Friday, February 01, 2013

Pontiac Shrine

The wall in my office at work and the Pontiac shrine built there ... 

The big rectangular frame is a custom framed Pontiac ad from 1985 showing a black and gold TA in the same paint scheme and options as my '86 along with a copy of the RPO callout (75 RPO codes!), a dealer postcard from the same year showing a black / gold '85 TA at speed on the highway and a copy of the original window sticker. 
The small picture at the top is supposedly of the last US Pontiac built (a plain vanilla Grand Am destined for a rental fleet). 
The large framed picture is a two page spread from the 1985 Pontiac full-line catalog again showing the black and gold TA. 
Of course there's a 24" by 36" framed "Smokey and the Bandit" movie poster (saw that in the theater when I was 7, along with "Star Wars") and finally the small frame in the middle is my first speeding ticket from 1986 when I was 16 years old. Definitely a keepsake and maybe a rite of passage.
On the shelf behind my desk I have an old TA cap along with a pair of 1:32 scale models, unopened, still shrink-wrapped in the original boxes.  The one on the left is a black and gold 1985 Pontiac Trans Am by Monogram and the one on the right is a 1985 Pontiac Firebird (Trans Am) by MPC.  What's interesting to note about the two kits is that the Monogram kit features a TPI V8 with a manual transmission ... a power train that wasn't available until 1987 due to emissions standards.  The MPC version features a Crossfire Injection V8, a EFI motor that disappeared from the lineup over a year before the new bodystyle was presented.