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We’ve stumbled upon this ’73 Super Duty Formula on one of our favorite auto classified sites, Hemmings Motor News. The car itself is a 1-of-9 example given its options of an automatic transmission Formula shod with the rarer still Ascot Silver paint color that’s sure to impress anyone! We also love the fact that these cars came equipped with the Shaker hood scoop that were normally only found on the T/A. But given the performance and the exclusivity of these cars, Pontiac saw fit that every SD Formula came equipped with one from the factory over the Ram Air hood normally found on this model.
The car comes chock full of goodies too; including the obvious SAE net 300hp engine, A/C, Rally II wheels, full instrumentation, power windows, power steering, tilt wheel, remote driver’s-side mirror, and yes, even an 8-track player so you can listen to all of your favorite ELO tunes while keeping pace with all of today’s latest muscle cars on the strip.
As you can see, the interior is all but as new as the day it rolled off the assembly line.
The Super Duty 455-equipped Firebirds were capable of low 13-second ¼-mile times and a supposed top speed of near 150mph -pretty impressive, even by today’s standards. Obviously, it didn’t get the fuel economy of today’s cars, but with 1973 fuel prices of only 35 cents a gallon, who really cared? Well obviously a lot of people did back then, since 35 cents for a gallon of gas was considered to be expensive in those days, hence the oil crisis.
The sad result of this was the fact that the baddest Pontiac engine ever made was to be around for only two years, and only limited to the Firebird model -although it was also originally intended for use in the GTO and possibly the Grand Prix as well.
But once GM received the bad news, they’ve decided to only wrap it in their lightest possible package, putting every one of those cubes to good use!
This one is available to you with 76k miles on its ticker for just under $58K, not exactly cheap, but compared to what others think these are worth, a fair price given to account the car’s significance.
Although this particular example doesn’t have the original motor (it was replaced with the GM XD-coded service replacement block under warranty), it does feature an excellent frame up restoration, and is otherwise numbers-matching.
An excellent investment for those who want to collect, or for those of you that are like us who would rather drive the wheels off of the thing!
