The Gray Ghost was Pontiac’s True Trans-Am Star
Most of us at Hagerty Media weren’t around to witness the 1971 SCCA Trans-Am season first-hand. We learned about the legendary cars and drivers from history books, our fellow enthusiasts, and from the next best thing, seeing these cars in action at events like the Rolex Motorsports Reunion and Velocity Invitational. It was at these recent events that we came to appreciate the 1964 Pontiac Tempest known as the Gray Ghost. It’s been restored and raced at several events over the last 10 years, and now it’s up for sale.
General Motors suspension engineer Herb Adams built the Gray Ghost from his wife’s daily driver with help from fellow GM engineers Tom Nell and Joe Brady. Despite being larger than the competition and lugging around a full frame, the car was shockingly competitive and surprised a lot of spectators and many of the fastest drivers in the series, placing in the top five in three of the six races it entered. Keep in mind that these races often had 20-30 entries. Those three top-five finishes placed the Gray Ghost ahead of every single Camaro in the field.
Because of its recent racing schedule, we don’t have to work hard to imagine how strange it must have been in 1971 to see the newest, hottest pony cars from Ford, Chevy, Plymouth, and AMC in the same race as a 1964 Pontiac Tempest. The Tempest, at least one generation in styling behind and a size larger than the rest of its competition, was an entirely different beast. Despite having a car named after the race series, Pontiac bowed out of Trans-Am competition for 1971. While the Mustangs, Camaros, ‘Cudas, and Javelins were vying for car buyers’ attention with their vibrant paint schemes, the understated Gray Ghost was a passion project. Adams’ smarts, along with the driving skills of Bob Tullius, made the car a contender.
Operating on a shoestring budget compared to the factory-backed teams, the underdog Gray Ghost is a monument to hot-rodding creativity and ingenuity. We hope that the next owner is as active as the car’s current owner, John Hildebrand, has been. This piece of racing history is best appreciated at speed.
The best book on this is Blood, Sweat and Gears. It is the story of the Ghost and the Trans Am Adams raced before leaving GM and doing the Fire Am and Cheverra.
I have a Herb Adams suspension on my Fiero. He did it for Showroom Stock but it was only raced a couple times.
Those were times when things were much more simple and money was not as hard to come by to field the costs.
The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue is a superior book on the behind the scenes of not only racing but what was needed on order to prep a competition vehicle. Donohue noted that in 1971 the difference between the lack of factory support vs the winning team. Donohue specifically calling out Parnelli Jones no longer having Ford money. Racing essentially a 69 Mustang in 71. Can you imagine the 71 Boatstang as a race car? No wonder Ford bowed out.
The Ghost is an interesting footnote and that’s about it. It was never going to be a world beater. Racing a 1964 Pontiac in 1971with zero factory support was simply an albatross. It had to be intended for the spirit of competition only. IE the fun of it. I can’t think for any other good reason one in their right mind would think a brick on wheels would be competitive at the time. But all GM intermediates were bricks at the time.
It’s sad we lost Mark so many years ago. We could have learned so much more from Captain Nice.
How long do we have until someone calls this Ghost a fake too?
(Not me, just cracking a wise joke is all)
Well, I AM old enough to remember this car in action, and it was amazing to see. The heyday of Trans Am occurred during my early teenage years, and I was transfixed by the series, especially Mark Donahue in the Sunoco Camaro and the fantastic Boss 302 Mustangs.
I’ve been a Pontiac guy and a road racer for a long time. The Grey Ghost was especially exciting simply because it was a privateer effort racing against factory-backed teams. I’ve had the privilege of speaking with John Hildebrand and a few of the people who worked on the Grey Ghost (Harry Quackenboss, Herb Adams) about this car and Herb’s Firebirds. Truly humbling to be able to talk with these people. I hope that John finds a great home for the Grey Ghost. Selfishly, I hope it’s home stays out on the West Coast so I can continue to watch it on the track.
One of the best races I ever saw was at Blackhawk farms between a Genie-Chev sports racer and–what I think was this car! If anyone has contact with Herb Adams, could you find out?
I am old enough to have seen it race at MIS when they had a road coarse. i also followed it in the great news paper AutoWeek. I loved seeing the underdog do so well.
@hyperv6 – I remember back in the day Pontiac was developing a skunk works 303 ci engine that never made it to production; possibly in parallel with the RA V program? Can’t remember exactly now, but seems like maybe it involved tunnel port heads among other things? Curious if the engine in Adams’ car used any of this vaporware.
The Pontiac Tunnel-Port head program was aimed at Trans-Am and other forms of racing, but it was found in 1969 that the Tunnel Port heads didn’t work well on the 5 liter engines or even in the 6 liter engines. They just started paralleling the more traditional Ram Air IV heads in the 6.6 liter and up engines. By the time the Grey Ghost was being built, the V heads were not even being thought about on anything for factory racing. The ram Air IV heads were used on the 5 liter engine in the Grey Ghost and in 1978 on the 6 liter Silverbird. The ’79 Firebird that Herb built for the Rolex 24 and the Trans-Am used a ’74 SD-455 (which had refined Ram Air IV-style heads). My ’79 is very much like that car except for the JBP engine and a few suspension tweaks.
There was one 1969 Trans Am built that had a factory-built Ram Air V. All other Ram Air V engines were assembled outside of the factory. Most were delivered either as parts in the trunk of a car or parts over the counter. Almost all of them were put into drag cars where those monster ports could be put onto larger engines. These were definitely not vaporware, just exceedingly rare. I have had my hands on a Ram Air V-engined car and there’s video of the one ’69 T/A with the only factory-built Ram Air V.
Living near Watkins Glen was a dream come true in 1970 and 1971.
I also saw this Tempest race at Lime Rock, it may have been one of its first races. It was terrible weather but the crowd got behind the underdog and was thoroughly entertained.
The Gray Ghost is such a great looking car. It looks right at home on the track.
Incredible machine, now if a person was in a position to drop 675k for a piece of racing history.
I was fortunate enough to experience the Gray Ghost at St.Jovite, Quebec, Canada in ’71 or ’72. It was amazing to watch this beast, shooting flames out of its full-length pipes on over-run. The images stick with me to this day. Always enjoyed the exploits of Tullius and his teams, whatever they were driving. Golden days of racing.
@AMCFAN We had fun, and we were understaffed, but we were deadly serious. When the management at Pontiac got wind they were going to build a Firebird, they individually got called into their boss’ office and were told in no uncertain terms, “No!”. In the face of GM’s official “no racing” policy, and the heat GM had taken from Congress and the insurance industry for the horsepower race, it would have looked like a factory effort. Herb already owned the car, and had raced it in club events at Waterford HIlls in 1970 (and also providing parts and tech advice to Titus’ Firebird team). But there was one other key factor. When Pontiac skirted the ban on big engines in the intermediate platform (Chevelle, Tempest, Cutlass, Skylark) by offering the GTO option on the Tempest LeMans, DeLorean had them file the paperwork to make it an FIA homologated touring car. Just like Ferrari. When the Trans-Am series was launched in 1966, SCCA used the FIA homologation regulations in an effort to ensure the cars were production-based. The 1964 Tempest LeMans with the GTO option qualified.
@Driver 17, Herb Adams ran an event at Blackhawk Farms on an off weekend during the 1971 Trams-Am season, on his way to earn a SCCA National license. I was his only crew. I remember sitting in his Surburban, the engine idling and the heater blasting watching the steady drizzle.
@Jeff Christe At St. Jovite, Rusty Jowett substituted for Bob Tullius because his Group 44team had a conflicting SCCA National weekend.