[3tas4me]

Back in about 1987 when I bought my "84 HO T/A, I was driving on East Washington in front of the mall. I pulled up to the stop light in the left lane of the three lane boulevard. On my right was a 1982 Crossfire Vette. The driver looked at me and when the light turned green we both took off. I waited a split second to floor it until I knew his intentions. He was in it hard so I nailed it. After I shifted into second gear, I started pulling him. By third gear it was all over. We had to stop for the next light, he wouldn't even look at me. His Vette had just got beat by a T/A.

Second story is of a 1976 455 4-speed T/A I owned. I had bought this car in 1989 as a project while going to Tech school. I had pulled the heads off it to repair some broken exhaust manifold bolts. While I had them off, I cleaned them up and did a valve job. Did a complete tune up and carb overhaul and then recurved the distributor. Added true duals and then drove it. The car looked bad, it had been hit on the passenger side in the door and quarter not to mention the rust it had. One day while driving it down the 4 lane highway, a string of cars was passing me on the left. The lead car was a 1969 Firebird 350 HO. Don't remember the others. They were all show cars probably coming from or going to a show. As the Firebird passed me I gave the driver a wave to let him know I thought he had a nice car. He must have thought I wanted to race because he took off. We were already going 65 or so on the interstate. As he started to pull away, my right foot reacted by planting the gas pedal to the floor of that T/A. I didn't even bother to downshift. I caught that '69 Bird and passed him in short order. After reaching triple digits and having a comfortable lead, I let off. Every one of those cars passed me then. They had all been racing me at the same time! That low compression 455 really performed well.