During the 2014 Route 66 Mother Road Festival, a 4th gen Pontiac Firebird Trans Am does a wicked burnout on the street.
There are few chances in life for a gearhead to do a big, nasty burnout on the streets without any risk of a ticket and/or jail time. However, this 4th gen Pontiac Firebird Trans Am is doing a “legal” burnout on Route 66 at the 2014 Mother Road Festival. This takes place each year in Springfield, Illinois and in addition to the rest of the festivities, they have a burnout on the street – under the careful watch of event officials.
As we can see in the picture above and the video below, there is plenty of space from the 4th gen Firebird to the crowd, with safety barriers on each side of the car and plenty of water to make the tires easier to spin.
We don’t get any details on the Pontiac Firebird in action, but it appears to be a later 4th gen Trans Am and it has a pretty healthy roar through the quickly-building cloud of smoke. It is obviously an automatic transmission, as when it drops into 3rd gear, the RPMs drop suddenly and the car has to work to keep the tires spinning.
At about the 20 second point in the video, the smoke is so thick that the Firebird is no longer visible, but through the cloud, we can hear the continued roar of the Pontiac’s LS1 V8. Best of all, since there doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of smoke during the burnout, the smoke just sits around the car as the burnout ends with the blast of an air horn.
We don’t know if this Pontiac Firebird Trans Am won the competition, but it had to be a contender with this awesome 30-second burnout.
"Before I was old enough to walk, my dad was taking me to various types of racing events, from local drag racing to the Daytona 500," says Patrick Rall, a lifetime automotive expert, diehard Dodge fan, and respected auto journalist for over 10 years. "He owned a repair shop and had a variety of performance cars when I was young, but by the time I was 16, he was ready to build me my first drag car – a 1983 Dodge Mirada that ran low 12s. I spent 10 years traveling around the country, racing with my dad by my side. While we live in different areas of the country, my dad still drag races at 80 years old in the car that he built when I was 16 while I race other vehicles, including my 2017 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and my 1972 Dodge Demon 340.
"Although I went to college for accounting, my time in my dad’s shop growing up allowed me the knowledge to spend time working as a mechanic before getting my accounting degree, at which point I worked in the office of a dealership group. While I was working in the accounting world, I continued racing and taking pictures of cars at the track. Over time, I began showing off those pictures online and that led to my writing.
"Ten years ago, I left the accounting world to become a full-time automotive writer and I am living proof that if you love what you do, you will never “work” a day in your life," adds Rall, who has clocked in time as an auto mechanic, longtime drag racer and now automotive journalist who contributes to nearly a dozen popular auto websites dedicated to fellow enthusiasts.
"I love covering the automotive industry and everything involved with the job. I was fortunate to turn my love of the automotive world into a hobby that led to an exciting career, with my past of working as a mechanic and as an accountant in the automotive world provides me with a unique perspective of the industry.
"My experience drag racing for more than 20 years coupled with a newfound interest in road racing over the past decade allows me to push performance cars to their limit, while my role as a horse stable manager gives me vast experience towing and hauling with all of the newest trucks on the market today.
