About this item

Pontiac Trans Am shows this dominating machine's full history, from early days burning up both race tracks and Hollywood to its final days as the most potent muscle car made. The early 1960s saw American auto manufacturers desperately trying to sell cars to the emerging baby-boom market. Pontiac attained success with its original muscle car, the GTO, but as successful as the GTO was, it was handily outsold by Ford's grand-slam home-run pony car, the Mustang. In response, Pontiac entered the pony car market in 1967 with its new Firebird, a model that became one of the most iconic cars of the classic muscle-car era. Introduced for 1969, the Trans Am version Firebird of the Firebird became the standard bearer for automotive performance in the U.S. market and kept the muscle car flame alive throughout the dark years of the 1970s and led the charge when performance reemerged in the 1980s.



About the Author

Tom Glatch

I was 4 years old when my late brother Ray bought a new 1960 Oldsmobile 98 convertible (he was 13 year older that me) , and I was hooked! Top down on a warm summer night, that was heaven. Ray also owned a 1966 Austin Healey 3000 and a 1953 Studebaker Starliner. My father owned a 1959 Pontiac Catalina at the time, a powerful black beauty with a silver interior. Throughout the Sixties Dad bought used Buick Wildcats. These powerful, stylish cars spawned my interest in all things automotive.

Since 1983 I've been contributed hundreds of stories and photographs to all of the major collector car, Corvette, Mustang, Musclecar, and Mopar magazines. I've also contributed photographs to books by Mike Mueller, Robert Genat, Motorbooks International, and KP Books, and to calendars by Motorbooks and Publications International LTD. I've been creating books for Motorbooks since 2015.

I met my wife Kelly in 1992 when I hired her to help me photograph a 1958 Corvette for Corvette Fever magazine, my top client throughout the Nineties. Three months later we were engaged, and we were married in September 1993. Kelly has developed into a fine photographer in her own right, and she shares my enthusiasm for vehicles that are beautiful, entertaining, and interesting. I work full-time for a Fortune 500 corporation as a data and systems analyst. We are life-long residents of the upper Midwest of the USA and have two children.



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