Photo: Schwartz Performance (edited by autoevolution)
If the Federal Government never asked General Motors to ax some of their brands after their late 2000s bailout and Pontiac hadn't been chosen as the sacrificial lamb, what would the brand look like today? We'll never get the answer to that question, but we can at least get an idea of what the drivetrain would likely look like through the medium of restomods. Thanks to the team at Schwartz Performance in Harvard, Illinois, we see this idea manifest in the form of a 1975 Pontiac Trans Am.
From the factory, this '75 Trans Am was just like any other that rolled off the assembly line. Complete with a 455-cubic inch (7.5-L) Pontiac big block V8 and all the necessary decals and markings, ripping a pristine 70s muscle car would be seen as a war crime to the average purist. Only a supremely skilled and well disciplined restomod shop has any business tearing into a classic as pristine as this Pontiac. Luckily, that's exactly who was on hand. Very meticulously, and over the course of thousands of hours of labor, each component of this Trans Am was stripped down to the bare body and chassis in preparation for the new drivetrain goodies.
This Trans Am's body was even chemically stripped down to bare metal to accept a top-of-the-line paint job to match the engine hardware of this restomod. All the while, an in-house manufactured Schwartz Performance G-Machine chassis was prepared to accommodate the body, plus all the new driveline and suspension hardware soon to come. Bolt-in chassis of this nature are the bread and butter for Schwartz Performance, which sells them and ships them right to your front door via their webpage store.
With that out of the way, time was taken to custom fabricate all-new sheet metal to help the original body look all the more aggressive. Then, finally, the engine could be installed. That'd be a 6.2-liter supercharged GM LT4 V8, the same you'd find in the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing, Camaro ZL1, and the C7 Chevy Corvette Z06. Add beefed-up valve-train, upgraded accessory drive, and the ultimate display of engine overkill, methanol injection, a motor that once cranked out 650 horses without even trying now jets in the neighborhood of 900.
It's for this reason that the Ridetech adjustable coilovers and Baer Pro Plus six-piston brake disks are on hand to keep you from achieving a Darwin award driving this restaurant around. With the completed blue and black-on-white paint job completed and flanked by Forgeline TA3 with matching blue rim accents, what was once just an ordinary muscle car is now a full-blow pro-touring pseudo supercar. How much does it cost to build a Trans Am that meets these specs? It must be easily north of half a million dollars, possibly even a million. One thing's for sure, we can't afford it.
This Trans Am's body was even chemically stripped down to bare metal to accept a top-of-the-line paint job to match the engine hardware of this restomod. All the while, an in-house manufactured Schwartz Performance G-Machine chassis was prepared to accommodate the body, plus all the new driveline and suspension hardware soon to come. Bolt-in chassis of this nature are the bread and butter for Schwartz Performance, which sells them and ships them right to your front door via their webpage store.
With that out of the way, time was taken to custom fabricate all-new sheet metal to help the original body look all the more aggressive. Then, finally, the engine could be installed. That'd be a 6.2-liter supercharged GM LT4 V8, the same you'd find in the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing, Camaro ZL1, and the C7 Chevy Corvette Z06. Add beefed-up valve-train, upgraded accessory drive, and the ultimate display of engine overkill, methanol injection, a motor that once cranked out 650 horses without even trying now jets in the neighborhood of 900.
It's for this reason that the Ridetech adjustable coilovers and Baer Pro Plus six-piston brake disks are on hand to keep you from achieving a Darwin award driving this restaurant around. With the completed blue and black-on-white paint job completed and flanked by Forgeline TA3 with matching blue rim accents, what was once just an ordinary muscle car is now a full-blow pro-touring pseudo supercar. How much does it cost to build a Trans Am that meets these specs? It must be easily north of half a million dollars, possibly even a million. One thing's for sure, we can't afford it.
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