Building the Mullet Missile: A Stunning '78 Trans Am

If it stays the same then we'll bring it home and just get over it. It's the plan. The mighty nation comes to you through summit racing teams powered by enthusiasts. Well, I'm going to leave the Detroit muscle shop for a minute and go hang out. I was out with a friend of mine and I heard he brought a spectator along with him, that's beautiful, hey big guy, how are you man, well tell me, I appreciate you having me here, yes sir, you have a beautiful ride sitting here , good thank you. Yeah, we're kind of proud of it, yeah, I mean, you should absolutely be a man.

This thing has quite a few mods, but they're tasteful mods and almost make you wonder if he changed it, so we wanted to. to take the cheesy 70's plasticity out of a

trans

am, yeah it's good, it was a lot of that wasn't it, it was a bit flashy and over the top at the time, we called the car a

mullet

missile

because of the air, but it we try. To remove the plastic, the rear spoiler is made of metal, we brought the rear bumper in about three inches into the rear, dropped the lower quarter over it and probably one of the biggest things people notice is the recessed glass that now did.

You use the original glass to make we built the car around a prototype piece of glass hoping that with both fingers we can move metal and paint, but we can bend the glass and move the glass, but it fit really well when we got it, like this which pleasantly surprised us. Back here on the bumper, I know that thing is not original in any way, no, I think it somehow emulates an original bumper, we just cleaned it up, so the bumpers on these fit horribly and were plastic and were a lot wider so we took an inch and a half from each corner of the bumper and moved them inward and then dropped the quarter panels about an inch and a half in the rear to make them more level so it doesn't have that ugly kick up and of course, Of course, you can see the big tires underneath and the full Rytek chassis underneath and it has a tube and we didn't put some big 325s in the back.

Mike Curtis who makes all of our wheels cuts us unique wheels and they look like a 70's honeycomb type, just a little modern update with a big fat sticky tire underneath, what's up with this fender? All the fenders were originally some kind of fiberglass plastic composite junk that never fit, so, uh, the shop mic made all the steel fenders. On the front and rear, the door handles by themselves, we wanted to clean and smooth them, they are from a new Nissan GT-R, we had to order them from Japan, what about the rockers? The rocker arm doesn't look good on the The car looks like it's been altered or something so they usually have a pinch weld and the body rolls under where the pinch weld meets, yeah about an inch of pinch weld on the bottom, so we just squared it up and I let it drop a little bit and, you know, it gives the illusion that it's a little bit closer to the ground.

Yes, it almost gives you a ground effect, but it's built in because it's not plastic. You know what I mean? I really like how. You also change the grading here on the side grilles and it matches the interior pieces. It also matches the interior on the back of the blade. The blade is functional with it, so it actually has the fin. it is or it's just not, it's just open, so originally they were closed and sucked in through the front or the bottom of the air filter. We are not smart enough to calculate exactly how much air we need, so we calculate more.

It was better there you go, well now the headlights and grill are not original in any way, so why and how did we still want you to know that there was a 78

trans

am that I think we pulled off the ugly square headlights from the end of the 70s? and from the early '80s we wanted to get rid of them so we got some halogen projector lights that we put in there and we have the halos around it and again with the front bumper we put it in and every inch and a half on both sides because it really stuck out so that everyone knew it's no longer plastic on the front flares, we put that little notch on the side of the front flares, okay, the main focal point on the front of this thing is the bird, it's the bird that's bad, dude.

It's impressive, sure, you did all those little things that make the engine turn? I'd love to take credit for that, where's your friend? I'm a painter, right, I'm not an artist who requires an artist. I had Jeremy Sayner come south. carolina and he did pretty much all of this freehand, he masked it, even the black is hand beaten and he put all this real silver sheet down there and turned it around on itself, I'm just curious how much time is on the bird. actually doing the bird waiting on my time drinking beer riding side by side and on motorcycles and me messing up once yeah oh that's a long time so I probably don't even want to know well let's talk about the inside now first.

