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A bright yellow 1973 Pontiac Firebird wearing full Trans Am regalia is live on eBay Motors at $39,500 or best offer, listed by Chatsworth, California seller nosferatu999.
The listing does not pretend to be something it isn't. The car is described up front as a "73 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am tribute car," the VIN field is filled with zeros, and the drivetrain is pure 21st century. This is a driver-focused restomod built on a second-generation Firebird shell, and the asking price puts it in unusual company.
A 5.3 LS Where The 455 Used To Live
The seller lists a cammed and tuned 5.3-liter LS backed by a fresh 4L60E-family automatic, exhaling through 2 1/2-inch dual exhaust and Magnaflow mufflers, with an 8.5-inch 10-bolt rear axle out back. The front end has been rebuilt with CPP tubular upper and lower control arms, and the car sits on 17-inch U.S. Mag Rambler wheels wrapped in Mickey Thompson rubber. It's the same recipe that has made LS-powered builds the default answer for owners who want vintage sheet metal and modern dependability.
Inside, Dakota Digital gauges replace the factory cluster, a B&M Quicksilver shifter handles the gear changes, and the seller notes a loud custom stereo. The body is described as solid with no patches anywhere, the title is clean, and the odometer reads 2,800 miles, which is almost certainly time on the new drivetrain rather than the car's life story.
What Hagerty Says A Real One Is Worth
This is where the asking price gets interesting. Per the Hagerty Valuation Tools, a genuine 1973 Trans Am with the 455-cubic-inch V8 rated at 250 horsepower carries a #3 "good" condition value of $27,900. That is the driver-grade benchmark for the real car, and it sits roughly $11,600 below what this tribute is asking.
Step up to the SD-455 and the math flips violently. Hagerty puts a #3 Super Duty 1973 Trans Am at $129,000, with the guide showing a 15.2 percent gain in its latest revision. Go the other direction and a base 1973 Firebird hardtop with the 350-cid two-barrel is worth just $9,700 in the same condition. One nameplate, one model year, and a value spread of more than 13 to 1.
The broader trend is friendly, too. Hagerty's analysis of Pontiac values shows second-generation Firebirds built between 1970 and 1981 up about 21.5 percent since 2020, with an average condition #3 value near $23,900. That rising tide has lifted everything from Bandit-era 400 cars to genuine 455-powered 1979 Trans Ams, which makes the tribute market harder to read, not easier.
The Restomod Premium Problem
Hagerty is careful to note that heavily modified cars trade outside the price guide entirely, because quality work can add value while narrowing the pool of buyers. That is exactly the tension here. Nobody is paying $39,500 for Pontiac provenance on a car with a zeroed-out VIN field. They are paying for a finished build: an engine that starts every time, a transmission that isn't 53 years old, a rebuilt front suspension, and paint and graphics that photograph well.
Viewed as a receipt rather than a valuation, the number is defensible. A cammed 5.3, a new automatic, a 10-bolt rear, tubular control arms, wheels and tires, digital gauges, custom exhaust and bodywork add up quickly, and anyone who has priced a build like this knows the invoice rarely lands under five figures. The question is whether the next owner values that labor at replacement cost or at resale cost, which is the same question hanging over every entry on our list of the coolest restomods we've featured.
What A Buyer Should Check
The Firebird is being sold through eBay's Secure Purchase program with a $500 immediate deposit, available for local pickup in Chatsworth or shipping, and the listing had roughly two weeks left with 132 watchers at the time of writing. Motorious first covered this car earlier in August, when the same yellow tribute wore a $40,500 ask, so the seller has already trimmed $1,000 without finding a buyer.
Anyone seriously interested should treat the all-zero VIN entry as a placeholder rather than a red flag, then verify the actual VIN, the donor car's original trim, and the quality of the swap in person or through a third-party inspection. The seller prefers phone contact and sells the car with no written or expressed warranty, which is standard for a private restomod sale but worth reading twice. At $39,500, the buyer is betting that a well-sorted 5.3 and a straight body are worth more than a title that says Trans Am.
