1978 Pontiac Firebird Formula

By 1978 the American performance car had been taxed, insured and regulated into a corner, and the Firebird was one of the few still willing to look the part. The Formula sat below the Trans Am and above everything else in the range, and it made its case quietly: twin nostrils punched into the hood, a gold band low along the flanks, and a shape that has aged into something better than it was given credit for at the time.

This one came to Crown in white over gold, straight and complete, the kind of car that has been kept rather than restored. The brief was not to reinvent it. No modern engine, no wide wheels, no reupholstered future. It was simpler than that, and harder: make everything underneath new again, and leave everything you can see alone.

So it went up on the lift and came apart from the bottom. The engine came out and went away for a full rebuild. The transmission followed, to be resealed. The rear differential was pulled, opened, rebuilt and resealed, and the driveshaft was refinished with new universal joints before it went back under the car. Then the front subframe was unbolted and lifted out entirely, stripped, coated, and set aside while the control arms were pressed apart and rebuilt with new bushings and ball joints. Suspension parts left for powder coat by the crate.

Nothing came back the way it left. The brake calipers were resealed and refinished, the rear drums replaced, the hard lines and rubber hoses renewed at both ends. New bearings, new rotors, new dust shields. The radiator support and crossmember were coated. Even the leaf springs were cleaned, painted and rebushed, which is the kind of work nobody ever sees and everybody feels the first time the car crosses a bad road.

What is left is assembly and proof. The engine goes back between freshly coated rails, the manifolds get Cerakoted, and every rubber hose and belt in the car is replaced before it is asked to run. Then it gets fluids, bled brakes, an alignment, a first start with somebody watching the gauges, and road miles enough to trust it. When it comes off the lift for the last time it will look exactly like a well kept 1978 Formula. It will simply be a better one than Pontiac ever shipped.