When I was in high school an older student drove a yellow Pontiac Sunbird with Ractive underglow, white letter Tiger Paw tires, a cherry bomb muffler, cut springs, and a Pyramid nothing but bass audio system. He thought it was pretty slick, but ever since I laid eyes on that car the Sunbird has been one of those vehicles that I would do anything to avoid owning.
Evidently that only applies to 99.9% of Sunbirds because I actually wouldn’t mind going for a rip in this heavily modified one.
From the firewall forward this Sunbird is equipped with a S10 clip, and from about mid rocker back 2×3 steel tubing has been grafted in so that a competition engineering adjustable ladder bar coil over suspension could be mounted out back.
Why you ask?
Well because the stock motor has been binned in favour of a built (50 .030 over Hypereutectic pistons 9.5:1, Speed demon 750 cfm carb) Chevrolet 350 that is further fortified by a 100 shot of naaaws nitrous.
That’s right ‘over 25000 dollars’ has transformed this previously front wheel drive Sunbird from disposable GM economy car to unexpected 1/4 mile demon.
Should you be interested in this oddball project the car is for sale on Kijiji for $6000 which actually seems like a half way reasonable price for something this unique.
Wonder if there’s a build thread?
haven’t seen a build thread on that one but being a big fan of J-bodies, this one caught my eye…
http://www.j-body.org/forums/read.php?f=28&i=14398&t=14398
If I avoided every car model that I saw built poorly, I would only have my bicycle…
I am a big fan of bicycles…
I’ll tell on myself: My first car was a red automatic 88 Sunbird with the Turbo hood louvers, but no turbo 🙁 It had 15″ chrome American Racing speedster wheels with lower profile tires (at standard ride height), a fiberglass touring wing, large chrome Nopi muffler (at least it was quiet), two tone gray velvet seats, tinted windows, yellow foglights, and two 10″ Pioneer subs. I thought it was great. Not awesome, but great. The only sunbirds I have ever seen fixed up had cut springs and that is one of the main reason I wanted a Civic; you could lower it and not have to cut anything. Your example here is by far the best looking example I have ever seen. If they had made them rwd V8 back in the day, the Fox body may have had a competitor.
Plenty a Civic got low on cut springs! I don’t think I have seen American Racing Speedsters in… 11 years?
Ha, I don’t doubt it being 11yrs or longer on seeing a set. A few months back I passed a Grand Am with Speedsters and thought “those have to be my old wheels because what are the chances that they’re not?”.