From the January 1979 issue of Car and Driver.
It was [then–associate editor Mike] Knepper’s strategy. “Why do not you try out to get a Trans Am to drive whilst you might be in Europe?” he questioned. Right away, that sounded like a marvelous strategy. Decide it up at Frankfurt-Major airport, push it to Austria, then Stuttgart, then Paris, then give it back again. “Fantastic!” said GM Abroad General public Relations, so we called the travel agent and produced our very low-buck Apex reservations, Detroit–Frankfurt. When it was way too late to improve, GMO named back and claimed, “Hey, great, you can decide on the automobile up in Antwerp!” So a offer was struck. We borrowed a Porsche 928 for the initial leg of our excursion, then flew from Stuttgart to Brussels to obtain our Trans Am.
We spent a wonderful afternoon with the irrepressible Tony Lapine, main designer for Porsche and resident sage at their escalating Weissach facility. Then, with substantial regret, remaining him to race off into a 40-moment targeted traffic jam that interposed itself ‘twixt us and Flughafen Stuttgart, whence Sabena would transportation us to beautiful Brussels and our waiting Firebird.
Belgium is not a enjoyment position, specifically when it is really cold and foggy. Belgium is not really significant, both, and the significant density of the smaller nation’s industrial plants implies that you might be never ever much from a smokestack or some dispirited village that is dependent on a local coal mine for survival. As a final result, the Belgian person on the avenue looks like just one of H.G. Wells’s Morlocks.
Car and Driver
At Brussels, the customs fellas waved us by without examining our luggage, but even so managed to express the experience that they recognized us as undesirable aliens, most likely smugglers. Out on the sidewalk, I guarded the baggage whilst J.L.K. Davis went off in research of the Trans Am. I was observing Belgian cabdrivers jockey for place in entrance of the terminal, enjoying the near misses that occurred consistently, when a white Trans Am comprehensive with screaming hen decal and Chris Craft exhaust observe came rumbling out of the maw of the parking large amount, my spouse at the helm.
The Pontiac Trans Am is just one of the last—but surely the best—of the Sixties’ foolish cars. It is large for what it is intended to do, claustrophobically smaller for whom and what it is really meant to have. It nonetheless manages to glimpse hot, and Pontiac’s fanatic-engineers certainly seem to have observed the magic formula of eternal youth and used it to this obviously out of date bundle, simply because a Trans Am is nonetheless a excellent kick, visually and dynamically, and that kick never ever came through as forcibly as when I saw our shiny white just one shouldering its way as a result of the Fiats, Renaults, and Citroëns in front of the Brussels airport.
If the customs folks eyed our baggage suspiciously, the Trans Am was positively hostile about it. Pop the decklid. “Twit! You imagined you would get some baggage in in this article!” The requirements for this automobile say that it offers 6.6 cubic feet of luggage accommodation. This is true, but only if you might be hauling loose sand. You could carry rather a ton of apparel back again there, but only if you left the suitcases at home. We managed to get a person duffel bag into the trunk, but the other 4 pieces had to be stacked on the back again seat. Hah! “Seat,” they get in touch with it, with sizeable irony. It may well seem like a seat, but it is no spot to sit.
From the Archive: Trans Am
It was disappointing to clamber inside of and come across an automated-transmission selector lever rather of a 4-velocity handbook, but otherwise it was predictably Pontiac—a tiny bit of residence for two Us residents who’d been absent from the Major PX for 10 times. And immediately after 10 times in a wide range of Fiats, Porsches, and Citroëns, I unconsciously attained for the seat changes and was sharply brought back to one more point of American existence: the non-adjustable seat (except you rely fore-and-aft). Probably Nash wrecked it for all upcoming generations of American auto buyers . . . The vehicles from Kenosha came with reclining seats, not for driving but for sleeping, and this appeared to give reclining seats a terrible title eternally in the strait-laced American heartland. So there you are in America’s leading road device, bolt upright for want of a easy product or service attribute which is been on German autos for 30 yrs, and standard products on even the meanest Japanese import. The front seats aren’t essentially terrible, but it is a disgrace that the driver and passenger must change their bodies to the seats, and not the other way about.
Soon after a evening at the airport Vacation Inn (a different taste of property), we strike the street for Paris. Within the Trans Am looking out, it appears neither massive nor incongruous. In actuality, it is each and every little bit as comfy on European roadways as any center-sized European auto. The nose is extensive, but visibility is superior. Just one knows where the four corners are, and the slice-and-thrust of European traffic—much far more intense and challenging than anything at all American drivers commonly experience—is managed with no far more trouble than a single would know in a Porsche 928. It attracts more interest than a Porsche 928, and this is often a possible hazard, due to the fact continental Europeans must surely be the best gawkers in all the entire world and you can find usually the risk that one of them will only generate his Citroën Dyane into your lap in an try to see better.
