This ad makes your author want to buy one. In fact, he did..

As we’ve been on a throwback-commercial-kick more so than ever recently, we’ve come to realize that we’ve been neglecting Pontiac a little bit. Shame on us! In this instance, we’ve decided to bring you a four minute advertisement (we say advertisement as there’s no way Pontiac would have aired a four minute commercial on TV) promoting the 1998 Firebirds. The year nineteen-hundred and ninety-eight doesn’t seem so long ago, but then again, neither does your author’s high school graduation that same year. It’s been over thirteen years since the first LS1-powered ‘Birds rolled off of the assembly line in Quebec, and we sometimes wonder how many are still left in an all-stock and original state. With the amount of time that has gone by, added in with the fact that the LS1 was the first in a long line of mod-friendly, all-aluminum powerplants from GM, we would have to say not many.

In the attached advertisement, Pontiac seemed to have managed to hire the same guy who does the narrating of action/thriller-movie trailers, giving the audience a sense of suspense and excitement. Excitement, after all, was Pontiac’s tagline in those days. The ad jumps back and forth between three Firebirds on a city street at night to an open track day for Firebirds, and then later back to the dark alley of which the trio of Firebirds have crept from.

There’s also a glimpse of an original ’69 Trans Am to harken back the glory days of muscle cars, before the EPA and CAFE stuck their noses where they didn’t belong. The ad discusses the changes made to the Firebird over the previous model year’s car, including the output of its engine, the features of the coveted WS6 package, and much more. They even discuss the “advantages” of the entry-level V6 version, but somehow overlook the Formula model completely. For our Formula fans, that’s a bit of a letdown, but otherwise, it’s a pretty cool clip.