Herb Adams

In his career, Herb Adams has pretty much done it all, and made mistakes along the way. Those stumbles, he claims, not only helped him grow, they are essential to the proper development of individuals, teams, and organizations. He placed in charge of an engineering special projects group at Pontiac. Your group worked on the development of the PFST (Pontiac Firebird Sprint Turismo) that led to the first Trans Am that was released in 1969. He did a lot of work and product planning on what became the first Trans Am in 69 and the second Trans Am in 70 1/2. DeLorean was the head of Pontiac at that time and he knew he was going to get the Firebird line to go along with the Camaro. He wanted us to develop something that was going to beat the Z28. We put Webers on that engine to try to get more power but we couldn't get big enough side drafts carbs so we used down drafts which ended up sticking out of the hood, so we made a hood scoop. That started a trend in the whole industry. We did that car in 67 and by 71 everybody had a scoop going through the hood. That was the early development car. We worked on the handling and aerodynamic stuff and it was a learning car that ended up being the 69 Trans Am. We developed the racing engines and gave the specs to the guys that were racing. Jerry Titus in the 69-70 season was trying to race Firebirds and it was a learning curve. Unfortunately the team was trying to make money on the deal and wouldn't spend what was needed to do the job right. The guy in charge of engine development at that time, Russ Gee, allowed us to do engine development on the dynamometer. The first 303 Pontiac only made like 300 horsepower. Tom Nell, Jeff Young and Herb Adams worked on that project. By the time we got done it was making 475 horsepower, which was as good as anybody had in those days. The problem was we would give the specs from our development to the Titus team and they would go change them. Unfortunately, Jerry got killed at the end of that season. We had gained a lot of knowledge especially about chassis development from the 70 SCCA season. Pontiac would not give us any parts but at least by then we knew what to get. Herb Adams took part in the Tempest adventure. Bob Tullius was the driver. He had a lot of experience driving in the wet. So every time it rained we did really well. It was also competitive in the dry. We usually ran in the top five. We found a wrecked Firebird in a junk yard. We applied what we learned with the Tempest and had a better starting point. That car was pretty competitive. In 1974, the SCCA basically abandoned the Trans Am series. I think they only ran four events that year. So we decided that if we were going to continue racing, the SCCA was not the place to be. At that time NASCAR was nowhere near as strong as it is now. It was about as popular as the Trans Am series had been. So we decided to apply the lessons we had learned in the SCCA to the NASCAR entry. That's when we built (the 73 Grand Am). We only ran it a couple of times. We took it to Riverside and ran in to a lot of resistance. NASCAR was a sharecropper arrangement. "We're the boss and you are the sharecropper." We had three strikes against us. We were damned Yankees and those faggot SCCA guys. So we didn't fit in too well. So we went to Riverside. They wouldn't let us run. They said, you have to change this and change that so we did what they asked. The last day of qualifying they said, "I'll let your car run but you have to use one of our drivers". I said `"No." Jerry Thompson was the guy who was driving for us. I said "He has been here all week working with us." So at the last minute they said "OK, you can go qualify". So we qualified in the middle of the pack. In the race we got up to 7th place in the first hour and the master cylinder failed. It was a good showing for the first event. We went down to Daytona. We were there over a week but they never let us run. They said, "you have to change this, you have to go talk to the next guy", etc. About that time he left Pontiac and Tom Nell was also quitting at that time. We sold that car to a guy in Washington. We had a good friend at Oldsmobile, Dale Smith, and he helped us do some racing by giving us parts and let us dyno test. They had a series called the Kelly Girl series in IMSA. The team ran a couple of years there. We started with a Starfire and we ran the first modern version of the Buick V6, before it was a good motor. They had a 77 Cutlass and we ran that at Daytona in the 24 Hour, but we blew the tranny in the back straightaway. Oldsmobile helped us and I think one of the Oldsmobile guys was driving when the tranny blew. Then in 78 we raced a "hunchback" Cutlass. Appliance Wheel had just been bought by WR Grace. A guy named Tony Goodchild was put in charge of Appliance Wheel and some other divisions of that company. He was able to twist some arms at Pontiac and get them to supply the engines which were the 366 engines we had developed about five years earlier. They gave Tom Nell the contract to supply those engines. They built the car and we ran a half dozen races. We had some different guys driving. Jerry Thompson did real well and then Milt Minter drove it the last race and did really, really well. I think he finished 2nd. We had to run against 427 Corvettes and we really didn't have enough power, but it ran good. So everybody was pleased with it. Part of the deal with Appliance was that they would get the car and put it on sort of a low level tour of different retail stores. Some guy in Detroit apparently ended up with it. He restored it and put it in the Detroit Autorama show. Then he campaigned a Fire Am in the 79 and 80 Daytona 24 Hour races. That car was a legal street car and actually driven to the 79 race from Michigan.They took the same Fire Am suspension and put it in that car. They installed a chrome plated roll cage. Everybody got a big kick out of that. It was a street legal car and we first ran it at a couple of SCCA events just to shake it down. It had a Pontiac Super Duty engine in it. The first race was run on our own, with no support of any kind. But we qualified. In those days the attrition was very high in a 24 hour race. Most of the exotic cars couldn't go more than 3 or 4 hours. But we just kept running. I remember waking up in the morning, the sun was coming up and the car was still running. We were in 10th place in GT when the crank shaft broke. The end broke off the front of the crank. The second year was again run on street tire, Goodyear Wingfoots, because they were part of the Fire Am street package. And we ran them in the race. But that year we went through three or four transmissions in the 24 hour race. They were (aftermarket) transmissions but they weren't as good as the factory transmitions we ran the year before. The third year he went down there with a Cheverra, a yellow one. We got a lot of resistance. They didn't like the whale tail. We again went down there with street tires. Initially they said we had to be within 10 percent as fast as the fastest qualifier (in class) in order to qualify. Then they changed the rules and said we had to run within 7 percent of that time in order to qualify. We couldn't do it with the street tires so we put a set of race tires on. I qualified and Jerry Thompson who was a co-driver went out and blew a right front tire and hit the wall. They had a good sponsor, Escort, which funded a couple of wild cars that were built. The only car we built that didn't run competitively was the Pontoon car. We put the engine way over on one side and the driver way over on the other. Herb Adams was also involved in the development of Pontac Firebirds that were entered in Trans-Am. He would run it sometimes and do well, and Milt Minter, Joe Varde and Gene Felton would sometimes drive the car. About the time he quit racing his son Matt came along and wanted to race. He remains one of the legends in racing.

Herb Adams drove this Pontiac Fire Am in 1979 and 1980.