Pontiac Firebird

The Pontiac Firebird is a 2-door coupe / 2-door convertible from Pontiac, built from 1967 to 2002, in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar. Under the bonnet: 230 CID Pontiac SOHC I6. Jack Humbert drew it.

Where it came from

The Pontiac Firebird is an American automobile built and produced by Pontiac from the 1967 to 2002 model years. Designed as a pony car to compete with the Ford Mustang, it was introduced on February 23, 1967, five months after GM's Chevrolet division's platform-sharing Camaro. This also coincided with the release of the 1967 Mercury Cougar, Ford's upscale, platform-sharing version of the Mustang. The name "Firebird" was also previously used by GM for the General Motors Firebird series of concept cars in the 1950s.

Under the skin

Power comes from 230 CID Pontiac SOHC I6; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It shifts through a 2-speed automatic / 3-speed Turbo-Hydramatic automatic / 3-speed manual / 4-speed manual. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 108.1 in (1967). These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.

In context

Its family tree is legible: assembly was at Lordstown, Ohio. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Alfa Romeo Spider, the Toyota Corolla, the Toyota Hilux — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Pontiac catalogue sit the Pontiac 2+2 and the Pontiac 6.

What it costs now

MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Pontiac Firebird has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.