{"id":748,"date":"2014-12-19T19:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T19:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transamcountry.com\/site\/?p=748"},"modified":"2014-12-30T21:12:02","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T21:12:02","slug":"the-fire-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transamcountry.com\/site\/the-fire-am","title":{"rendered":"The Fire Am"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have stumbled upon this article you must be asking yourself “What is a Fire Am?” and believe it or not that is a great question.\u00a0 The answer…Its everything the Trans Am could have been and should have been.\u00a0 In the height of the muscle car era GM was turning out some of the best performance cars this world has ever known.\u00a0 A man by the name of Herb Adams was an automotive engineer and diehard racer and just happened to work for the GM Pontiac division.\u00a0 His contributions led to the now infamous Super Duty 455 engine, as well as the Ram Air V program.\u00a0 Perhaps his greatest contribution came after his official departure from Pontiac.\u00a0 On a contractual endeavor Herb was brought in to conduct a performance handling exercise of sorts. In 1977 Herb and his newly founded company VSE (Very Special Equipment) built 8 race ready Trans Ams for Pontiacs IROC racing program.\u00a0 The program did not succeed at that time, but the improvements made to those 8 Trans Ams were not lost.\u00a0 Several of the key components went on to become the WS6 performance package in 1978.\u00a0 The rest of the improvements were deemed unsuitable for a production car and VSE was granted permission to offer those components themselves and the Fire Am was born.<\/p>\n

If your first question is “What is a Fire Am?” then your next question is probably “Why haven’t I heard about this before?”.\u00a0\u00a0 Keep in mind that all of this took place in the late 70’s.\u00a0 Two guys by the name Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs had just started Apple computers and the internet wouldn’t be publicly accessed for another 20 years.\u00a0 The only source for information was a periodical.\u00a0 Even then our choices were slim with Thunder Am, Car Craft, Hot Rod and Car and Driver to name just a few.\u00a0 Even though they did all cover the Fire Am on multiple occasions the VSE corporation stopped offering components in the mid 80’s.\u00a0 VSE itself did not build a large number of Fire Ams or its camaro cousin the Cheverra, but anyone could build there own and the majority of them that exist today were built by the owners.\u00a0 That being the case there are no production numbers available.<\/p>\n

The VSE catalog was a great resource for parts and information.<\/p>\n

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No one will argue that the Trans Am is the epitome of what we all love about that era in automotive history with the huge hood bird decals and stylish lines, but the Fire Am took that heritage and took it to a whole new level.\u00a0 Not just with performance, but handling as well.\u00a0 It was a pro-touring movement before the word was mainstream.\u00a0 There were three stages designed for Street, Autocross, and Road racing.\u00a0 Here are some really nice examples of Fire Ams owned or restored by members in the TAC community.<\/p>\n