One step up was the V-8 Firebird 326, billed as a "family sportster. Next came the Sprint, with 215-bhp ohc six, floor shift, and "road hugging" suspension. The base Firebird carried Pontiac's year-old, 165-bhp 230-cid overhead-cam six. Each was available in Camaro's convertible and hardtop coupe body styles. Where Camaro achieved four models through options, Firebird arrived with five separate offerings keyed to engines. The most notable were engines set further back for better front/rear weight balance, and standard rear traction bars to minimize axle windup under hard acceleration.Īnother distinction involved marketing. Moreover, Pontiac's pony benefited from some engineering lessons learned too late to affect first-year Camaros, which went on sale some five months before Firebird's February 1967 debut. body had all the Chevrolet sheetmetal and all the same exterior hardware except for the grille and taillamps." Even so, those elements - split-theme grille, "slot" taillamps - were distinctly Pontiac, thus differentiating Firebird from Camaro to a surprising degree. Pontiac engineer Bill Collins later stated that the '67 Firebird was "just kind of inherited from Chevrolet." The. Firebird was a good name choice, signifying power, beauty, and youth in American Indian mythology and recalling GM's gas-turbine experimentals of the late '50s and early '60s. Pontiac was aware of the effort all along, and asked to be cut in once management vetoed DeLorean's two-seater. So DeLorean settled for a "Pontiacized" version of Chevy's four-seat Camaro - which was hardly bad.Ĭamaro stemmed from the "Panther" or "F-car" program that aimed at a direct Ford Mustang-fighter to replace the Corvair Monza as Chevy's mainstream sporty compact. But GM was hard-pressed to support one sports car, let alone two, and "Banshee" didn't test well with the public. Had division chief John DeLorean gotten his way, it would have been a two-seat sports car called Banshee, a low-cost sister to the Chevy Corvette. That was true even in the carefree '60s, when GM almost owned the market. General Motors may be the world's biggest automaker, but it's always had limits.
0 kommentar(er)
