1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Ram Air IV 4-Speed Muscle Car Of The Week Video Episode
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1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Ram Air IV 4-Speed Muscle Car Of The Week Video Episode #106
This is the Trans Am that started it all… the first-generation 1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, complete with it's understated styling, high-performance suspension, and the highly sought-after 345 HP Ram Air IV V8 / Muncie 4-speed driveline. It's a rare bird for sure, and we're honored to be able to share this prized Muscle Car from the Brothers Collection.
The 1969 Pontiac Trans Am is one of the most popular American Muscle Cars thanks to it's great looks and performance. Finished in Cameo Ivory and Tyrol Blue, the Trans Am set a high bar for all Muscle Cars.
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1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Ram Air IV 4-Speed Muscle Car Of The Week Video Episode #106
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I grew up in a little town and when I was in High School there were two brothers there and each brother had a 69' Trans Am, and yes we new they were special cars back then because only 697 69' Tran Ams were made , those were the days of GTO's , Road Runners , Trans AM's ,70' Formula 400's , Camaro Z28's in the school parking lot, my favorite today are the 70' through 73' Trans Am's
Beautiful car. I like how they are not scared to smoke the tires when they show them off!
It is such a tragedy GM had to kill off Pontiac. My first car at age 15 was a hand-me-down '67 Catalina sedan with 400 2 bbl, soon followed by '65 GTO 4 speed, 4.11 posi, '70 Grand Prix SJ w/HO 400, then a '74 Firebird Formula 400. I still have dreams about these cars! I just clocked 100k miles on my '09 G8 GT and am giving it some love for another 100k, during which I'll be looking for a G8 GXP! Maybe Pontiac will be revived some day? Thanks MCotW for sharing so many great cars!
+Kurt Nyffeler well they did it because the corporate jackass mentality .not because they "had to" .but I suppose I should just move on with my life .however I agree its a tradgedy.
Kurt - unimaginable coincidence ... In 1979 I was 15 and had pulled a 1969 Firebird out of Smitty's Junk Yard for $300. Of course the previous owner had rodded the crap out of my "Weekend-warrior" (mean, mean, pride) - so a rod was hanging out the 350 motor.- My Dad helped me find a replacement == A 1967 PONTIAC CATALINA WITH A 400 ENGINE FOR $200 - and she was a Cream-puff ! I drove the Cat a long time before gutting it and taking my 400 for the 'Bird ( felt kinda dirty after Poncho's started dying off through the years ) THE Memories !!
GM didn't have to kill Pontiac. GM killed Pontiac with mismanagement, forcing it to produce clones of other terrible GM cars and expecting to make profit from brands that were heavily doing internal competition, for most of the cars were identical to each other.
I have 1970 pontiac firebird, but damn I love the 1969 Firebird and Trans Am
I did a 69 firebird in a commercial shop and spent about a year on it..... awesome car and I replaced almost every panel that could be replaced and done surgical repairs on the rest also all the gaps were surgically corrected to perfection.... thank you for this video... it brought back memories for me
I wish i was living in 1969
Beautiful American muscle! 🇺🇸👍
Thanks for the positive feedback!
I saw one in the city where I live driving down the street a few years back and I was blown away! Gorgeous muscle car when seen out in the road doing it's thing! Still my favorite Pontiac of all time and I had a beautiful yellow '71 Le Mans with black vinyl top and a '72 Grand Prix!
This Mopar guy says, that thing is sick. Beautiful.
love those '69 Firebirds.. When I was 17yrs old, I bought a 69 firebird/350 from a used car lot for 1600.00 bucks. It was just a run-of-the-mill 'bird, but it had a fresh paint job, a pristine interior & it took all kinds of abuse w/out ever breaking down. Back in '81, I had test driven a true '69 Trans-Am at a used car lot. That 'bird sat on his lot for over a year before it sold. They were asking 8k, but it finally sold for only 7,200 bucks. If I only knew what i know now.. lol
6 digits now FOR A SUPER CLEAN LOW MILEAGE..
Always like the 1969 T/A convertible
They only made 8 convertibles All accounted for but one...Where is it???? No one knows..
