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Muscle-cars

Since the end of Pontiac has come, there will be no Trans Am thrown into the mix of the vintage-looking sports cars on the road today. The Ford Mustang, the Chevrolet Camaro and the Dodge Charger are all competitors in a group that the Pontiac Trans Am would have fit right into.

Lingenfelter Performance Engineering couldn’t leave that scenario alone, so they made their own Trans Am. Beginning with a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, the performance company reworked the body, interior and engine into a modern day Trans Am with the looks from a classic 1971 Pontiac Firebird. Complete with fender vents, raised white-letter tires, honeycomb wheels, twin-port front grill and a duck-tail spoiler, the car looks like a real modern day Trans Am.

Built using the body of the current 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, (not to be confused with the Lingenfelter Performance Engineering’s 2010 Camaro) the TA doesn’t look anything like the Camaro it was born as. It has been referred to as the Lingenfelter T/A, the LTA 455, LPE TA or the LPE 455 TA. With Pontiac gone and no “real” Trans Am on the market, the car doesn’t have an official name.

The interior of the car now sports blue woven vinyl seats, a metal gauge cluster and other updates to give it the feel of the original Trans Am. The exterior includes custom molded body parts like the extended rear fenders, front fascia, shaker hood, headlight and taillight housing and rear spoiler. The paint is bright in an icy white with an electric blue racing stripe running from hood to trunk.

Under the hood is where this car shines. Producing 655 horsepower and 610 foot pounds of torque, Lingenfelter’s 455 cubic inch, 7.5 liter V8 engine is what pumps the life through the one-of-a-kind TA. The engine is made using a custom Racing Head Service aluminum engine block, Lingenfelter Performance Engineering-brand CNC ported and polished LS7 cylinder heads, an LSX FAST 102 intake, Diamond pistons, a Lunati forged crank and a Corsa stainless steel exhaust to finish the package. For keeping all the power going down the road, a Lingenfelter 6-bolt LS9 twin disk flywheel and clutch assembly work with heavy duty Driveshaft Shop half-shafts.

The car is to debut at the 2009 SEMA Auto Show in Las Vegas in the Nitto Tire booth. The TA is riding on Nitto performance tire - 275/40ZR20s in the front and 315/35ZR20s in the rear, bolted to custom 20-inch honeycomb wheels, which are a trademark of the Pontiac Trans Am.

Emerging from bankruptcy this summer, the Dodge Viper was the first vehicle to have its production go back on line, but the iconic sports car will be end production next year according to Ralph Giles, President and CEO of the Dodge Car Brand. Giles said that the Dodge Viper SRT-10, which has been around since 1991, will cease production in July 2010. The Dodge Viper, along with its powerful V-10 engine, is hand-built at Chrysler’s Conner Avenue Assembly plant in Detroit, Michigan.

Production of the Dodge Viper has been up in the air over that past 18 months including an attempt to sell it off as a separate franchise, but ultimately it was kept in the Dodge portfolio. In a business plan that laid out the future of the entire Chrysler Group over the next four years, Giles said that the discontinuation of the Viper is an attempt to preserve the value of the existing models, and he also said a future rebirth of the Viper is under consideration. According to a slide revealed in the business plan, the fifth-generation Viper could make a possible debut in the summer of 2012 likely as a 2013 model.

With Ferrari under the parental umbrella of Chrysler’s parent company, Fiat S.p.A., it is not clear what role any of the Italian-based automakers would play in the development of a future Dodge Viper. Unlike Ferrari’s high-horsepower output from a relatively small engine displacement, it is likely that the Dodge halo sports coupe would retain its big V-10 to produce similar output of the current model’s 600 horsepower and 560 lb-ft of torque. The redesigned model should also keep a similar design language to the first two body styles offering both hard- and open-top models with aggressive styling and a low, wide stance.

Giles added that there would be a final run of 500 of “the most special Vipers ever” when production ends next summer, but he gave no indication as to what would make the final run of Vipers so special. We expect the final Viper models will most likely be limited to exclusive appearance and packaging combinations including paint jobs, interior materials and even special, high-performance models, and there is sure to be extensive pomp and circumstance when the final Viper models are introduced.