2nd Gen Pontiac Firebird Meets C5 Corvette ~ Translammed by TredWear

Lee and Michael from TredWear introduce Translammed, a ’77 Firebird Formula and C5 Corvette amalgamation and follow-up build to their full chassis build wing car, a 1969 Dodge Charger dubbed Scraptona.

With this next project, they wanted to build something that was more of an everyday driver, a hot rod, as Scraptona was so much of a race car that it’s not necessarily something that you just hop in and go to the corner.

When they were looking at chassis options for the build, they found a 2003 Z06 with some body damage and a lost title. They were able to score the car for a pretty good price, so they made the purchase and brought the chassis donor in to start stripping it down.

The difference between a Scraptona type full chassis build and using a chassis donor like the Z06 is that everything you need mechanically is already done, and in this case, they’ve got a complete chassis with an LS6 that makes 420 horsepower — and they’ve got air conditioning!

When evaluating what they could put on this chassis that would be as iconic as a winged car, they turned to one of their favorite iconic cars — the Smokey and the Bandit Pontiac Trans Am.

So, they went out and found an old 1977 Firebird Formula — it’s not a Trans Am, but it’s basically the same thing. It was a great deal, and it wasn’t really restorable as it had rust in places that you weren’t going to fix and it had the old anemic 301 engine.

The Trans Am are great cars — the way they run, the way they feel — but it’s a 10 mile per gallon gas guzzler that just doesn’t do anything well, including handling. If you’re going to do a Trans Am, you’re going to put an LS swap in it, you’re going to do all the chassis upgrades, and make it where it’s a modern driver you’re going to spend big bucks.

So TredWear took some of the things that they learned with Scraptona to build a road racing Trans Am using the C5 Corvette Z06 chassis as the donor.

Lee and Michael from TredWear Introduce Translammed

Watch as Lee and Michael talk about how the Translammed build project came to be…

Tearing Down the Body Donor and Chassis Donor Cars

In Part 2, Lee and Michael discuss the teardown of the Firebird donor car and describe how the Translammed build project is progressing, including some of the challenges they experienced stripping the C5 Corvette…

Reassembly ~ Project Translammed is Takes Shape

Michael and Lee work to get the fitment they are looking for between the original Firebird sheet metal, fiberglass hood and move towards the wide-body look they are after. They also show the turbo fin prototype for the wheels…

Translammed Progress Continues

The guys go over some of the build progress and what is planned to get the project widened and working the way they envision including the fenders, sectioning the doors, and T-tops…

Translammed Build Progress Photos from TredWear

Stay Tuned…