Nov 4, 2017 • Uncategorized •

Before the Internet, your odds of meeting the Pope at McDonalds exceeded those of spotting a GM H Body with a V8 under the hood. Believe me; my third car was a 1976 Buick Skyhawk (231 V6, five-speed), and my Step-Dad had a ’77 Sunbird (231 automatic), and I scanned every Chevrolet Monza I saw for the “5.0 Litre” badge on the front fenders. I’d have probably passed out if I spotted this 305 cid V8-powered 1979 Pontiac Sunbird with a four-speed manual transmission. Located outside Springfield, Massachusetts, this sub-compact mini-muscle car is listed here on Western Massachusetts craigslist with an asking price of $5500.

The listing offers minimal information about the car, and 26 of its 44 words are a warning not to negotiate until you’ve seen the car. I’ve seen hundreds of these and never a V8 Sunbird, let alone a four-speed. Still, I suspect the pool of buyers waking up every morning hoping this will be the day that a V8 Sunbird turns up numbers in the single digits, but perhaps there should be more.

As I recall, the factory steering wheel on these cars looks about twenty times better than this aftermarket unit. Otherwise the little 2+2 seems rather tidy inside, supporting the seller’s claim of 77,000 original miles. I bought my Skyhawk at 119,000 miles, sold it to a buddy at 250,000, and years later it exited my circle of friends with about 350,000 miles on (as far as we know) the original 231. Your results may vary.

This listing does not include a picture of the feature car’s engine, but this picture from an earlier Barnfinds.com post shows how the 305 looks in the H body. A friend of mine had a V8 Monza Mirage, and had to loosen the motor mounts and crank the engine to one side then the other with a spud bar to change the rear plugs. The Chevrolet-sourced 305 V8 made 130 HP and 245 ft-lb of torque @ 2000 RPM (some details courtesy of h-body.org). Consider the Camaro and Firebird got the same engine and weighed 900 lb more than these 2700 lb H-bodies, and you realize how this Sunbird, with no V8 callouts, could have surprised nearly any “normal” car produced well into the ’80s. In 1988 I thought long and hard about building my H-body’s 231 with go-fast parts from Kenne-Bell. That might have given me 250 HP (more than that year’s Corvette) but having landed my first real job and, considering the numb power steering and other H-body low-points, I bought an ’89 Mustang LX 5.0 instead… the only new car I ever bought (and I still have it). That’s the rest of my story. How would you write the next chapter of this H-body Sunbird’s story?