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Thanks to SCOTT BEAM for submitting this article in August 2000.

CARS: The High Performance Monthly Volume 20, Number 8, August 1977

" It's interesting to see just how much louvers, tape stripes and spoilers can affect the image of an automobile. Pontiac's newly created Can Am typifies the direction of today's performance cars -- instead of body building, they get plastic surgery! "

CARS: The High Performance Monthly, Volume 20, Number 8, August 1977

Can Am Road Test
Pontiac Performance with a Wing and a prayer.
by Don Green

" The past has a way of recycling itself. Clothing styles, songs and movies from someone's good old days reappear with some regularity, so it should be no surprise that car makers have decided to recycle the Supercars of the Sixties. Ford would have to receive the credit for getting things rolling with their revival of the Cobra version of the Mustang. Chevy and Pontiac never quite let go with their small performance cars, but soft-pedaled the Z/28 and Trans Am through a period when people were reluctant to buy performance in the face of uncertain gasoline supplies. The Z/28 and Trans Am still exist, but like the Cobra II, they are hardly more than cosmetic versions of the machines that spawned the term Supercar. High mechanical camshafts, multiple carburetion and high compression pistons are all dead items in Detroit. The automakers would sell them if they could, and the public would buy them if they had the chance, but the Federal Government, with good enough reason, has relegated those pieces to yesterday. What is left of the original Sixties Supercar is a wing, a spoiler or two, hood scoops, fat tires and tape stripes. That may not sound like much of a basis for a performance automobile, but if you're crafty, reasonably tasteful in your design and are dealing with people who may never have had a taste of genuine performance...
you may be able to bring it off.

The Can Am, Pontiac's new version of the LeMans, looks like the test bed for the "re-invention" of the Supercar. Unlike the Mustang or Camaro, there never was a blatantly "performance" version of the LeMans in the style of the new Can Am. Its advertising would make you think it's the son of GTO, but it appears to owe its heritage more to the Trans Am Firebird, though even that is stretching the point a bit.
There is no doubt that the Can Am is a good looking automobile, especially from the side where you can appreciate its flowing lines accented by tri-color striping. The car got a surprising amount of attention everywhere it went. There were questions about it at every gas station and at many stop signs; heads turned to watch it on the freeway and kids gave it the thumbs up as it passed on the street.
The ten to twelve year old crowd loved it because they were young enough to have never seen a car like it; older people were interested because it had been seven or eight years since they had seen a car decked out in this fashion, and most had never seen a car of the Can Am's size treated to performance styling.
And the Can Am is a big car.

Starting life as a LeMans Sport Coupe, the Can Am option is added in two parts:
one takes care of the mechanical changes (engine, transmission, suspension) and some appearance items;
the other includes the majority of the dress-up parts (spoilers,stripes, etc.).

The engine, in all states but California, is the top of the line 400 c.i. 4-bbl V8 (L78), the same engine used in the Trans Am. It develops 180 hp at 3600 rpm and 325 ft./lbs. of torque at 1600 rpm. Figures that make it sound like a great engine for towing! If you live anywhere in California or in certain high altitude areas in the rest of the country, you can't get the 400-inch engine. Instead, you get a 403-incher which is a new and completely different engine having a larger bore and shorter stroke than the 400 but similar power output figures. The 403 is referred to as a "corporate engine" and will no doubt eventually replace all similar sized engines in all GM products. Our test car, however, had the real thing 400-incher.

The quarter-mile testing was done at Irwindale Raceway in Southern California where the Can Am recorded a best of 16.74 seconds at 82.28 mph, not a bad time for a big car these days. Especially for one that we were told was several hundred pounds heavier than the regular production line version; since it was a heavily undercoated LeMans prototype that had been converted into a heavily undercoated Can Am prototype. Because of the amount of low rpm torque available, the car feels like a real performer on the freeway, eating up hills like they weren't there. It's certainly not what you could call a fast car by late 60's standards, but anyone raised on Datsuns and Vegas would probably get a nosebleed from it. And regardless of what the EPA says about LeMans gas mileage, the car was consistently in the 11-13 1/2 mpg range close to the EPA's 14 mpg city driving estimate, but miles from their 21 mpg highway driving guess.

The suspension was equipped with the Rally Handling package, front and rear sway bars and GR70-15 steel belted radial tires. On the freeway and around town the car rode extremely well with a confident, positive feel. The power steering was easy but not too easy; there's still enough effort involved in turning the wheel to make you feel needed when you're driving. The sway bars and radials combine to keep the car flat and hooked to the ground. Driving fast on any kind of winding road is a completely different story. The softness of the suspension becomes apparent and the shocks aren't capable of slowing its bouncing enough to give the car a secure feel. In that situation you find yourself in what looks like a performance car, but handles like the family station wagon with a towing package on the suspension. Some magazines have been impressed with the Can Am's performance on the skid pad, but that's simply a function of the sway bars and radial tires. Skid pads are flat and smooth and nothing like the real world where roads bank this way and that, rise and fall and have unevenly radiused turns. While the Can Am is a great riding car, as a handling car it is only adequate. Though it tries to play on the image of the Trans Am, its handling is nowhere near that league.

The interior of the car is big and comfortable. Visibility is very good; even the louvered rear-quarter windows let you see enough of what's out there to keep you off of someone else's fender. The dash has the good looking Grand Prix instrument cluster with large tach and speedometer and a cluster of four smaller gauges (gas, oil pressure, water temperature and voltmeter), and all the controls are in easy reach.

The exterior is really what a Can Am is all about. The already pleasing lines of the LeMans Sport Coupe have been accented by tasteful tape striping and by the blacking out of much of its chrome trim. Windshield, rear window and door window moldings have been factory-painted flat black for a subtle competition feeling. The striped rear spoiler and the " shaker " scoop protruding through the hood confirm that this is, at least by appearances, a performance car. Bolted to the top of a stock air cleaner, the scoop is for looks only and is totally incapable of passing any air to the engine. Too bad it can't be real, but that's the emissions/noise business. With a functional hood scoop/air cleaner, the car would have to be recertified with an expensive 50,000 mile EPA test. As a substitute for a working scoop, the stock air cleaner picks up its air in front of the radiator through a piece of flexible hose. Beyond the comments on its styling (no one ever said anything bad about the looks of the car), the most popular question was, " How much? "

The less popular answer was $7100 for the car we tested (less tax, license and shipping). A basic LeMans Sport Coupe lists for about $4200; the Can Am Option Package adds another $1164 and the Can Am Appearance Package another $375. You can add what options you want from there. Our car had $500 worth of air conditioning, but was not otherwise heavily loaded with options. Comparisons with the Supercars of the late 60's are inevitable simply because that's the image the Can Am tries to portray. Cosmetically, at least, the car is a smashing success, but a performance car it's not.

But then what is these days? "

Thanks to SCOTT BEAM for submitting this article in August 2000.

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