Pontiac
The Pontiac Firebird (3rd generation) is one of 67 Pontiac models in the MotorJury library, the catalogue that sets out to hold every car ever made — production, prototype and concept alike. The record places its introduction in 1981. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the Pontiac Firebird (3rd generation) properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1980s were the decade of turbocharging, electronic fuel injection and the first mass digital engine management — Group B rallying and hot hatches defined its performance culture. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Mitsubishi Mitsubishi Pajero, the DeLorean Motor Company DeLorean DMC-12, the Toyota Toyota Camry — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the Pontiac Firebird (3rd generation) reads like this: the record lists its engine as 151 CID GM Iron Duke engine / Iron Duke Straight-four engine / I4 / 173 CID GM 60-Degree V6 engine#Longitudinal / LC1/LL1/LB8 V6 engine / V6 / 191 CID GM 60-Degree V6 engine#LH0 / ; kerb weight is recorded at predecessor = Pontiac Firebird (second generation); drive goes through 3-speed automatic THM 200C / 4-speed automatic THM 700R4 / 4-speed manual / 5-speed manual Borg Warner T5; the layout is FR layout. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.
Within Pontiac's own catalogue the Pontiac Firebird (3rd generation) sits alongside the Pontiac 2+2, the Pontiac 6 (1926), the Pontiac 6000, the Pontiac Astre. The record names the Pontiac Firebird (second generation) as its predecessor and the Pontiac Firebird (fourth generation) as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Jerry Palmer, Bill Porter. Assembly is recorded at United States: Van Nuys, California (Van Nuys Assembly) / United States: Norwood, Ohio (Norwood Assembly).
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
What this page cannot yet tell you is what the Pontiac Firebird (3rd generation) costs to live with — that is a different dataset. MotorJury's ownership verdicts are computed from federal complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, published per model year as the nightly ingest reaches each car. If this model was sold in the United States, its years will surface in the ownership database; browse it live or price any car yourself with the true-cost calculator.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.