This issue’s featured car is the ‘71 Trans Am of Gary Trombino. Here is his story:
I have been a Pontiac guy for as long as I can remember. My
Uncle Bernie and his Pontiac racer buddies would take me to the Long Island drag
strips when I was a kid. His friends included Harry Wesch, who drove a Mertle
Motors sponsored 1968 Firebird. All of my Uncle's friends raced and won with
their Ponchos.
This 1971 Trans Am is my third Pontiac collectable. I've had a '67 GTO, and
still have a '73 TA with a Jim Butler 455 motor. The '71 was purchased from a
guy in Michigan, after having well known Pontiac expert Dan Jensen check out the
car. It is a completely restored, PHS documented 40K mile TA with turbo 400,
original trim group, Garner exhaust system, and is near 100% original. I hope to
make the Dayton Nationals and Saratoga Lawn Show in the coming years.
Now I have a ‘94 25th Anniversary Trans Am. It’s number 3 off
the assembly line for the total production of the anniversary run. Now for the
really neat part - it’s also 1 of 2 1994 NASCAR pace cars. One is in Michigan at
the Pontiac Motorsports Museum and I have the other. It’s also the same car that
paced the late, great Dale Earnhardt to his seventh and last championship. This
car still has all the markings on it from race 29, AC Delco 500, North Carolina
Raceway, October 23, 1994 and the caution lights are still intact and still
work.
It has 12,600 miles, 4,000 are documented pace laps from the 1994 season. It’s
one of the 25th anniversary cars with hard top, automatic transmission and AM/FM
Cassette radio which makes it 1 of 254 produced but again the documentation
shows it to be one of the earliest off the assembly line, as NASCAR needed it to
prep for the ‘94 Daytona 500. Paperwork also shows that these two pace cars were
at 20 different NASCAR tracks in ‘94 excluding the Brickyard 400 which used a
Monte Carlo.
In short, this rare ’94 25th Anniversary pace car looks good
sitting in my garage next to my 10th Anniversary turbo pace car.
Long live the Firebird Trans Am, if not on GM sales lots, at least in the our
garages and on the road!
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