Haha!

 

Pretty sure that all the formulas were v8's. Did a quick compare on autotraders website, under firebird it lists formula.. all of which are v8's. I know the 98 I test drove was one bad *** sounding *****.






By the way the auto trader compare vehicle function rocks! When I was shopping for cars the last couple of months I found it was the quickest way to find out weight, factory hp, torque, what the base transmission was... all that type of info.

 

lol you act like there god...

 

Sounds like you raced an LT1 Firebird Formula. Everyone discounts the LT1's as subpar to the LS1, but none the less, the stock LT1 gives <=04 GT a run for the money. The formula's look like V6 cars, until they nail it...

They did make some LS1 Formula's, which generally hit low 13's stock. If it was an LS1, you probably wouldn't of been able to keep up.

 

I've personally never raced one, but by the way everyone else talks, they're unbeatable.

 

They are not unbeatible, it just takes a lot of mods for a n/a GT to do it. I almost lost to a 02 GT with full bolt ons, cams, and a gutted interior. He got me on the 60 foot really bad, bad I was able to run him down and beat him by about a fender. He was a real cool guy and came over to my pit to talk afterwards.

 

OOO i didnt keep up with him, wasnt even close lol i felt dumb

Zach

 

^^^LOL. Formula is basically a transam without the gaudy exterior stuff, or a LT/LS1 in a firebird body.

 

A Pontiac Firebird Formula is mechanically a Trans Am without all the weighty Trans Am interior, graphic and body mods. Remember the late 1980s/early 90s when you could get stripper Ford Mustang 5.0 LXs that were lighter and faster than a GT, because they had all the go-fast stuff under the hood and in the suspension but none of the weight-intensive stuff like plastic bolt-on body pieces and power windows, leather, etc? They were to the Mustang what the Formula was to the Firebird line, except Formulas are a little more flashy graphics-wise. IIRC basically any performance option you could get on a T/A you could get on a lighter Formula, but you kind of had to know how to order it because it wasn't as well-known as the T/A and most buyers went for T/A flash rather than Formula muscle. And they go back farther than the 80s-way farther. IIRC the Formula actually debuted with the 1970 (1/2) model year and built them pretty much from there until the end of F-Body production. There are early-70s Firebird Formulas with 400s and 455s, including a few Ram Airs in the early years and a few Super Duty 455 cars from '73 and '74. They had a pretty wild graphics package in the late '70s, but it was the same deal, Trans Am hardware without the Trans Am frills, and IIRC that even went as far as the shaker hood, albeit without the giant Trans Am screamin' thunderchicken decal we know and love. In those years they had either Poncho 6.6s (400s, aka the T/A 6.6 as stated on the shaker) or corporate Oldsmobile-built 403 ci engines (I think it was 403, some odd displacement like that, generally identified on the shaker hood as 6.6 LITRE-IIRC if it says T/A 6.6 on the shaker it's the real Poncho 400, which was available with a manual trans, and if it said 6.6 LITRE on the shaker it's the Olds, which was auto-only). Beginning in 1980 there were Formulas and T/As that had the rather infamous Pontiac turbo small-block, and that takes us into the '80s cars that others have mentioned. You will see those '80s/early 90s T/As and Formulas with 305 Cross-Fire Injection (also known parjoratively as Cease-Fire Injection), 305 Throttle-Body Injection, and 305 and 350 Tuned-Port Injection. There were also Camaro IROCs, Z/28s, and Firebird Formulas and T/As with what they called the 1LE option, which was A/C delete, rollup windows, manual seats with cloth, heavy-duty cooling and suspension, which was made for showroom stock SCCA racing. (And then you had a Police Package, which was a whole new ballgame, but that's off topic). From the debut of the 1982 cars until the 1993 debut of the car that would see through final decade of F-Body production, you could not get that 350 with a manual trans in either a Camaro or a Firebird. When the 350 hit the lineup all it had was the 700R4 auto, but you could get a 305 with either that or a 5-speed.

BTW There were Fiero Formulas, too, that had Fiero GT mechanicals in base Fiero bods, but we needn't go there. Although I've always thought it would have been fun to have a 5-speed Fiero GT with the snarly Quad 4 H.O. out of my 1990 Olds Quad 442....but that's another story!

 

The Firebird Formula has been around for quite some time. I believe they started it with the 3rd gen Firebird around 87-88. It has the look of a v6, but with v8 power. The 3rd gen 87-92 had the 305 ci v8 (i don't believe they made a Formula 82-86)...The 93-97 Formula had the LT1 and the 98-02 Formula had the LS1. The 4th gen Formula looked like a typical v6 Firebird with the low spoiler, and they also had a Formula WS6 model that they only made from 98-00...i think they stopped production of the Formula WS6 in 01-02. Hope this helps!