English was one of my favorite subjects in school, especially when it came to assignments involving colorful use of vocabulary and creative expression. I wasn’t a big reader (I’m still not), as I generally preferred to entertain myself by creating my own content, whether that meant writing short stories or keeping a journal. Still, I recognized the importance of many of my assignments which included reading, digesting, comprehending, and analyzing great literary works. Sometimes I’d connect personally with a book or poem, which added to the reward. Parts of Hermann Hesse’s Demian seemed both taboo and thrilling when I had first read it for humanities class as a high school senior. That book was my choice on a list of possibilities in the pre-internet age, so I had known nothing about it before reading it. It was a pivotal moment for me in understanding that not everything was black-and-white as my conservative parents would have had me believe.
Other English assignments had left me less impressed. I remember being annoyed by Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. There’s this protagonist who is sad about the loss of his love, Lenore, and in flies this big, black bird that specializes in redundancy. To be clear, I don’t recall thinking at the time that it was the worst thing I had been assigned to read. A big plus was that I could understand the words and follow the story with just a moderate amount concentration, needing no one else to explain to me what was going on for the most part. The protagonist keeps asking this random, creepy bird questions, and the answer is always the same: “Nevermore”. Have you ever shaken one of those “magic eight ball” things, asked it questions, and repeatedly gotten answers that left you dumbfounded? That’s what I feel had been going on in this story. Why did the main subject seem to lose his marbles over this?
The whole story arc rated maybe a two out of ten on the believability scale, as we all know that ravens can’t talk… Wait. Wrong. They can! Corvids, or birds in the crow family that includes ravens, can talk and vocalize. They are highly intelligent, with some said to possess the brain capacity of a seven year old child, ranking just below non-human primates in that regard. They’re highly social, use tools to accomplish things, and have even been shown to be capable of doing basic math. In addition to this, they have insanely strong memories and have the ability to pass along grudges to their young. I am not kidding, and you can look this up yourself. For one example, if you try to harm a crow, it will teach others in its murder (a group of crows is, yes, called a “murder”) and its offspring to selectively poop all over, say, your prized Camaro sitting in the driveway.
As I have written before even just this year, I love birds. Even if I’m no ornithologist, I find all of these things about crows to be awe-inspiring and, quite frankly, terrifying. I would love to make friends with one and have the kind of interaction I’ve witnessed on YouTube videos between a crow or raven and a human. It has been only within the past year or so that I’ve learned that there are birds out there with not only advanced problem-solving and comprehension abilities, but possess these gifts in addition to all other qualities that are specific to birds, like the ability to fly, land, dive, grasp things, and so on. With this newfound knowledge, I have a more sympathetic view of both The Raven and its protagonist, as a talking, monotone, repetitive, tormenting bird with a deep voice would also have freaked me out. Somebody please turn the lights back on.
I captured these pictures of this road-going, black ‘Bird just over a year after the COVID pandemic had started, which would explain the t-tops-off / mask-on situation we see above. I would have been in the fifth grade when this Trans Am was new, and it was a dream car of mine and many of my peers. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me that Pontiac’s F-body was ostensibly in the same “ponycar” category as the Ford Mustang or Mercury Capri. No, the Firebird in all of its variants, along with the related Chevrolet Camaro, seemed of a different order, at least from an aesthetic perspective. These seemed elevated and more like four-seat Corvettes than Mustang competitors, much like corvids are not like other birds. It was only as an adult that I had learned that the base version of the blocker ’85 Mustang GT, which was about two hundred pounds lighter than the Trans Am, was almost two seconds faster to sixty miles per hour from rest, with a mid-six second time for the GT.
According to a license plate search, our featured car was originally built in Van Nuys, California and features a 305 cubic inch V8. I was unable to determine if this five-liter unit is the standard, 165-horsepower mill, or one of the high-performance versions with 190 hp, or the tuned-port injection option with 205 horses. (For comparison, the standard 302 V8 in the ’85 Mustang GT came with 180 hp, with the upgraded mill good for 210.) Transmission options included a five-speed manual or four-speed overdrive automatic. Of the ~96,000 in total Firebird sales for ’85, the T/A’s 44,000 units accounted for almost 46%. The base-model Firebird hatch was slightly more popular, at 46,600 units. The S/E model, the ’80s equivalent of the Esprit, found but 5,200 takers in its penultimate year of being offered.
“Nevermore” applies to the Firebird, Trans Am, and the Pontiac brand, in general, which bowed out after the last G6 was produced in early 2010. Do I miss Pontiac? Absolutely. Does its absence lead me to solitary, destitute emotional places in which I would ask a bird questions? No, though I still will occasionally wonder what a new Pontiac would be like if engineers and stylists had been allowed to keep working (and yes, I’m aware of Roger Smith’s B-O-P consolidation of the early ’80s). Pontiac was always just so in-your-face that it would have seemed inconceivable to the boy I was at the time this car was new that there would not be another new Pontiac for sale all these almost-forty years later. I’ll keep hope alive as we inch closer to 2025 that I will get either that chance to drive an ’80s-vintage Trans Am or have an interaction with a crow or raven. Never say never.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, April 4, 2021.
Factory brochure pages were sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.
A guy I used to know drove one of these in the early 90’s. It was a black Trans Am with T-tops, and pretty much the twin of this car. I had admired its good looks and one day an occasion came when he came by and picked me up for lunch. That ride changed my impression of these cars forever. I could not remember something that shook, shivered, squeaked and rattled more than that car. I still admire their looks, but have no desire to be counted among their owners.
“That ride changed my impression of these cars forever”
Same; I was convinced the ‘84 Z28 I was a passenger in must have had poorly repaired accident damage. Unwilling to offend the owner, I asked nothing and kept it moving. Further exposure taught me it was a feature, not a bug, and that Z wasn’t particularly obnoxious relatively speaking…
I still think they look great all these years later.
Nice looking from certain angles, but way too much front overhang. That is one design feature that I am thankful is no longer prevalent among modern designs. The SUV trend helped by shining a spotlight on “angle of approach.”