Pontiac Can Am

Pontiac Can Am at a glance

The Can Am follows the Pontiac GTO idea of a performance package on the mid-size Pontiac and borrows its engine and bonnet scoop from the Firebird Trans Am.

How the Can Am came about

The Can Am took over from the 1973–1975 Grand Am, which had sold slowly. Jim Wangers, often called the godfather of the GTO, proposed a new package together with Motortown, the company that would do the conversion. According to Hagerty, Pontiac general manager Alex Mair was receptive and product planner Ben Harrison supported the plan, while a revival of the GTO Judge was rejected in favour of a more contemporary design.

The name came from the SCCA Can-Am sports-car series, revived for 1977; Pontiac had no connection with it. The car was shown at the Detroit auto show in January 1977, next to the Sunbird Sport Hatch, and production started by spring. The plan was to build 2,500 cars; Wangers later said dealer orders were roughly double that, and Street Muscle and Hooniverse give the target as 5,000.

Design and equipment

The Can Am started as a Cameo White LeMans Sport Coupe with louvred rear quarter windows. Motortown cut the bonnet for the shaker scoop and added the rest:

• the Trans Am's shaker scoop, lettered "T/A 6.6" on Pontiac-engined cars and "6.6 Litre" on Oldsmobile-engined cars;
• a glass-fibre ducktail spoiler taken from the Grand Am All-American show car;
• orange, red and yellow graphics with blacked-out lower panels and window trim;
• body-coloured Rally II wheels with chrome trim rings and GR70-15 steel-belted radial tyres;
• the Rally-Tuned Suspension and 11-inch front disc brakes.

Inside, buyers chose red, black, white or tan trim, and the dashboard and console came from the Pontiac Grand Prix. Street Muscle mentions swivel bucket seats. Options included cast-aluminium "snowflake" wheels, a steel or glass sunroof and the Safe-T-Track limited-slip axle.

Hooniverse addresses a persistent story about seven Mandarin Orange cars: Wangers said Motortown built no orange Can Ams officially.

Engines and performance

Most Can Ams have the Pontiac 400 in its W72 "T/A 6.6" form with 149 kW (200 hp), 15 kW (20 hp) more than the regular 400. Cars sold in California and at high altitude received the Oldsmobile 403 with 138 kW (185 hp). No Can Am was built with a manual gearbox.

The magazines of 1977 measured very different times, partly because the test weights differed by about 260 kg:

For comparison, Car and Driver's four-speed 1977 Trans Am with the same engine ran 16.9 seconds at 82 mph. Hooniverse puts the Can Am in context: the 1977 Mustang Cobra II's 302 V8 had 95 kW (127 hp).

The Can Am in numbers

1CARS calculated these ratios from the sourced weights and power ratings; they are not measured values.

The W72 engine gives 22.6 kW per litre from its 6.6 litres. By the standards of 1977, when emission rules had cut outputs across the industry, the Can Am was a quick mid-size car rather than a match for the golden-age cars ranked on the most powerful muscle cars page. The comparison tool sets it against the Trans Am and other cars of its year.

Why production ended

The rear spoiler stopped the car. Motortown converted 30 to 40 cars a day at its peak, according to Street Muscle, but the tool for the glass-fibre spoiler broke and a replacement would have taken 90 days. The company did not want to ship cars without spoilers for dealers to finish, and cancelled the programme in mid-June 1977.

There was also opposition inside the company. Wangers told Hagerty that some managers were against the car from the start, and Wikipedia notes that executives saw Can Am sales as lost Grand Prix sales. The Can Am used the Grand Prix dashboard, and the Grand Prix was heading for about 288,000 cars that year against roughly 80,000 LeMans. Street Muscle adds that the downsized 1978 LeMans would have been 270–360 kg (600–800 lb) lighter, with a projected Can Am weight of about 1,450 kg (3,200 lb).

How many were built

Against the more than 81,000 LeMans sold in 1977, the Can Am was a very small series either way. Consumer Guide says about 300 survive.

Pontiac Can Am buying guide

• Engine and scoop must match: "T/A 6.6" lettering means the Pontiac W72; "6.6 Litre" means the Oldsmobile 403.
• Colour: every genuine car is Cameo White (paint code 11, per Consumer Guide); an orange car is not a factory Can Am.
• Spoiler and stripes: the glass-fibre ducktail and the graphics were Motortown parts and are hard to replace correctly.
• Gearbox: a manual car has been converted; none left the factory that way.
• Interior: the Grand Prix dashboard and console should be present.