@@classickruzer1 crash maybe or destroy also ram air V could be available not officially released on 1969 but late 69 if you knew people then you could get it also money
@@classickruzer1 they found it, it is in Canada , dollar value of one of them is over a million dollars
@@terrybangley2281 That's awesome. Thanks for the info man..
Stunning Trans Am
Absolutely feckin Awesome Car . 2nd most favorite.1# Buick GSX APOLO WHITE STAGE 1
I agree ,and this is one of the muscles that just about any colour sits on well
Kevin I got to stop looking at your videos cuz the more I look the more I want just kidding I love your videos and the information you give it's just cars I think everybody wants that lived in that era
I really like the Bandit Trans Am, but here's the funny thing. I got to know of Smokey and the Bandit because I liked the car, not the usual way around. Turns out the movie is awesome too.
Same here. :) The first movie I remember was Smokey and the Bandit 2. More than 30 years later I got it on DVD and was like "Whoa... That's the 4.9 Turbo?!?" Pretty, but not fast. :-/
Ya but unfortunately by the mid 70's they had less performance and more pollution controls....Beautiful looking cars for sure.
Always liked the styling of the 75-78 Trans Am. But they were basically dogs in stock form. Although the ones with the Pontiac W72 400/4 speed we're definitely faster than the ones with the Oldsmobile 403/automatic. It would be cool to drop an earlier high compression 1967-70 4OO HO and a 4 speed into a late 70s T/A.
The 69 T/A is best IMO, 73-74 T/A SD 455 would be #2. Always liked old pontiac's, I have a 70 grand prix sj with a 455 that my dad bought new back in april of 70.
I like all Trans Ams
The factory power steering cooler was not just a Trans Am piece. It came standard on all 1969 Firebird 400s equipped with 3:90 or 4:33 ratio differential gears. And the Ram Air IV equipped Firebirds could only be had with 3:90 or 4:33 gears.
Gorgeous!
Gorgeous looking Cars
Love the videos !!! just one suggestion start the cars and let us here those Bad Ass engines run that cam on the ram air IV is so cool !!!
Trans Am years 1970-73 are my favourite body styles!
That's a beauty
I might not own the car but I Have what's Under the hood though, WQ Block, 722 heads, Winters intake, Round port Exh manifolds, and the 29273 Quadrajet...
this is a beautiful car, in comparison to all other Trans Ams
My favorite trans am would be 1971-72 455 HO in lucerne blue with withe stripe
Awesome car
My neighbor Had a 1969 firebird with 400 on the hood convertable that did 130mph on the Bonniville Salt Flats
Mark Arrivi oh, it would do more than that. I had a 350 with the 4v and it would easily do more than 130.
I had a 69 that I drove for almost 30 years. Rumor has it that very late one night it got up to 125 on a lonely stretch of highway.
Damn in my opinion this is the best looking car ever made i wonder what this car would bring at Barrett Jackson !!
6 digits easy..
@@classickruzer1 On 1-15-2023 one sold thru mercum auction 400K!!!
1970 trans am ram air iv 4 spd polar white
Love the 69 Trans Am. I* never owned one but idid have a 71 Lemans sport
Great vids. Pls mention 0-60 times. Thx
well let me put it this way, i wouldnt kick the first generation trans am or a third generation trans am to the curb in no way shape or form. but, i love the second generation model the best because i grew up around them! if i could have any year it would be a 70-73 model i love the styling with the 455 ho or sd and 4 spd!
I always understood Pontiac to be a more budget priced company within GM, not luxury. That was Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac. The spoiler also looks the same as the 69 GTO one.
Please let me know if there are any ram air 1 1967 cars still around , side note my 67 400 was one of 18000
I heard you could get power seats.....and they were very rare. Maybe that was the 70 1/2 but i thought i read it was 69. And it was the driver seat only.
Too bad that Chevy didn't use the same cylinder head design. I like the spark plugs higher up and away from exhaust,less chance of burning up plug wires on headers
Buick had that, too! And the alternator in front, so it wasn't such a pain to get to it. When they standardized all the engines across the GM lineup, I thought they should have standardized to the Buick or Pontiac design. Not the low-buck Chevy stuff.
