"Behold, the car of your dreams. The car of my dreams. Her name is Firefox, and she’s an ‘89 Trans Am GTA with 5.7 liters, a Corvette 6-speed, and a Dana 44 rear. I drove her at Watkins Glen International Raceway at the 1990 Pontiac press preview on June 13. I can’t tell you about the 1990 Pontiacs yet, except to tell you they’re great, because there’s an embargo date (that means we’ve got to keep it secret) of September 4 on all that.

But Firefox was built before the ‘90 model year, and in fact was a proposal for the 20th Anniversary model, which as we all know wound up with a turbo 3.8 V6. A fabulous car, but one that I found out is not in the same league as Firefox.

Let’s start with 350 hp from the V8. Then let’s talk about the incredible smoothness and control inherent in the Vette trans. Finally, let’s move back to the Dana 44, the cure for the F-body’s Achilles heel: that GM of Australia rear axle that loses its Posi function at an average of 20,000 miles—or less, if you drive hard.

Now let’s look under the car, at the racing suspension, high-speed wheels, and racing rubber. Real cool. Pop the hood, and you’re saying "bone stock." Climb inside and you’re in the familiar GTA environment, sporty and luxurious in the same moment. Depress the clutch; it’s soft yet precise, unlike a lot of muscle clutches. Turn the key and you know you’re in for the drive of your life.

That’s just what I got when I dared to ask if I could drive this car. All morning, Pontiac engineer and racer Tom Goad had been giving members of the press rides around the Glen in the sleek black GTA. But I remembered all of you who have asked for a manual trans with the 5.7, and when I asked Jeff Beitzel, who created Firefox, if I could try her out, he looked me up and down and decided that I looked like the kind of guy who wouldn’t come limping back from Turn 9 with a broken steering wheel in my hand. Either that, or he thought it was important enough that you folks get a firsthand tale of this most incredible car. Well, here it is.

My helmet’s on, and I’ve checked everything out to get familiar with the car. Shifted the lever several times to get a feel. Adjusted the seat, the mirrors, etc., and fastened my belt. Very, very comfortable. Now I turn the key.

Honey is no sweeter than the sound of Firefox. Pure musclecar, yet smooth, with no lope at all. Crack the throttle and the horses rush out of the twin-cat free-flowing exhaust. Very civilized, yet very potent. I ease into first gear and head slowly up the pit lane, hopping a little at first as I get used to the enormous amount of throttle on tap. I can tell that the touted 350 hp is all there, and probably then some. I wait for the flagman to clear me to enter the track, as several 1990 Ponchos are circulating. He sees I want a clear track, so he waits until the last flock is long gone before waving me out.

I’ve driven the Glen before, and I know the corners pretty well by now. I know what the Pace Car feels like out there, as well as the McLaren turbo Grand Prix and the Sunbird Turbo. So I ease into the turn out of the pits, picking up speed as I prepare to enter the track. Suddenly, I stab the pedal heading for Turn 2, a tight right-hander that you set up far to the left and aim for an apex cone tight on the right. Incredible! Firefox responds like an F-14 with a MIG on her taill Whamo! Up into the esses, picking up speed like an uphill avalanche toward the back straight. We’re reaI~ racing now. The car hugs the road like a 4-year-old hugs his mama, totally composed, totally balanced. The shift is precise, yet like butter. I already know it’s the finest car I’ve ever driven. I’m virtually wearing it.

The back straight is where a car tells me what it’s got. The turbo Indy Pace Car showed me 120 at the last press preview, and Bobby Unser was hitting 125 in a special race car he was giving folks rides in that day. I rode with him, and the man can drive. I saw 125 long before the spot at which I normally hit the brakes for a tight right-hander at the end of the straight, and not being a professional race car driver, and remembering that don’t-break-it look on Jeff Beitzel’s face, I told myself I’d learned enough about this car and backed off long before I came up on the 600-foot marker before the turn. All smiles, I swept through the turn and applied some throttle as I came down the h toward another right-hander, in the middle of which I sent the engine room prompt orders for more power It was there instantly, loads of it, and not at full throttle, either.

As I came out of the turn I floored it, and the normally distant lefthand drifter was there immediately. I drifted the car lightly in this turn, which is easy to do, and hit a little throttle into the right-hander before the pit entrance. Then I lit it all up down the pit straight, hard-charging with a roar that must have made other writers envious as I screamed past. Then onto the brakes for tricky Turn 1, a 90-degree rig ht-hander that has no banking at all. It’s an easy turn to spin in, and I wasn’t about to. Then back into Turn 2 and on around again, once more chickening at a buck and a quarter not very far down the back straight. I think the car would’ve seen the high end of the 130s quite easily, but I didn’t want to experiment with how much room you need to brake the F-body from that kind of speed. I rolled into the pits after the second lap with a grin on my face that you could’ve pasted a billboard to. My vocabulary began and ended with one word: "wow."

I don’t think I shut up about Firefox for the next several hours, even into the reception that night at the Corning Glass Center, where we all watched the Detroit Pistons take the bee-ball championship on a wall TV. In between baskets, I quietly made up my mind: I had to drive a car that I thought might match Firefox. I had to stay for the Chevy press preview and drive the Corvette ZR-1 the next day.

What I found out is that the ZR1 is truly a world class car in every way. What I also found out is that it felt incredibly like Firefox, only it was appreciably… slower. Just a tad, maybe, and they may have had a speed limiting chip fitted so that some cub reporter wouldn’t stuff all that expensive fiberglass and steel into the Armco guard rails. But I proved to myself right there that Pontiac had presented a world-class car the previous day.

I’ll tell you how you might see this car: Jeff Beitzel’s company, PAS Inc., built not only Firefox but also the 1,500 Indy Pace Cars. A small manufacturer like PAS can build up to 10,000 cars a year without having to do the kind of testing the government requires of the big companies. So that would be the logical way for Pontiac to get this car onto the streets without having to crash dozens of them.

I’d really like to see a special edition at the end of production for the current F-body, which is scheduled to be replaced around 1993 by a body quite similar to the Banshee show car. Then, of course, I’d like to see the Corvette 6-speed and a beefy independent rear in that body. I’d be happy if they leave it in a relatively mild state of tune—perhaps with the "performance key" the ZR1 has so you can let your kid drive it to the prom at a reduced horsepower level—and leave the rest to the after-market. You can always add chips, headers, and such to the platform.

Now that Pontiac has shown me what they can do, I won’t rest until it’s on the showroom floor. In these days of balanced, world-class cars, a car like Firefox is too good not to be true. In the next F-body, Pontiac—and GM—could show the world a four-seater Vette. Tell me they wouldn’t sell a passel of ‘em."