[UPC-WU2]

I've had a fascination with the 1969 E.T. and the GT-37s for many years, plus a sort of addiction to collecting Factory Literature. While scanning the 1969 Performance Cars catalog today for my website, I couldn't help but to notice on the 2-page spread for the 350 H.O., both the Lemans convertible and the Firebird coupe have that extra hood tach shell on the RH side. The Firebird has a hood tach and thus the two matching housings, but the LeMans has only the one on the right. There's also photos showing a sort of flex duct to the air cleaner from the hood. Neat stuff. I wish this had made production.

Or maybe it did?

Pages 14-15 of the 1969 Performance Cars catalog:


The famous (sort of) press photo of the E.T.:

[Steve Hoog]

I've got one somewhere of the orange 69 Firebird with the dual thing; I believe the said for break air. I'll see what I can find.

[north]

The right hood inlet tach casing was obviously airbrushed for the HiPo brochure photo (check it out with a magnifying glass). That white LeMans vert shows up in many other factory photos and even video, in all those other cases it doesn't have the right side scoop-tach thing but it does have a regular left side hood tach.

On the subject of the 69 HiPo brochure it is interesting to note that the Judge shown was basically the ET in your photo with a GTO front bumper, hood and bucket seats added to it.

Look carefully at the pictures and you can see that before airbrushing it was a Tempest 2 door postie (on the cover picture they forgot to remove the door frame, on one of the rearview shots it has Tempest taillights, the rear view mirror is set back on the door like a postie car, it doesn't have woodgrain on the dash like a Tempest and the presence of a power antenna and cornering lamps like the ET is too much for coincidence. All the specific GTO emblems etc are clearly airbrushed and poorly at that.

I'm surprised no one has ever put together a ET clone, wouldn't be that hard if you could find a nice Tempest postie.

[MikeNoun]

The original plan was to have a low budget Ram Air setup for the 1969 Firebird and LeMans 350 H.O.s. Pontiac wanted to cash in on the Ram Air mystique, which really connected with high-performance buyers, but did not want to use the dual scooped hood. The dual scooped hood was the most identifiable part of the Firebird 400 or GTO model, and they didn't want to water down the image of their flagship performance cars.

The plan was to offer an alternative Ram Air setup using a hollow passenger side hood tach nacelle. The air cleaner used was a standard single snorkel that was rotated around so the snorkel was facing the heater box. A defroster duct was connected between the nacelle and air cleaner. In the brochure mentioned above, the 1969 Firebird has a hood tach (drivers side) and the Ram Air nacelle (passenger side), while the LeMans just has the Ram Air, no hood tach.

Royal Pontiac tested their 1969 Firebird 350 H.O. (pre-production, fully blueprinted and prepped by Royal) using this setup. Unfortunately, they found that the hood tach nacelle Ram Air was costing a great deal of horsepower. Most likely it was due to the hose being pinched off when the hood was closed.

The setup was abandoned before production started, but the brochures had already been printed up. Ram Air was not available on the 350 H.O. cars.

It was a strange setup, and looked very homemade.

[north]

If I had a hood I didn't mind sacrificing it would be fun to cobble one together, not much to it.

Another error in the brochure is they show the air cleaner on the engine photo having a chrome lid which did not happen either.

[UPC-WU2]

Lots of interesting stuff in those old brochures.

[north]

Thats one of the pics I was thinking of, look how far back the mirror is, lack of lower rear chrome on the quarter and the 5 pce trunk lid moldings (standard on GTO). The GTO fender, rear quarter, trunklid emblems are obviously hand drawn as are the tail lights.

[MikeNoun]

I detail a lot of these on my website. http://www.musclecarfilms.com/Pontiac_Promo_Errors.html

Mike

[lancesjudge]

This maybe the wrong place to post but here goes. Mike on your promo error list the yellow 70 firebird also shows a hood tach. I've never seen one on a 2nd gen. Am I the only one or did the hoodtach not make production on 2nd gens?

[Steve Hoog]

Here is the pic with the 350 HO Bird. Funny thin about the BW pic; the shade of gray varys that you probably wouldn't see in color to indicate the front clip has a new finish.

[Steve Hoog]

More good stuff