General Motors Used To Tease Car Enthusiasts By Trying And Failing To Make Pontiac Firebird ‘Shooting Brakes’

The Pontiac Firebird was one of those automotive icons so strong that even people who don’ t call themselves car enthusiasts know about them. When Pontiac said “we take the fun of driving seriously,” the powerful and sporty Firebird helped make that slogan real. But Pontiac designers had something up their sleeve in the 1970s that could have turned the Firebird into an object of pure automotive lust. That car was the Pontiac Firebird Type K, an awesome shooting brake that GM actually built. Then Pontiac did it again in the 1980s. Both times, General Motors could have sold the cars, but instead let them stay as forbidden fruit.

The Pontiac Firebird Type K and the later Firebird Trans Am Kammback beg the question of “what if?” How could the course of Firebird and Pontiac history have changed if General Motors actually gave America Firebird and Trans Am shooting brakes? Perhaps the wildest part about this story is that the cars on your screen made it past the sketch stage enough for real working examples to be built. One of them was sold in recent auctions, so at least some people out there have enjoyed this forbidden fruit.

While the four-door wagon body style is slowly slipping out of the public consciousness, the two-door wagon hasn’t even been that lucky. Today, if you want a modern take on the traditional “shooting brake,” as this two-door-wagony body style is called, you’d have to buy something like a Ferrari GTC4Lusso or maybe a BMW Z3 Coupé. Yeah, your options are really thin on the ground. You could take a time machine back to the 1970s through 1990s, when the shooting brake design was fighting for its life. That’s where you’ll find some wild experiments from GM.

A Funny Name

The history of the shooting brake goes back to the dawn of the automobile, but its original meaning was very different than how enthusiasts see it today.

The earliest shooting brakes were horse-drawn wagons in the United Kingdom. These wagons were designed with the purpose of carting hunting parties to where the game was and helped haul the game back after the shooting ceased. These wagons became gasoline-powered cars in the 1900s and they continued to serve the same general purpose. When these vehicles weren’t used for hunting, they also worked as a way to transport groups of people. In a way, the early gasoline wagons resembled the later interpretation of the shooting brake. They had two doors and a large cargo area in the back.

Wagons have dotted the automotive landscape forever. However, as Curbside Classic notes, Willys was a driving force behind how the two-door wagon became popular. As the publication notes, Willys was looking for a way to stand out in post-World War II America. In 1946, Willys launched an all-steel wagon. But, aside from the all-steel body, Willys did something a bit different. This wagon was short and had just two doors.

The rest of the automotive industry responded in kind. Plymouth had an all-steel two-door wagon in 1949 followed by Ford that same year. Chevrolet continued building four-door wagons until it introduced its own two-door wagons in 1955. The minds at GM decided to cover both ends of the market, selling the entry-level Handyman two-door wagon as well as the high-end Nomad wagon. Ford hit back a year later with the 1956 Parklane.

Two-door wagons then lit up in popularity. Mercury tossed its own two-door wagons on the fire, as did Edsel, Studebaker, and American Motors. Other nations were having their own two-door wagon fun, including Japan with its Daihatsu Compagno and Europe with the Sunbeam Alpine.

As Hemmings writes, Chevrolet killed the two-door Nomad in 1957, but General Motors still had some interest in the concept. In 1970, Chevy designers punched out the Camaro Kammback concept. This wagon featured a tailgate and was supposed to go into production that year, but General Motors reportedly canned the idea after realizing that such a car would have a limited market and it couldn’t be made cheaply enough for that tiny market. The project never got past a non-functional mockup.

Special K

We would later get a production shooting brake in the form of the Chevy Vega Kammback, but it was only in 1977 when GM flirted with the idea of making a flagship shooting brake again. This time, it was Pontiac’s turn and the plan called for making the Firebird into a sexy wagon. Gerry Brochstein is credited with the design with leadership from David R. Holls. What they created was a fantastic evolution of Bill Porter’s Firebird design. This was the Firebird Type K, and the “K” stood for Kammback.

GM design chief Bill Mitchell loved what he saw enough to have a couple of real working examples built, which resulted in the photos you see here.

Unlike previous efforts, the Firebird Type K didn’t have a tailgate. Instead, just above the louvered taillights was a large fixed window. If you wanted to load things or people into the rear, you just had to pop open the gullwing windows over the carpeted rear area. It looks like GM’s model had some real fun playing around with this thing. I also love the “Type K” license plate that would feel at home on a ’90s Honda.