@1:43 This happens a lot; the restorer attempts to mimic the original markings from the assembly line, but ends up putting them on too slowly, and they look like they were drawn-on! Its very rare to see markings on a restoration that look like they were very quickly written, just like the factory. It takes guts!
John L sorry dude, but i don't get what you're referring to.i keep pausing it at 1:43..can u explain what u mean? Sorry just trying to find out what the restorer did wrong.......
Quentin 33 it's the mpm31 on the firewall
Did these actually run in Trans Am racing? I know Pontiac was working on a 303 cubic inch Ram Air V engine just for the Trans Am series but I don't think it ever panned out
'69 T/A IS THE T/A,all the rest are imitations,imho.BTW if you knew you Pontiac dealer well enough,you could have the Trams Am special 303ci Ram Air V,a crate only motor,literally made for racing!.
I wonder how many of those 303 ci RAV's were actually built. I know that Pontiac originally planned on building 4 different versions of the RAV...the 303 ci for the Trans Am Racing series, the 366 ci for NASCAR, the 400 ci street version, and the 428 ci version for drag racing. But I'm not sure how many were actually built because Pontiac was no longer involved in any factory backed racing from 1963 up until 1978 I believe when Richard Petty switched from Chrysler to Pontiac because the 1978 Dodge Magnums were so slow. I think he raced Pontiac's from 1978 until he retired in 1992
anybody know if they put any 455s in these like a copo or yenko option? love to see one with the 428 in it too, killer motor.
Michael Ferro nope...No Yenko for any Trans Am.
905 there was a Pontiac dealer( possibly Royal Pontiac not sure) in Michigan that put 428s in GTOs and Firebirds I agree with Quentin I don't believe they modified any Firebirds with the T/A option or GTO judges as far as the 455s go in 1970(also the first year for the 455 it replaced the 428) GM lifted the 400 cid limit and yes 1970 T/As had a 455 available in late 1970 they had a 455 HO engine option
There was never any Firebirds that got the 428 from the factory but Royal Pontiac would install it in Firebirds and GTO's as part of the Royal Bobcat package
All of them
Its a baby Goat.
My 2008 Honda Fit with manual tranny and 14" rims so my car now identifies as
(a) Trans Am.
In 1977 i had a pre-approved $2500 bank loan to get myself a good muscle car. Asking price on the 69' Trans Am Ram Air IV w 4 spd. was $2,700 but i passed because the engine was smoking and dented front bumper. Then i looked at a 70' saturn yellow GSX Stage 1 and they were asking the same $2,700. It was starting to rust at the rear wheel wells,so i passed. Finally settled on a 71' 340 Duster/4 spd/4:56 gears w/ Plum Crazy purple paint for the sum of $2,500 which was my budget. OH MAN......this Trans Am makes my knees weak. Those were the days were you could pass up one of these for $2,700!
Love these cars. But everyone always says the factory rating. No one pays that much money for 10HP. Has anyone dyno tested a RA4 400 to see what is actually puts out?
number3665 An original, unmolested one in good shape should put out 400-420hp at the flywheel at around 5000rpm. They're way more powerful than they're rated at, but they're not the torquiest motor you can get. Probably comparable to a 396 L78.
There was a Pontiac magazine a few years ago that wrote about a Ram Air IV GTO someone was racing in a Factory Appearing, Stock Tire series. They rebuilt the engine and on a test stand it made about 440hp. That's how you measure "SAE gross" horsepower, which is what most ratings were back then. "SAE Net" would be power as installed in the car, where the engine has to actually turn an alternator and a fuel pump, and breathe through mufflers.
I think a lot of "underrated" engines were just advertising SAE Net horsepower a few years before it was normal. (Like the Buick 455 Stage 1 and Chevy ZL1.)
I think Pontiac made up ratings for arbitrary power-to-weight ratios, to appease the insurance companies.