As is our wont, we dismissed the advice of the girl at the Holiday break Inn and merely adopted the autoroute that appeared most logically to lead to Paris. Immediately after a heavy early morning visitors jam and a pair of rapidly laps about the airport attempting to come across our way out of the Brussels metro area, we blundered abruptly into the finish of our autoroute and the vaguely marked beginnings of a detour. This is the form of detail that commonly prospects to frayed tempers and surly early-morning repartee, but right before we could commence hassling one another the Wellington Monument loomed up out of the fog and we realized that our déviation had introduced us to the edges of the Waterloo battlefield. We slowed the Firebird to a sightseeing pace and peered out into the gloom as one particular heroic monument right after one more rose up on either side of the highway and discreet tiny signals pointed away towards areas I have read about given that I was a baby. Definitely, stumbling upon the scene of Napoleon’s very last fantastic struggle this way, by accident, had to be extra stirring than any planned arrival by tour bus could at any time have been. Even the fog served to heighten the impact.
Vehicle and Driver
Back again on the autoroute, we watched the gas gauge march steadily toward vacant. We might remaining Brussels with a quarter tank, and the large 400 was ingesting that up at a hell of a rate. We wheeled off into the upcoming support area and, oops, remembered the “Unleaded Gas Only” decals scattered close to on many flat surfaces the place they could not be missed. What to do? We termed GM in Antwerp and requested their tips. Nobody understood. A person point was for sure, Belgian and French fuel stations were not outfitted with no-guide pumps. Last but not least, somebody in the manufacturing unit support department said to put top quality in it. This is exactly what the station attendant had been telling us for 20 minutes although we took up place at his pumps. I had my uncertainties, but the official voice of Normal Motors on the phone reported, “Fill it with tremendous,” so we crammed it with super, 1060 Belgian francs well worth, 62.4 liters of the stuff. Which is just about $40 in what we employed to contact “serious funds.”
Now entirely conscious of what it was costing Motor vehicle and Driver to have me roaring alongside the autoroute in the Electricity Crisis, imagining of the Belgian properties that could have been heated this wintertime with the petroleum I was utilizing up, I eased back again on to the highway and let it slowly increase to 90 mph—typical Renault/Simca cruising pace in these pieces. (This newfound prudence was also based, in section, on my anxiety that all that costly quality gas was likely to soften the catalyst and mail us down in flames like a Fokker Triplane.) When we crossed the border into France, the sunlight came out and the countryside opened up, getting far more hospitable someway. The French national velocity limit is around 80 mph, so we were not fudging by significantly, and it felt amazing to let the Trans Am operate at structure velocity without trying to keep one ear glued to the CB and the other to the radar detector. In Europe, one can flip up the stereo and go rapid to the strains of Bach, or Waylon Jennings. Extremely civilized.
In this manner, yet another American cultural byproduct intruded on our reveries—rattles and squeaks. American autos, even expensive types, rattle and squeak. The new pc-made work from GM and Ford are superior in this respect, but continue to not up to the amount of the imports. It was bothersome to be blissfully cruising alongside, making the most of high-quality French climate in a excellent vehicle on a smooth street, and nevertheless be vaguely troubled by a selection of persistent thumps and resonances.
Auto and Driver
Our arrival in Paris was uneventful. Guys in corrugated Citroën vans—potential suicides for the most part—screamed by on equally sides and tried to out-drag the Trans Am at each intersection. College youngsters could not acquire their eyes off of it, even American-baiters like the just one who caught his experience in the window and instructed us, “This vehicle is obscene!” We got the right obeisance from the doorman at the Crillon and located ourselves parked in the midst of two BMW coupes, a Ferrari 400 computerized, a Cadillac, and a quantity of other really serious higher-roller models. Somehow, the Pontiac seemed suitable at house in that firm, partly, I suppose, for the reason that it can be these kinds of a exceptional chicken above there. Below, the endless parade of screaming chickens and all that article-GTO self-caricature get to be a tiny banal, but in excess of there it can be unique stuff, and the locals have a tendency to be a little mesmerized by it all.
That, I suppose, was what it was truly all about in the ultimate evaluation. It was wonderful pleasurable to be viewed in a Pontiac Firebird in Festung Europa, but the real driving enjoyment was only about typical, and visits to the gasoline station at 35 or 40 simoleons for every tank pretty rapidly took most of the remaining entertaining suitable out of the journey. It built a single detail absolutely crystal clear to us, nevertheless. The most successful way to speed up this nation’s shift to lesser cars would be t0 enable gasoline increase to its source-and-demand totally free-sector price. An American can nevertheless rationalize the order of a little something receiving twelve miles for every gallon when he is shelling out less than 70 cents for each of individuals gallons. Driving a Trans Am and paying the European cost for gasoline would make smaller-car or truck believers out of a host of American skeptics.