GM sent a pair of production Firebirds out to Italy, where Pininfarina grafted steel body panels and glass onto the backs of the pony cars. One example was gold with a beige interior while the other was silver with a matching interior. Autoweek notes that a prototype was displayed at the 1978 Chicago Auto Show, where the car captured the hearts of the public. GM decided that it was worth moving past the concept stage.

As Hemmings writes, Pontiac figured it could make the Type Ks $16,000 ($80,794 today) flagship versions of the Firebird and Trans Am. These would have to be halos, too, because that target price was basically three times as expensive as a $4,753 ($24,001 today) Firebird and a $5,889 ($29,737 today) Trans Am from the same year.

GM figured it could take one of two routes to make the Type Ks a reality. It could just ship the cars to Pininfarina and let that firm handle the coachbuilding work or GM could save money by building them here in America with Pininfarina overseeing quality control.

While all of this was happening, a marketing blitz commenced with the silver car, which bore the front end of a 1979 Trans Am, appearing in an episode of The Rockford Files. Unfortunately, GM couldn’t figure out how to get anywhere near the target price. Even with severe cost-cutting, GM estimated it would have to sell the wagons for a pricy $25,000 ($115,521 today) to make any money. Nobody was going to pay that much for a Firebird. That ignores the fact that a new generation of Firebird was right around the corner.

Take Two

According to the August 1985 issue of Motor Trend, GM and Pininfarina had actually managed to get the Type K down to “$22,000-plus,” but ultimately, it was decided not to give up, but to try again in the next generation.

In 1985 GM punched out its third shooting brake concept and second time branding it as a Pontiac. This time, we’re looking at the Pontiac Trans Am Kammback Concept.

The Trans Am Kammback was designed and built in-house, slashing costs. Further slashing costs, Motor Trend writes, was the fact that the wagon glass didn’t require any strengthening in the roof structure and that the Kammback used as many existing parts as possible. Its glass lifted up using the base car’s struts and GM figured it could get the Kammbacks out of the door in 1988 for “a few hundred dollars” more than the fastback it was based on.

Pontiac then showed off several functional prototypes to the public but once again, GM ultimately decided to can the project.

As Autoweek writes, while GM never reached the finish line of any of its Kammback halo car projects, the Takanobu and Yukimasa Hoshi brothers in Japan weren’t willing to let it go. The brothers ran the Deco International Corporation out of Pacoima, California, which specialized in federalizing imported cars. The Hoshi brothers decided to create perfect replicas of the canceled Type Ks. However, there were some caveats. The Type K replicas had fiberglass panels, not metal. Likewise, the conversion was $15,000 ($69,312 today) on top of the price of buying a Pontiac. If you bought your Trans Am new, this meant paying $21,000 ($97,038 today) to get it as a shooting brake.

The sad thing is that there just aren’t many Pontiac Firebird shooting brakes in existence. Of the original two Firebird Type Ks, the gold example was destroyed by GM while the silver example is believed to be in the hands of the GM Heritage Collection.

As Autoweek notes, the only known Deco Type K replica in existence (above) was owned by Michigan-based Pontiac dealer John McMullen. That car looked exactly like the 1979 Trans Am Type K concept and was purchased from a private owner in Texas in the 1990s. McMullen had that car restored. It was sold at RM Sotheby’s in 2007 for $154,000, and the car still occasionally makes appearances at car shows.

Some publications say that this car is actually one of the original Type Ks. However, its interior is the wrong color. It appears that the authenticity of the vehicle might be unclear.

McMullen also had possession of one of the original Pontiac Trans Am Kammback Concepts. That car was also restored and then sold in the same auction in 2007 for $66,000. That car sold again later on in 2017 and again in 2018. Sadly, it’s unknown exactly how many replicas Deco International constructed, but there cannot be many given their original price.

Doubly tragic is the fact that cars like these aren’t likely to see a revival anytime soon. The typical wagon is already struggling for its relevancy; a less-practical two-door shooting brake doesn’t stand much of a chance. Of course, Pontiac itself isn’t around anymore, and the Chevy Camaro as we currently know it is dead. Still, it’s fun looking at these concepts and prototypes and thinking about what could have happened if they went into production. I know I’d probably be looking for one right now on Facebook Marketplace.