Yes well over 400hp
I once saw a bone stock 1969 400 Ram Air IV on an engine dyno and it made 436 horsepower at 6000 RPM. Completely stock
I have two of them, hot wheel cars of course.😭
For the life of me I can't understand why GM dropped Pontiac rather than the Olds.....can anyone enlighten me? Great video Kevin.
They dropped Oldsmobile before they dropped Pontiac. You must have Buick and Oldsmobile confused
By the way, I'm searching TH-cam to hear that Ram Air IV sound people keep talking about. You guys are *killing* me.
If I had it I would add Factory A/C
My ex-husband bought this car in 1969. My son sold it in 2019
My best friend in highschool had one of these non ramair i had a 67 mustang fastback 302 he smoked me every time
I never have seen a pontiac 400 ram air 1967 featured there were only 65 produced is that maybe why
I own a matching numbers 1967 400 with a
steel ram air 1 hood 400 turbo transm.........
It's ironic how the Trans Am was named for the Trans American championship, but never had a Pontiac engine eligible for the series. They had to use Chevy 302s. :-/
Better still, when Pontiac entered the series in 1969, and started selling the Trans Am package to customers, their cars in the Trans Am races were 1968 models.
They actually did build a very limited number of 303 cubic inch Ram Air V engines specifically for the Trans Am series but I'm not sure if they ever actually competed in it or not. I know that engine is extremely rare and desirable but probably not very good to drive on the street. They were a high RPM screamer because of their big round port cylinder head design but low end torque was basically non existent. Kind of like the Chevy DZ 302 and the Ford BOSS 302 in that aspect
It ran a Qjet
So am I the only one that thought this has slicks on it?
Not from factory*, just the one they have in the vid
I gotta say that 1970 1/2 beats this bad boy out by a long shot
These motors never came with a Holley they were all Quadrajets
Fyi it had a Q-jet not a Holley
Someone should dyno the ram air 4 engine!
I saw a stock RAIV on an engine dyno and it was good for 436 horses at 6000 rpm. Can't remember the torque figures but I do know the RAIV was more of a high RPM screamer because of the big round port cylinder head design. The lesser 400's and the 455 were more torquey at lower RPM...especially the 455. I'm a Mopar guy but I've always been a big fan of Pontiac's too. Awesome machines
For such a nice T/A there is rust under the hood
This is the only body style trans am I can get behind, future generations of the car were always ugly as a MF to me, I've never seen a first gen before now
69 to 73 are the only good ones
The Crème de la Crème... In my opinion the 1969 T/A was truly meant as a factory 'streetable Racecar' of the era. I was privileged and fortunate to have owned a Ram Air III 4 spd 1969 T/A from 1988-1994 == I kick myself twice a day for having sold it to put a foundation under my house... (Should have burned the house and lived in my car.. LOL ) This car screams to the corporate pukes of GM of HOW BADLY THEY FAILED -- They lost John Z. DeLorean and soon after Herb Adams - Killed the Poncho Motor by 1979, the Firebird by 2002, and of course the final Nail... Ole Chief Pontiac himself by 2008.. Way to go Gov't Motor Sell-outs..!!
I loved the old GM products but I'd never buy a new one again after the shit they've pulled in recent years. They've become Government Motors by helping the Obama administration spy on citizens with their On Star bullshit that is supposedly for " our convenience". Not to mention that GM took billions of our money to keep them from going bankrupt but then close a bunch of plants and move to Mexico anyways. I wouldn't contribute one cent to that company ever again. If I'm gonna buy a brand new vehicle from now on it will be a Ford. Globalist Government Motors can blow me
It,s too bad they didn,t have ram air callout,s on the hood.
My dream is to own a 69 ram air 4 trans am and a color matching 70 ram air 4 GTO JUDGE
Nice, but a fancy firebird 400. But it was the first t/a.
They put the bird on the hood because they weren't allowed to do anything UNDER the hood!!
could have bought a nice clone for 2 grand
it was NOT a HOLLEY CARB>>....sorry you done screwed up bud!
Right, it's a Quadrajet. Slip of the tongue, thanks for pointing it out.