I'm a big fan of the red interior because there's something about how they pop, so to speak, and then the stitch on this is awesome, it's bad, right? You did that? Yeah, neither of them ever did that again. I'm not. That talented Chuck Hannah has done all the interiors for me for the last 20 years and he always nails it with a design and I give him a concept and an idea and he runs with it and he has a young lady named Lisa who works. for him and all the seams on the interior are sewn by hand, not by machine, so he spent weeks hand sewing the entire tiger cage, the console, the dashboard and the seats, all hand sewn and if you look at it, it looks looks uniform almost like a the machine did it right, it's just amazing the skills that people have and I'm not talking about you bro, open this hood, we need to see what's underneath, okay, hmm, that's pretty sweet, not like six, six later, yes, incredibly. clean well thank you, I appreciate it, yes, and then I don't mean dust free, a lot of people wonder if it really works and where we hide, like batteries, radiators and overflow tanks etc.

I'm saying if you take the engine cover off, that's where we hide it, it's ugly, that's where we hide under everything, it's obviously an ls, but what kind of power does it make and what is its size? It's a 6-liter, 600-horsepower ls. 600 horsepower, so you're saying it's a little lively now, we haven't actually driven it yet, but you can tell by moving it you'll get it, when are you going to do the big smoking burnout? Well, we did it. little not-so-smoky burnouts are just playing around now, okay, so after sema, when it gets to sema, we'll take it home and just get over it, it's the plan, you know, the idea was to build a 30 40 worn out car 000, we begin. this project right now, yeah, we missed the part.

I was going to ask you what made you choose a Firebird trans. I was lying in bed on a Sunday morning watching Smokey and Bandit for the 150th time. I get it because when it's on you have to stop and Look at it, I got you. I'm thinking I'd like to have one of them. Well, this one is neither black nor gold. Well, that was the original idea. I told you I ruined this whole thing. Yes, I'll tell you. I think I was wrong about but you're still okay so we started this project and I asked them to deliver the car to me while I was on the road somewhere, last year in Sema or something, so when I got home I looked at the thing and We started cutting it up and I didn't like the way the bumpers fit and I didn't like the rockers and I didn't like the side panels, so what you're saying I just couldn't leave it like that, yeah.

I'm stupid that way, you know, choosing the right color for a car is very difficult, the right color and wheels and tires can make or break any car, so I drive around new car lots everywhere and I've always been I liked a silver red combo, so originally it was black, I lost it, so it was going to be like a blue with red gut or bronze with red gut, but silver with red gut is kind of timeless, you know, and the color actually it's from a new bmw it's called donington gray when you put it in the sun it really stands out but it's hard to spray it um i don't care who you are silver well i just wanted you to do it this was a test to see how good friends we are they are when you say oh no, it was easy it's not a problem you say it's silver yes it's silver and there you know um this is all uh xalta chroma base here which is a great product and we love their stuff however it's still Silver and the only thing in it is aluminum, of course, aluminum and there's no binders, yeah, so you're throwing like silver flakes through some things, you know, and I hope it lands correctly on the metal.

Gotcha, big guy, why did you choose? a trans I'm different from the bandit, you know that's because the only reason you chose him um no, once I decided to make the changes in the car and clean it, I didn't do it anymore to be a maniac, I was afraid if I did it black and gold trans am would just blend in with the rest of the black and gold you know, the trans am of this era some guys you know they've been abused for a while you know they were almost you weren't cool if you had one but you were cool but It was a different cool almost in a way, if that makes any sense, because everyone or I know you for having the 50's custom style and the mid 70's trans am is nothing like a mountain, a drop.

The best man in Cadillac, you know, I can remember when I was in school, you know, the guy in school that had the killer

mullet

and you know he was drinking beer, there was a killer mullet, yeah, okay, I've worked too, man , I understand, so, you know. He had his cigarettes rolled up his sleeve and I can imagine that guy sitting in the seat of this trans. I'm with the cigarettes up there, you know, give him the rock and say: what's the problem? What is his name? He is working for me. here right now there is no drivers side hood for these cars, what do you mean it doesn't exist?

You can't really get one. No, we have a theory about it, so every time Dolph with the mullet went and got him a six. -pack of beer, slid it across the roof, okay and they're scratched and you can't find a t-shirt on the driver's side, it's not scratched, it's not scratched, well bro, I can say you knocked it out of the park.