[north]

Trivia, the 69 bird was going to have a full Endura but Mitchell said he wanted some chrome on the front, might be a true story or not. I think more likely is that they knew the 69 bird was a one year holdover so tooling up a full Endura bumper for one model year didn't make financial sense. Even though I own a few 69 Birds I'm not a big fan of the 67-69 bird styling. The basic body shape and roof line was nice, the back end of all three years are all nice and trim. As for the front end I find the 67-68 have an odd look, like they had too limited a budget to change the Camaro look, also 67-68 body has a bulbous look around the wheel openings. As for 69 I find the front end more natural looking but overly complex (they are an unbelievable pain to assemble with everything lining up square). The side view of the 69 squared up wheel openings is much nicer but I don't like the extra front overhang or the odd rear body spear line that bulges out quite a bit making the rear wheel opening wider in front than in back. If the instead used a look similar to the 70-72 GTO quarters it would have been quite nice. One nice plus of 69 though was the adoption of a unique dashboard, unlike the 67-68 which had a Camaro dash.

Engineering wise the first gen all had a surprisingly solid body structure (even the ragtops) and in stock form are quieter than you'd expect given the chevyII-Nova bones. On the other hand the seats are awful and the firebird in particular (they sat lower than the Camaro) easily bottom out their suspension. In general the interior trim is of economy car quality, flimsier components than the mid or fullsized cars.