https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON3JjYl7crQ

It all started when I was 12 years old. Ads started rolling on the TV about the newly redesigned Pontiac Firebird/Trans Am. You remember the ones, the ones that pointed out what a beautiful monster it is, the ones that told you that you could afford a super car within your price range. This car was everything to me before I even had one.

When it came time to buy my first car (yes, this is my first car), all I could think about was that car I had been obsessing about since I was a little kid. So I looked for her, I knew she was out there, my unicorn, my 1998 Firebird Formula. There were many Trans Ams waiting on me, and the prices were tempting, but it just seemed off to buy anything other than the car I pinned down when I was young.

To back things up a little, and on the personal side, I was raised by a top fuel driver. My dad was such a talented driver, but we didn’t meet eye to eye when it came to cars. In combination with that, my mom saw something in me at a very young age that scared her, she knew I was a bit of a daredevil from the start. It was actually a fear of my parents that I would ever express a real interest in cars, so they kept me from ‘the lifestyle’, and pretty effectively too.

I could see the hesitation from my dad to engage with my automotive obsession when I was a pre-teen, after all, I was fairly well removed from the lifestyle, so my parents didn’t understand where I got it from. What really made my dad listen was when I demonstrated an unusual talent when it came to automotive obsession: I could identify a car by its exhaust note before I saw it, when I was 12 years old. Not kidding, Mustang, truck, Camaro, Corvette, etc., I knew what it was before it came over the hill in our little cul-de-sac. Not only did I know what it was, I was so excited by it, I was like a dog waiting for a treat when I’d hear a muscle car coming my way.

So fast forward to my car search at some-teen years of age, and I was picky, as a good gearhead should be. I met a beautiful red Trans Am with ebony interior and manual transmission that certainly tempted me, but that car had some red flags, the interior was worn, the engine bay smelled of glass cleaner…I knew a dealer dolled up car when I saw one. I also test drove a stunning black Trans Am, and this sucker lost its rear end while I was driving it, no joke. The dealership still tried to sell it to me for some money off, but I took it as a sign.

After a few months of searching, she found me. There she was, my 1998 Pontiac Firebird Formula. She was Navy Blue Metallic, just a few shades off the black I wanted, but she was clean. I printed off the ad and walked into the dealership wanting to buy my car. They said she wasn’t there, but at their sister location, so that was all fine, let’s sign the papers.

The funny thing about the purchase was, I thought I was getting a car for $12,000 with 125,000 miles in the early 2000s, and I was so happy about it, but come to find out…she only had 25,000 miles. A typo on the intake form resulted in a valuation far below the asking price of similar vehicles. But hey, we already saw it now, didn’t we! It was the sales guy’s first day on the job, and he fought tooth and nail to get this sale, otherwise, I think they would have corrected the valuation and gave me a ‘sorry’ and maybe offered some kind of lame incentive to buy it at real valuation. So home with me she came.

The plan was to just enjoy the car as it was, and that lasted for about 6 months. So here’s where I’m going to contradict myself from the video posted here. The first time we went to the track, the car was stock as rock, that’s when she ran a 13.2 in the 1/4 mile. I got tripped up on my words and I feel bad for not giving the car the credit she was due. Anyways, she was what is known in the LS F-Body community as a “factory freak”, meaning, the car was just faster than it should have been for no particular reason.

Then the exhaust came after racing her stock, and she ran 12.95 with the exhaust and a few ‘free mods’, and the fun only started there. I wanted on that damn bolt-on list, so I went for it. Like I said in the video, this was during a time when people weren’t swapping LS engines into everything. The only swapped car on the list of a Trans Am that was originally a LT1 car. I believe it had some insane number like a 10.xx second pass with no internal engine work, the thing probably weighed as much as a Miata with all the weight removal. So as insanely competitive as I am, I knew I didn’t want to try and be number one on the list, being number one would mean that I would have to dedicate the car to racing, and that was never my intention.

The next phase would include doing every modification possible to the car without cracking the engine open. Then I obsessively started doing every little thing I could to make the car lighter, even going as far as to forbid people with change in their pockets from riding in the car (because the change might roll out of your pockets and hide under the carpet somehow). Like I said, it got obsessive, I won’t even go into the extensive detail of all the things I took out, but I did some damage to the car, especially the interior. Come to find out, when you gut it and then put it all back in, it doesn’t want to go back in as stoutly as the factory had it setup.

I did, for a very brief moment, find my way onto that list, and then the LS swaps got out of control, and I found my way right back off. Which was fine, I was ready for a change. So on came the cam. I went iwth high lift, aggressive profiles, and it was amazing. If there was a point I could go back and just stop changing anything, it would have been there. The cam was the biggest payoff, modification wise, done to the car. However, I had to go messing with a good thing and thought a high stall converter was absolutely needed to compliment the power band of the cam, which it is, but it also ruined the way my car felt. The pedal was looser, and it had problems with the tuning, I just didn’t like it at all.

A set of high flow heads came along, I was hoping that would help the situation a little, and I was underwhelmed. Not to say that a good build doesn’t need good cylinder heads, but my expectations were askew, so the outcome wasn’t what I expected, which was my own fault.

For years, the car was raced as a heads/cam combo with a high stall converter, and of course, the really good bolt-on foundation that it started with. It was fun, it was my hobby, lifestyle, my drug of choice, but I did get burnt out over time. Life and work were starting to become a priority, but I was still so ‘addicted’ to finding that 10th every place I could cut it out. Then, something happened that needed to happen, the transmission gave up. When that happened, I was relieved in a way. I had my sign/my reason to swap it to a T56, and so I pieced together everything I needed, and the swap was done a few months later.

Swapping to a T56 has caused a little bit of controversy in my car circles, but I didn’t do it to slight the automatic crowd, or because I felt like manual transmissions were superior in some way (well…maybe they are). I did it because I wanted a manual during the search, and compromised for this car since it was so great. I was also done with my days of 1/4 mile drag racing, and wanted to build a ‘driver’s car’.

Over the last few years, the focus has been on making the car feel like a super car when you sit in it. The main key to that was the suspension, most of it has been replaced, parts of the setup have even been redone a few times to get the right feel…for example, the shocks and springs have been changed out quite a few times to smooth out the ride. If I have learned anything from the suspension phase it’s: spend the money, do it right the first time. The brakes were also upgraded, and by the this point in my life, I knew to go with the best stuff if I’m going to do it at all.

During the same time, the clutch started slipping, and Centerforce provided a DYAD clutch system for the replacement. This was easily one of my favorite parts installed on the car. I was hesitant to go with the twin disc setup, but it’s not ‘too much’ for my car on the road, and it has done great so far with autoX and road racing style driving.

After all this was done, Xceleration Media (our parent company) wanted to do a Gearhead Story video on me and my car, okay cool, it’s at a good stopping point, so let’s roll! Well, the stock 10-bolt, god bless its soul, was not having the new beefy autocross tires and grabby clutch, and it decided to pick the video shoot as the time it was going to tear up.

This felt so devastating with the timing. I felt like I let everyone down who invested time and money in the video too, and if I knew it was going to happen, I would have called it off and replaced it before it happened, but there wasn’t anything I could have done to stop it. So after an expensive tow home, I had to save a little for the parts (keep in mind that I just spent some major money on the suspension), but it was replaced, and after the break-in procedure was done, the video was shot. So here we are, Vendetta version 2017!

For more on Project Vendetta, check out my past posts here.