The Bandit Returns

Back in 1977, my Grandmother bought my father a Pontiac Trans Am Bandit edition to help mask the pain of losing his father at 16 years old. The car had debuted in the movie Smokey and the Bandit that same year. I grew up watching Smokey and the Bandit as it was one of my Dad’s favorite movies, and so my love for the Pontiac Trans am was born.
Now with my Father’s recent retirement, he just so happened to stumble across this beautifully kept 77’ Y82 with only 48 thousand original miles. It had only one owner and was covered and stored in a garage since 1987. Fully original or restored go anywhere between 80-200 thousand dollars at auction like Mecum and Barret Jackson so this was an extremely rare find.

Of course, being completely original comes with some minor needed TLC. There are a few issues here and there, like paint chips, broken plastic, and upholstery issues. Mechanically the car had full service brakes, fluids, motor tune up and timing. We started doing some interior work to replace some of the gold trim around the rear of the seats and replace the seat belt brackets.

A few other things include updating interior lighting, specifically the cluster lights with leds and redoing the fabric on the headliner.

I myself, have owned a 1988 and 92’ Firebird and a 1983 Trans am that I bought for practically nothing off a farm in northern Vermont. Being young and stupid, I overlooked the monetary cost to make the car reliable. It came with a Chevy small block 350 motor and 5 speed manual gearbox. At the time, that’s all I cared about. My attempted he restoration only got to the point where the car was road worthy and then due to the circumstances I was forced to sell. Still, the whole process was a fun learning experience.