There may not be any other Pontiac engine that harbors as much mystique as the Super-Duty 455. Introduced in '73 as a maximum-performance effort capable of sustained 6,000-rpm operation, it was ...

Sometimes automotive scribes have to beat themselves over the head to comprise a strong lead for a feature article. Other times one just comes to them as naturally as waking up in the morning. Then ...

The 1973 Pontiac Trans Am arrived at a moment when muscle cars were supposed to be dying, yet it ended up defining an attitude that outlived the horsepower wars that created it. By pairing race-bred ...

The Pontiac Firebird is a pony car legend. Introduced by General Motors in 1967, it was half of GM's one-two punch response to Ford's iconic Mustang (the other being the Chevrolet Camaro). The ...

Discontinued in 2002, the Firebird is considered old news by some people and a sought-after classic car by individuals in the know. The Trans Am SD-455 we’ll talk about today is the very definition of ...

In the 1973 movie McQ, a 66-year-old John Wayne slouches onscreen with little of his former authoritative charisma. The laconic hero of many a western was ill suited to a hard-boiled detective flick, ...

Introduced for the 1969 model year as a performance version of the Firebird, the Pontiac Trans Am took its time to build momentum and really get under the public’s skin. In the first five years of ...

It’s a strange but true thing that one of the last real muscle cars was — here it comes — a Buick. The 1973-1974 Century GS Stage 1 455. You have probably never heard of it — even if you are a car guy ...

Introduced to the press during Pontiac’s annual model line preview in the summer of 1972, the Super Duty 455 was enthusiastically received. It had a block, heads, rotating assembly, intake manifold, ...

The Muscle Car Wars hit their peak in 1970 with the final year of full-power madness from GM and Ford. MOPAR gave it one more year, then caved to the federal emissions and economy standards. In 1971, ...