status symbol — not that it will matter anyway, because you won’t have money to take them out on a date. A first car shouldn’t stop you from having fun in other parts of your life.

Now, this may sound as if I’m lobbying for some kind of safe, sensible, economy car. But let’s be real, if you’re reading this and daydreaming about your first car, the above statement just dropped a rock into the pit of your stomach worse than your parents reading through your Snapchat history. Do kids still use Snapchat? I don’t know. I’m old now.

You want fire and fury. You want burnouts and a V8 that screams hellfire and shoves a middle finger in the face of your hybrid-driving vice-principal. You want freedom and rebellion, and if it all comes wrapped in a retro-cool package tied around with a big fat ribbon of mild irony, all the better, right?

Well then, young gearhead, might I direct your raging hormones towards this absolute bucket of a 1984 Pontiac Firebird listed for sale on AutoTrader by a private seller in Brantford, Ont. While you may not guess it now, this Firebird began life as a fairly well-optioned, desirable model. 

This particular Trans Am also received the desirable W62 group “ground effects” kit (a salute to the ‘83 Pace Car models) to create the two-tone exterior colour scheme. The black and gold colour scheme on the Trans Am was, of course, made famous by Burt Reynolds’ Bandit character, and a Trans Am exactly resembling this one even starred in Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, which, famously, is the one that doesn’t have Burt Reynolds in it, but whatever. 

This Firebird also started as a Trans AM H.O. variant — which means it was equipped with the most powerful engine option in ‘84 — a variant of GM’s 5.0 V8-equipped throttle body injection and good for a whopping 190 hp and 240 lb-ft of torque.

Zero-to-60-mph times were recorded around the seven-second mark, which was actually pretty good for its day. In 1984, it was more or less matched to the legendary Buick Grand National, and just a few milliseconds off the pace of the Chevrolet Corvette.

However, by modern standards, GM’s 5.0L is more than a bit of a dog, which is almost certainly why the current owner decided to swap in a rebuilt 350 small-block V8. 

It’s got all the fun stuff you’ve been chopping it up about in shop class. The engine block has been bored out. It’s got an aftermarket camshaft and valve heads, and a Holly four-barrel carb. Headers. Cat delete. Flowmaster mufflers. The neighbours will never sleep again. It’s also got 373 gears out back, so it’ll scoot pretty good — at least, good enough to make your friends who all bought Volkswagen Jettas and Hyundai Elantras regret their life choices.

Now granted, it’s got some rust spots on the fenders. And the interior is … well, it looks like a grade-school pillow fort and almost certainly reeks of cigarettes and oil.

But, hey, those are all great points for you to talk the seller down from their $6,500 asking price. With a little paint, bodywork, and some upholstery restoration, you’ve got the ultimate high school street carnage machine. 

And if this one passes you by, just remember: cheap doesn’t need to be cheerful, and cheap thrills may just be the best ones you’ll ever get to have.